clock | October 19, 2008Once she loses in November (and perhaps gets impeached as the Governor of Alaska), Palin can get a permanent job on Saturday Night Live. She fits there well, is just as good as the rest of the crew, and we can continue NOT watching the show, just like we have not for years now:
clock | October 18, 2008There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and, because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
- Ernest Hemingway
clock | October 18, 2008Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival Edition #33 is up on Ivor Kovic's blog.
Carnival of Space #74 is up on Lounge of the Lab Lemming.
Friday Ark #213 is up on Modulator
clock | October 18, 2008For some reason, my (rare) posts in which I make direct comparisons between Serbia and the USA (usually about politics) tend to become wildly popular (as in: spreading like wildfire on digg, redditt, stumbleupon, etc.). See, for example: Bush is Milosevic, Comparative Wingnuttery, Darwin in Serbia, More about me, The Warriors, Never Again!, Sixteen years ago today, We are now officially living in a dictatorship and When religion goes berserk! for examples of my typically inflamatory prose on the topic ;-)
Let me take a stab at another one, connected to the current US election. I'll try to…
clock | October 18, 2008Joe Killian is a reporter for Greensboro News&Record. Friday, he went to a Sarah Palin rally at Elon University and filed a report from there for his newspaper.
But he also got assaulted - the first reporter so far - and then blogged about the incident.
Pam has more details.
Joe lived through the ordeal and joined us all at ConvergeSouth for a while.
More local discussions here, here, here and here.
clock | October 18, 2008I am back from the 4th ConvergeSouth, the do-not-miss Greensboro conference about the Web, blogging, journalism and community (and the model/inspiration for our own science blogging conferences, including the third one) . Big kudos to Sue Polinsky, Ed Cone and the cast of thousands for putting together the meeting again, making it better and better every year. And of course, thanks to Dave Hoggard for hosting the legendary BBQ with (even more legendary) banana pudding.
I rode to Greensboro with Kirk Ross and came back home with Anton Zuiker, having interesting conversations with each.
Dave…
clock | October 18, 2008Close Enough To Honest:
CNN lies about ACORN 54 times which is certainly better than, say, a billion.
Nuts About ACORN: Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health.:
As far as "gotcha" stunts go, the right-wing feeding frenzy over the vile vote-fraud treachery of ACORN has yet to yield much fruit. Investigations are indeed under way. But then, they are always under way this time of the year--and as the indefatigable Brad Friedman points out, so what? Evidence of voter-registration wrongdoing is no more a sign of widespread, Obama-sanctioned vote fraud than evidence of…
clock | October 18, 2008TPM explains the origin of the term, what it evolved to mean, and who in the U.S. punditocracy is on the tire, who is off for good and who's off but yearns to get back on:
Meghan McCain: "It was a really fun experience.... Everybody really relaxed. It was fun to kind of see big journalistic figures, like Holly Baily swinging on the tire swing and Jon Martin helping my dad grill ribs."
clock | October 18, 2008Scoble goes for a walk through Rep.Brad MIller's precinct, canvassing the neighborhood and talking about politics:
clock | October 18, 2008Human Brain Still Awake, Even During Deep Sleep:
Sleep in humans is divided in two main phases: non-REM sleep, which occupies most of our early sleep night, and REM sleep, during which our dreams prevail. Non-REM sleep is usually considered as a compensatory 'resting' state for the brain, following the intense waking brain activity. Indeed, previous brain imaging studies showed that the brain was less active during periods of non-REM sleep as compared to periods of wakefulness. Although not rejecting this concept, researchers from the Cyclotron Research Centre of the University of Liège in…
clock | October 18, 2008So, let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens, PLoS ONE and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Birdsong 'Transcriptomics': Neurochemical Specializations of the Oscine Song System:
Vocal learning is a rare and complex behavioral trait that serves as a basis for the acquisition of human spoken language. In songbirds, vocal learning and production depend…
clock | October 17, 2008The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribably as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, A segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
- Henry David Thoreau
clock | October 17, 2008Back from ConvergeSouth. Energized but exhausted. Time for bed. Forgot I had a camera with me so I only had one picture taken - this one, with Robert Scoble and myself, trying to make the FriendFeed logo with our fingers:
More ConvergeSouth microblogging on FriendFeed can be found here.
clock | October 17, 2008
A Blog Around The Clock: Get your calendars...
A Blog Around The Clock: Will there be a Third Science Blogging Conference?
A Blog Around The Clock: ScienceOnline'09
A Blog Around The Clock: Submit your entries for the third Science Blogging Anthology
A Blog Around The Clock: ScienceOnline'09 - Registration is Open!
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline '09
Laelaps: I'm going, are you?
The Beagle Project Blog: Registration open for ScienceOnline'09 and OpenLaboratory'08
Living the Scientific Life: ScienceOnline'09 Conference in North Carolina
Michael Nielsen: Biweekly links for 09…
clock | October 17, 2008We are busy preparing for The Open Laboratory 2008. The submissions have been trickling in all year, and a little bit more frequently recently, but it is time now 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.
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-coming blogs - they may not know about the anthology - and submit their stuff as well.
As we did last…
clock | October 17, 2008
Brain Structure Provides Key To Unraveling Function Of Bizarre Dinosaur Crests:
Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.
Movement Restored To Paralyzed Limbs In Monkeys Through Artificial Brain-muscle Connections:
Researchers in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated for the first time that a direct artificial connection from the brain to muscles can…
clock | October 16, 2008Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man: yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hair's breadth of time assigned to thee live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
clock | October 16, 2008I am off to ConvergeSouth where there will be a fascinating Program.
Now, my session is entitled "Conquering Fear - Overcoming Social (Networking) Anxiety". If you walked into a session with this title, what would you expect to hear, want to hear, want to say?