Media
clock | April 22, 2010In this talk, