clock | December 1, 2008
Humanity May Hold Key For Next Earth Evolution:
Human degradation of the environment has the potential to stall an ongoing process of planetary evolution, and even rewind the evolutionary clock to leave the planet habitable only by the bacteria that dominated billions of years of Earth's history, Harvard geochemist Charles Langmuir said Thursday (Nov. 13).
Want Sustainable Fishing? Keep Only Small Fish, And Let The Big Ones Go:
Scientists at the University of Toronto analysed Canadian fisheries data to determine the effect of the "keep the large ones" policy that is typical of fisheries.…
clock | December 1, 2008A live performance by Johannes Moller from a concert in the Vasteras Concert Hall, Sweden, May 2005 :
clock | November 30, 2008Who says we didn't have controversial subjects on TV back in my time? Remember Bonanza? It was about three guys in high heels living together.
- Milton Berle
clock | November 30, 2008For those of you too busy to read this blog daily and who did not have time to check out each of 233 posts I published on this blog in November, here is a sampling of some of the posts you may like to check out now:
Spring Forward, Fall Back - should you watch out tomorrow morning?
Semlin Judenlager
I have voted. Have you?
Roosevelts on Toilets
Transition and the new Cabinet
Post-election thoughts
Republicans? Who's that?
The Science Blog Meme
Will there be new communication channels in the Obama administration?
The map is in the bag, but the sequence may yet reveal if kangaroos have jumping…
clock | November 30, 2008Checking one's incoming links on Sitemeter, Technorati and Google Blogsearch is essential tool for a blogger - it allows one to notice responses to one's posts in approximately real time, so the blog-to-blog conversation can continue fluently.
But, for a couple of weeks now, Google Blogsearch has been useless. They have changed the algorithm so, instead of picking up only links from individual blog posts, it picks up links from all sorts of widgets, blogrolls, etc. and thus floods the search with tons of useless hits. I have no idea who just posted a blog response to something I said, and…
clock | November 30, 2008Martin Fenner started it all, so Martin also put together a summary of most frequent, most interesting and funniest responses. Take a look.
And here is the Worldle summary of the Question #1 and here for Question #2.
clock | November 30, 2008Saw the movie over the weekend. Mrs.Coturnix and Coturnietta read the first book (Coturnietta is now reading the second) so we went together.
I am a horrible movie critic - I usually kick back, munch popcorn, and enjoy every piece of crap on the screen. Heck, I love B-monster movies.
So, back to Twilight - first, it was obvious it was a movie made after a book:
- it was too long (Hollywood makes them 90min by design)
- it was choppy and the story was overcomplicated (Hollywood makes simple storylines by design)
- it was missing relevant information, probably something explained in the book…
clock | November 30, 2008Science Professors Know Science, But Who Is Teaching Them How To Teach?:
U.S. science and engineering students emerge from graduate school exquisitely trained to carry out research. Yet when it comes to the other major activity they'll engage in as professors - teaching - they're usually left to their own devices. That's now beginning to change, thanks to work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the Nov. 28 issue of Science, a team led by bacteriology professor Jo Handelsman describes its program of "scientific teaching," in which graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are…
clock | November 30, 2008This is what you need to do:
2008 Nominations Contact Form
In order to nominate blogs for the 2008 Edublog Awards you have to link to them first!
So, follow these two simple steps to nominate (nominations made without links or without correct submission will not be counted)
1. Write a post on your blog linking to a. The 2008 Nomination page & b The blogs & sites that you want to nominate (must be linked to!)
You can nominate for as many categories as you like, but only one nomination per category, and not yourself :) You can nominate a blog (or site) for more than one category)
2. Use…
clock | November 30, 2008It's time! We are closing the submission form on December 1st at midnight Eastern time! That is just 34 hours away!
As expected, the entries have been flying in by the bushel over the past few days - it's hard to keep up with you all and add all the new entries to the list. But, keep them coming! Is there a topic, format or style that is grievously under-represented? This is your last chance to provide the balance. We definitely need more original poems and cartoons.
Only submissions received through this form are valid. Do not add entries into the comments - this will not work!
Keep in…
clock | November 29, 2008The next time you feel like complaining, remember that your garbage disposal probably eats better than thirty percent of the people in this world.
- Robert Orben
clock | November 29, 2008Miss Baker's slideshow about using blogs in the science classroom:
Using Blogs to Promote Science Literacy
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education blogging)
clock | November 29, 2008Philip Johnson makes some back-of-the-envelope calculations, very conservatively assuming that all OA journals are author-pay (not true) and all author fees for publishing are born by the Universities (not true) and concludes that even with such harsh handicapping, universities that switched to OA-only policies would immediately save substantial amounts of money (also check the excellent comments on that post):
Subscription costs would obviously be nil for an open access journal: we are all free to access the content of an open access journal via the internet, with no restrictions on who can…
clock | November 29, 2008It's time! We are closing the submission form on December 1st at midnight Eastern time!
As expected, the entries have been flying in over the past few days. Keep them coming! You have only 3 or so days left to dig through your Archives for your best posts since December 20th 2007 and submit them. Submit one, or two, or several - no problem. Or ask your readers to submit for you.
Only submissions received through this form are valid.
Then take a look at your favourite bloggers and pick some of their best posts - don't worry, we can deal with duplicate entries. Do not forget new and up-…
clock | November 28, 2008Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
- John le Carre
clock | November 28, 2008Friday Ark #219 is up on Modulator
Change of Shift Volume Three, Number Eleven is up on RehabRN
clock | November 28, 2008The other night, at the meeting of the Science Communicators of North Carolina, the highlight of the event was a Skype conversation with Chris Brodie who is currently in Norway on a Fulbright, trying to help the scientists and science journalists there become more effective in communicating Norwegian science to their constituents and internationally.
Some of the things Chris said were surprising, others not as much. In my mind, I was comparing what he said to what I learned back in April when I went back to Serbia and talked to some scientists there. It is interesting how cultural…