clock | July 12, 2006Carnival of Community Campaigns....will be a fortnightly roundup of all the best posts put together by local community campaigns, aiming to spread their message - an international forum for local campaigns.
The carnival will favour the voices of people excluded from power, people and communities who the establishment parties may sometimes court at election time, but forget as soon as the polls are closed - turning back to their corporate paymasters, at least until the next time they want our votes!
clock | July 12, 2006
This post was a response to a decent (though not too exciting) study and the horrible media reporting on it. As the blogosphere focused on the press releases, I decided to look at the paper itself and see what it really says. It was first posted on August 09, 2005. Under the fold...
I saw this on Pandagon first - a response to an article on NeuroImage about gender-specific voice recognition. Actually, it was not a response to the article itself (behind the subscription wall), but to the MSM reporting about the article. Soon, other bloggers chimed in, notably Feministing, Blondesense,…
clock | July 11, 2006Anton notes that Dave Winer is advising John Edwards to start a program to teach North Carolinians to blog.
Er, Dave, you've been here several times at various bloggercons. And the bloggercons were here because this is one of the Big Centers of blogging in the country. Why should John Edwards start doing something that is already done by people who know what to do and how to go about it and are successful at it as humanely possible?
John Edwards is using the new communications technologies better than any politician - he is light years ahead of the competition. He sits in the hotebed of…
clock | July 11, 2006Last Carnival of Education (teaching, educational policy) was on NYC Educator and the next one is tomorrow on School Me.
Last Animalcules (microorganisms) was on Aetiology and the next will be on July 13th, 2006 on Science Matters.
Last Change Of Shift (nursing) was on Emergiblog and the next one will be on July 13th, also pm Emergiblog.
Last Friday Ark (animals) was on The Modulator and the next one will be on July 14th, also, as always, on The Modulator.
Last History Carnival (history) was on Chapati Mystery and the next one will be on July 15th on Air Pollution.
Last Tar Heel Tavern (…
clock | July 11, 2006This post from May 07, 2005, was one of the rare personal posts I have ever written. Under the fold....
It is Derby Weekend! Exciting, isn't it? I had to watch the re-run tonight, but I saw it. Giacomo! Who's that!? I love when underdogs win!
I practically grew up on the Belgrade Racecourse. Horse sports being really small in Yugoslavia, it is an unusual place. The mile-long dirt track is on the outside. Inside is a 1000m long hard track for trotting races. And in the very center, there is a large show-jumping ring. The Sunday racing program would usually start with a jumping class (and you…
clock | July 10, 2006I often ask you to read several posts in succession and make your own connections. Here's a line up of some old and some new posts about the history, current state (and cultural battle) and possible future of the institution of marriage:
First off, Lance Mannion wrote a couple of days ago on Polygamy, voyeurism, and other fun things to do on the weekend:
"...a lot of Right Wing America lives on the frontier between civilization and Trailer Park choas. The reason they are so terrrified by change and the prospect of sexual and personal freedom is that where they come from all those things are…
clock | July 10, 2006This post, originally published on January 16, 2005, was modified from one of my written prelims questions from early 2000.
EVOLUTIONARY PHYSIOLOGY OF BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS
"Circadian clocks allow organisms to predict, instead of merely react to, cyclic (predictable) changes in the environment". A sentence similar to this one is the opening phrase of many a paper in the field of chronobiology. Besides becoming a truth by virtue of frequent repetition, such a statement appeals to common sense. It is difficult to imagine a universe in which it was not true. Yet, the data supporting the above…
clock | July 10, 2006
Today is the 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla. Here is an attempt to put in one place as much as can be found about the celebrations of his birthday and birth-year, the information about Tesla, the mentions in the media and on blogs, etc. I will keep updating this post throughout the day so, please, if you know of something I missed, or if you have seen (or written yourself) a blogpost related to Tesla, please let me know by e-mail or in the comments so I can check it out and perhaps include it in this post.
Tesla's birthday in the media
A good article in Globe and Mail: "Lighting up the…
clock | July 10, 2006Today's Quotes of the Day:
Nikola Tesla was born at Smiljan in the Lika region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an area now in Croatia. After studying electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic at Graz, Austria he became the chief electrician at the phone company in Budapest, then worked for Continental Edison at Paris. His supervisor there gave him a letter of recommendation which Tesla presented to Thomas Edison in 1884, the letter said only "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." When Edison failed to honor a promised incentive award, Tesla left…
clock | July 9, 2006Dont' forget to write something about Tesla tomorrow for his 150th birthday. If you do, please send me the URL so I can include it in a kind of a carnival-like linkfest for this occasion.
clock | July 8, 2006Welcome to the second edition of The Synapse, the new neuroscience carnival.
This time, you have a puzzle to solve. Next to each entry, there is an image depicting the structural formula of a neurotransmitter, neurohormone or neuromodulator. Your job is to figure out what they are and leave the answers in the comments (or in your own posts that link to this edition). If I have managed to figure out MovableType by now, you should be able to click on images to enlarge.
Watch out - not everything is mammalian, or even vertebrate neurochemistry! The winner - whoever is the first to…
clock | July 8, 2006Many of us on SB are having problems with Movable Type today. Some of us can post OK, some can post only very short posts with no links and/or no mention of dr*gs etc. Others cannot post at all. This is a test to see if I can post anything. I'll try to post The Synapse late tonight or early in the morning, but if that does not work I may have to postpone it until Monday when the tech-guy fixes the problem.
Also, I have not received a single comment in more than 24 hours. We have a new super-tough anti-spam system. I am afraid that it is blocking legitimate comments (and trackbacks).…
clock | July 7, 2006Carnival of Feminists XVIII is up on Ink and Incapability. Somehow I missed this carnival from my regular Carnival Updates feature. I will rectify that error in the next edition.
clock | July 7, 2006This post is really ancient - from September 24, 2004 - but it was fun to write, I remember. In the meantime I learned that it is actually official - as an atheist I cannot get elected for any office in North Caroina (and a dozne or so other states). That is written in the state law. Only people who believe in fiary tales (or are good at lying about it) can get elected here. Under the fold....
I will never be elected a dogcatcher. I'd never run for that office as I happen to like dogs and would have a problem with taking them to the pound. Even if I ran I would never get elected for a…