Housekeeping
tsmith | June 22, 20067 days, over 2000 miles, and 32+ hours on the road (half of it with 2 kids and a dog). I need a vacation from my vacation. Thanks to most of you for your patience; I see I've already been accused of "censorship" for not being around to approve some comments that got stuck in the junk filter, but everything has now been published and I'm working my way through the rest of the comments (and catching up on emails, reading, lab work, etc.) Have a few posts in the works for today and tomorrow but they'll likely be without any heavy science; I'll get back into that again next week.
clock | June 18, 2006If you look up, just below the banner, there is a new button "Banner Art".. My recent post about the banner is soon going to go off the page, so this is the way to make the information available at all times with just one click....
clock | June 16, 2006There are some excellent news from Seed overlords. They will add to our DonorsChoose educational action for science and math programs for underfunded schools. You can see the donation thermometer on the sidebar of about 20 blogs here, including mine. We are doing excellent - my readers have already donated $342.26 and other bloggers are also doing fine - we have two weeks to go.
Now Seed bosses have announced that they will match our donations, up to $10,000. So, if all the bloggers combined raise $10, 000 or more, SEED will donate an additional ten grand! You will be able to see regular…
clock | June 15, 2006When I first uploaded the banner it was kinda mrky and muted. Look at it now! Clear and gorgeous!
Thanks for the banner go (again) to Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage.
He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here.
Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers.
tsmith | June 14, 2006It's "vacation"--sort of. Thanks to the magic of scheduled posts, even as this pops up I'm probably somewhere in central Illinois at the moment. I'll be in Ohio for a few days to play with my new nephews, and yet a third new nephew who was just born this past weekend. Then it's off to D.C. for a few days, Ohio again, and then back to Iowa, jiggity jig. In the meantime, I have a number of posts scheduled, (and, hey, here's a Grand Rounds to keep you busy as well), but I won't be around often to clear any comments that get sent to the spam filter, or respond to questions or comments. I…
clock | June 10, 2006According to Blogger Dashboard (which cannot be trusted, but there is no other source), I have written a total of 2420 posts (Science And Politics - 2124; Circadiana - 220; The Magic School Bus - 76). Many of those posts are too irrelevant to move to the Archives here - things like carnival announcements, linkfests with lots of dead links, outdated news, etc.
But, there are perhaps somewhere between 100 and 200 posts that are, in my opinion, good, timeless and thoughtful. [more under the fold]
Starting on Monday I will start moving them over here, one at a time. I'll use the 'scheduled…
clock | June 9, 2006You may have noticed a button on my sidebar (under the heading "I Support") that looks like this:
If you click on it, you will be transported to the homepage of one of my favourite science educational programs - the Project Exploration. This project is the brainchild of paleontologist Paul Sereno and his wife, historian and educator Gabrielle Lyons.
More under the fold....
If you do not know who Paul Sereno is, you are probably not interested in dinosaurs at all, as he is the #1 Big Star of Dinosaur Paleontology. Among else, he has discovered Carcharodontosaurus saharicus, one of the…
clock | June 9, 2006I hope you like my new banner. It was commissioned from a real artist,....
.....Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen. You may want to visit his website to check his artwork (and perhaps buy some, or comission your own banner). You can see some of his art also on this webpage.
He has also recently published a gorgeous book, which you can buy either here or here.
Finally, you are surely going to enjoy his beautiful blog. I hope he gets invited to be in the next wave of new SEED sciencebloggers.
I tried to upload the uncropped, unreduced, unmodified version of the banner art so you can play the…
clock | June 9, 2006The Big Blogging Gurus suggest that one should often link back to old posts. I do that, actually, quite often, but now that I have moved my blog here, all the old posts are elsewhere. Over the next few months I will re-publish some of my best posts here so they get archived on this blog. In the meantime it is nice to have the permalinks of the best (and most likely to be linked) posts, or at least most interesting posts all in one place.
I noticed that, when they moved to their new digs at SEED, several science bloggers posted their lists of "best of" posts. I found those lists very…
clock | June 9, 2006I am Coturnix.
If that is insufficient information for you, click on "Read more..."
I used to run three blogs (all three linked from the sidebar): Science And Politics (a little bit about everything, certainly not limited to just science and politics), Circadiana (focused on chronobiology: study of biological timing, including circadian clocks, photoperiodism and the biology and medicine of sleep) and The Magic School Bus (a blog about education, especially Higher Ed and science education).
