clock | November 24, 2008Jeff Jarvis systematically lays down the possible future of journalism (read carefully the entire thing):
It's fair to expect me to put forward scenarios for the future of news. In a sense, that's all I ever do here, but there's no one permalink summarizing my apparently endless prognostication. So here is a snapshot of - a strawman for - where I think particularly local news might go. What follows is just a long - I'm sorry - summary of what I've written here over time and an extension of the one model I think we need to expand coming out of the conference, where one lesson I took away is…
clock | November 24, 2008Plants Grow Bigger And More Vigorously Through Changes In Their Internal Clocks:
Hybrid plants, like corn, grow bigger and better than their parents because many of their genes for photosynthesis and starch metabolism are more active during the day, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin in a new study published in the journal Nature.
How Red Wine Compounds Fight Alzheimer's Disease:
Scientists call it the "French paradox" -- a society that, despite consuming food high in cholesterol and saturated fats, has long had low death rates from heart disease. Research has suggested…
clock | November 24, 2008Carnival of Space #80 is up on Starts With A Bang!
Carnivalesque 45 - a blog carnival of Ancient and Medieval findings - is up on The Cranky Professor
Friday Ark #218 is up on Modulator
clock | November 23, 2008I had been practicing for the Depression a long time. I wasn't involved with loss. I didn't have money to lose, but in common with millions I did dislike hunger and cold.
- John Steinbeck
clock | November 23, 2008As you all know, I was not an Obamamaniac. I never thought that he was a super-Progressive. But I am liking what I am seeing right now.
A lot of Progressive bloggers are screaming bloody murder how Obama has abandoned them by not appointing the Progressives to various cabinet posts. Hello? He's Obama, not Kucinich. But anyway, what Progressives can he appoint - give me names?
What I remember most from reading The True Believer many years ago was not that revolutions are bad, but the take-home message that a revolution has different 'types' of people and that most people are not…
clock | November 23, 2008Daniel Drezner: Public Intellectual 2.0:
".....The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Alan Wolfe claims that "the way we argue now has been shaped by cable news and Weblogs; it's all 'gotcha' commentary and attributions of bad faith. No emotion can be too angry and no exaggeration too incredible." David Frum complains that "the blogosphere takes on the scale and reality of an alternative world whose controversies and feuds are ... absorbing." David Brooks laments, "…
clock | November 23, 2008
Crafting Your Image For Your 1,000 Friends On Facebook Or MySpace:
Students are creating idealized versions of themselves on social networking websites -- Facebook and MySpace are the most popular -- and using these sites to explore their emerging identities, UCLA psychologists report. Parents often understand very little about this phenomenon, they say.
Oh, What A Feeling! Regaining Ability To Interpret Emotions After Severe Brain Injury:
People who have lost the ability to interpret emotion after a severe brain injury can regain this vital social skill by being re-educated to read body…
clock | November 23, 2008I wish every single laboratory web-page contained a disclaimer like this one:
We currently have room in the lab for more graduate students. Before you apply to this lab or any other, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, be realistic about graduate school. Graduate school in biology is not a sure path to success. Many students assume that they will eventually get a job just like their advisor's. However, the average professor at a research university has three students at a time for about 5 years each. So, over a career of 30 years, this professor has about 18 students. Since the…
clock | November 23, 2008Start here, then keep clicking on the 'plus' sign on the right to see everything. Interesting...
clock | November 23, 2008Macedonians plant six million trees in single day:
Thousands of Macedonians took to the hills and forests on Wednesday to plant six million trees in a single day as part of a mass reforestation drive in the Balkan country.
The main aim of the campaign was to replant Macedonia's forests after extensive wild fires over the past two summers, and organizers trumpeted the scheme's environmental benefits at a time of global warming.
"Our goal is to make Macedonia "greener" and make people more aware of the needs of this planet," said Macedonian opera singer Boris Trajanov, who initiated the project…
clock | November 23, 2008This article made me think about this - it showcases two local examples, and it contains this statement:
Mary Gratch, the academic counselor for the junior and senior classes at CHS [Carrboro High School], was a counselor at Chapel Hill High School for 16 years before CHS opened. She said that about two of her students apply to Canadian universities every year.
"It's a small number, but it kind of consistently happens," she said. "In terms of people selecting schools, it's the United States or Canada typically."
But I am wondering if there are any trends occurring - do more (or less) students…
clock | November 23, 2008This is in March and close enough - Wilmington, NC - for me to go:
UNCW's Evolution Learning Community will be hosting "Darwin's Legacy: Evolution's Impact on Science and Culture," a multidisciplinary student conference on March 19-21, 2009.
The conference will be a unique opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and arts who are conducting research or creative endeavors related to evolution to present their research, investigate graduate study opportunities, network, enhance their resumes, and enrich the body of knowledge…
clock | November 23, 2008
From here:
Platinum is a Brazilian image manipulation studio which uses combination of photography, illustration, 3D and CGI to "make the impossible become reality".
clock | November 23, 2008
Simple Eyes Of Only Two Cells Guide Marine Zooplankton To The Light:
Researchers unravel how the very first eyes in evolution might have worked and how they guide the swimming of marine plankton towards light. Larvae of marine invertebrates - worms, sponges, jellyfish - have the simplest eyes that exist. They consist of no more than two cells: a photoreceptor cell and a pigment cell. These minimal eyes, called eyespots, resemble the 'proto-eyes' suggested by Charles Darwin as the first eyes to appear in animal evolution. They cannot form images but allow the animal to sense the direction of…
clock | November 22, 2008Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species - man - acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
- Rachel Carson
clock | November 22, 2008This is where I was last night.... it was great fun, lots of people, lots of enthusiasm. Congratulations to Brian for pulling it off!
clock | November 22, 2008NYTimes:
Eliminating daylight time would thus accord with President-elect Barack Obama's stated goals of conserving resources, saving money, promoting energy security and reducing climate change.
Eugene Sandhu:
In order to conserve energy, President-elect Barak Obama should eliminate daylight saving time.
Boing Boing:
President-elect Obama wants to get rid of daylight saving time in the United States to conserve energy.
The game of broken telephones? Or lack of reading comprehension, or just wishful thinking? I though we were the Reality-Based Community.
More....