Department of the Drama

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." -John Updike
"There is no rest, really, there is no rest, there is just a joyous torment all your life of doing the wrong thing." poet Derek Walcott, 1982 excerpted in Harper's Magazine, February 2010
Thanks to everyone who participated in the unscientific survey on commenting. The results are back, and I'd like to share them with you. As many of you have noticed, we've been talking about comments a lot here lately, both at BioE and on Sb in general. There's also a big session on online civility coming up at SciOnline '10. So the main purpose behind the survey was to get you involved in that discussion. I've brought the issues of uncivil and uninformed comments up in several posts, sometimes rather provocatively, but we already know that the majority of blog readers don't comment often,…
BioE readers: if you have a minute, take this quick five-question survey to let me know your thoughts on blog comments. Thanks! The survey is now closed. Thanks!
Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling (detail) view the whole thing at The Oatmeal - it's great. While blogging late at night, I've sometimes wondered whether an extensive study of blog comments would yield a set of emergent categories, which could then be organized into a sort of phylogeny representing different species of blog commenter. I'm not referring to politics, academic discipline, or favorite ideological hobby horses: I'm talking about comment writing style and what you can infer from it, independent of a comment's content. For example, you have no doubt encountered Grammar Nazis…
Happy New Year! It's been a great two years (almost) here at Scienceblogs. But since most readers don't comment, I don't really know who many of you are. Who are you, where are you, what do you do, and what plans/hopes do you have for the upcoming year?
The recent blizzard turned our decorative holiday planter into a suspiciously Cthulhulian holiday effigy. A cephaloconiferopod? A gymnosquid? An everoctogreen? I have no idea what to call it, but it obviously says "Merry Christmas, BioE readers!"
Every year, I do my charitable giving at the holidays. It doesn't make much sense from a personal budget standpoint, since I'm always running out of money and time, but it just feels like a good thing to do. This year, I'm going to feature one recipient here on the blog, in the hopes of raising awareness of all the great local charities out there who don't get much press. Unlike my perennial favorites Doctors Without Borders and DonorsChoose - both wonderful organizations who do a lot of good, and have been featured on BioE already this year - or media groups like NPR and Wikimedia, there…
So it's finally happened: the government is taking blogs so seriously that the FTC is cracking down on us! As you may have heard, Bloggers who offer endorsements must disclose any payments they have received from the subjects of their reviews or face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.The agency, charged with protecting consumer interests, had not updated its policy on endorsements in nearly three decades, well before the Internet became a force in shaping consumer tastes. The new rules attempt to make more transparent corporate payments to…
Yes, I am aware comments are borked on some recent posts - I apologize. It's apparently a code issue at Sb, and I can't fix it. If you click directly through to a full post, you may not see comments. If you click on the "comments" link at the bottom of the post on the main page, you may be able to enter a comment there, but you won't see the full post anymore. This appears to be more of a problem for people using Firefox than for those using Safari. And sorry about the timing - I know there are some lovely ladies anxious to express themselves about my last post. I've now added a link at the…
Those of you who visited Abebooks' weird book room have had an impact - check out this story in the Guardian. Also, I was thrilled to see photos of the Snail Art Car, the "Golden Mean," at Burning Man this week - here's why. Glad to have contributed even a tiny bit of inspiration to what turned out to be a whimsical steampunk triumph for Kyrsten, Jon and their team. Damn, I really want to go to Burning Man. . .
Scienceblogs is playing with the idea of making the "user community" more multidimensional. You can read more and express your opinion here.
For me, back-to-school shopping was always accompanied by a frisson of anticipation and excitement. It was the only time of year I actually got to go on a shameless shopping spree - which required leaving town and adventuring an hour or two north to find a wider selection of department stores. I didn't care about clothes much, so it wasn't the clothes I really cared about, but what they represented: the possibility that if I just hit on the right costume, the right ensemble of luscious jewel-toned sweaters and tights and matching socks (this being the 80s and 90s), I'd suddenly enter into a…
. . . as soon as possible. As you may have noticed, Scienceblogs is having a few hiccups as it transitions to new servers. I'm having a few issues myself as I transition to a new apartment this week, so the blog will be fairly dead until everything gets straightened out. In the meantime, here's a classic wince-inducing headline from the Albuquerque Journal (1984). Is this good advice? Bad advice? Who can tell!? You can find many more like this on the tiles in the restrooms in DC's Newseum - I took this snapshot during the SEED Innovation Summit last month. Have a great week!
Readers, this week I had to do something I have never done before. Specifically, I banned someone from BioE. Their comments will no longer appear here, and as the rest of you may notice when you comment, I've turned moderation on to enforce that. Unfortunately, that means everyone's comments will be slightly delayed. I apologize; I don't like it either. There is a surprisingly common misperception about blogs: that any commenter has the right to say whatever they want in the comments, no matter how offensive, off-topic, rude, or annoying, and the blogger and the community just have to grit…
Opened the July 09 issue of The Scientist to find an article by Steven Wiley on why, contrary to popular belief, you aren't necessarily a failure if it turns out you're not suited for academic research: There is no disgrace in failing to achieve a career as a scientist. Truly. Some of my students achieved distinction in their graduate work only to walk away from a scientific career with no regrets and with much ensuing success. Life is full of opportunities. The more attuned we are to how we realistically match those opportunities, the more likely we are to find real satisfaction in our…
Red Line crash, June 22, 2009, between Takoma Park and Fort Totten stationsPhoto from Fox5 News, via DCist As many of you already know, DC's Red Line suffered a fatal crash this evening during rush hour. One train had stopped. A second train behind it failed to stop, overtook the first train, and ran up on top of it, shearing off the front end of the first car and crushing the last car of the first train underneath. It is still totally unclear how or why this happened. The second train's driver is deceased, as are at least five others (the situation is being updated as I write this). About…
While I was out of town this weekend, one of my friends lost her dog. As I read over the many caring comments on her Facebook page, it struck me how difficult it is to express condolences - especially on the loss of a pet. Like many others, I ended up simply saying "I'm sorry." The significance of the relationship between pet and person is often minimized, even though we know that the unconditional love supplied by a pet can do astonishing things for human mental and physical health. Personally, I don't believe animals have souls, but neither do I believe they are soulless automatons. Cats…
Thanks to SEED's matching Bloggers Challenge funds and some generous donors who gave me DonorsChoose gift certificates for Christmas, I got to push several worthy projects to completion this winter (by "topping off" their funding). That meant that I got real, snail mail thank-you packages from those classrooms. At first I was a little ambivalent because I didn't really want the kids to spend their valuable classroom time thanking me. But then I realized that while writing those thank-you notes, they spend at least a few minutes thinking about the fact that a complete stranger cares about…
OMG! This Chris Beckett story is totally about me! You can read the title story of The Turing Test online, and it's well worth checking out. In a dystopian future, Jessica runs a gallery where art increasingly involves human body parts and is designed to shock and appall bystanders. Now I have to go read it. . . via iO9