You can learn much more about me if you click on the "About" button above, just below the banner.…
clock | June 9, 2006So, the Big Day has finally arrived - the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable, including me - yeay! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old and new bloggers there.
My new blog, a fusion of all three of my blogs, is a new brand, with a new name - A Blog Around The Clock, reflecting my age and musical taste, my usual blogging frequency and the area of my scientific expertise, all in one title.
The Banner was designed by Carel Pieter Brest Van Kempen who also runs a delightful science/art blog Rigor Vitae.
The…
clock | June 5, 2006OK, let's try to figure out this Movable Type thingie.
Let's see how bold looks like.
...and italics...
How about I put something inblockquotes?
Or try to embed an image:
That is the early bird that got the worm (which, as R.A. Heinlein said, just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed). So, PZ, Tara and the other early birds here caught worms. Now, we in the second eshelon may not get a worm, but we may get some seed, or SEED...
Hmmm, the "Under the Fold" function is not working....
And "Comments" are not working...
The MovableType thingie apparently gives individual posts…
tsmith | May 15, 2006I was off this weekend, so I've just now published some of the comments that got caught in the junk filter. My apologies to the authors--contrary to what at least one of you mentioned, I'm not censoring you, and a few comments I agree with also got stuck. Swamped today, but I'll have some new material up tomorrow. In the meantime, I encourage you to browse ye olde blogroll or the scienceblogs main page for some excellent posts elsewhere.
tsmith | May 4, 2006Sorry in advance about the shameless self-promotion. As mentioned, I'm hosting Grand Rounds next week (so be sure to get your entries in). Each week, the originator of the carnival, Dr. Nicolas Genes, posts a bit about the host on Medscape ("Pre-Rounds"); here's my interview for anyone interested.
Additionally, for those of you in the Iowa City area, I'll be speaking at this month's Cafe Scientifique (the final one of the year) on the topic "Avian Influenza: What's The Big Deal?" The details:
Time: Thursday, 11 May 2006 5:00 - 6:00 PM
Cottage Bakery and Cafe, 14 S. Linn St.
Stop by…
tsmith | May 1, 2006Just a note that I'm swamped with real work today and in an all-day meeting tomorrow. I have a few things on tap to schedule so things won't be completely dead here, but will be slower than usual for the next 48 hours or so.
tsmith | April 19, 2006(I was planning on mentioning this yesterday, but hadn't heard yet about exactly how the author--Ciryaquen--wanted credited.)
As you can see, the new banner's up. I just wanted to thank everyone for the entries--it was a tough choice; there are a bunch of talented people out there, and I really appreciate all the submissions. I'm putting the image info after the fold for posterity.
One more "programming note:" If you scroll over to the bottom of the left-hand column, you'll find that you can now subscribe via email. Just in case there's anyone out there who's interested, the option's…
tsmith | April 13, 2006As others have mentioned, Scienceblogs got a mention (okay, an entire story) in the Online Journalism Review. And hey, in addition to quoting me, they mentioned my post on Chikungunya--gotta love that. They did misquote me, though (or I misspoke)--I don't have cable. Can't get it in the sticks here; the compensation pays for my internet. Other than that, an overall thumbs up.
tsmith | April 8, 2006Ed did it. Janet's doing it. And, since I totally lack any artistic ability and creativity, I'll do it as well. In the comments to the open thread I posted last week, pough even volunteered an initial design. As I mentioned, I liked the font but I was thinking of something, well, more microbial for the background.
As for the details, Janet notes it should be 760 pixels wide by 80 pixels high, and as she notes, nothing too garish or that would involve copyright issues. And I'll match her offer to do a blog post for the author of the design of choice, and of course give proper credit in…
tsmith | April 7, 2006Thanks to the miracles of scheduled posts, I'll have a few things on tap today, even though I'm far away from my computer and dealing with a vomiting child (who hopefully, by the time this is published, will no longer be throwing up all over himself, his bedding, anything else within projectile distance...) So if there are spam comments that get through (or legitimate ones that got caught in the junk filter and are awaiting my approval), my apologies--I'll get to them when I can.
tsmith | April 5, 2006I've not done this before 'cause I didn't want it to sit and be all pitiful without any comments, but occasionally I'll get comments in a thread that are off-topic, or ask questions about something else I've not written about, etc. Obviously I fill this blog with topics that are interesting to me, but at the same time, I don't want to bore everyone to death. So, here's your chance. Have an interesting topic you'd like to read more about? Maybe there was something I touched on previously but you'd like some follow-up? Feel free to drop any suggestions (and they don't have to be limited to…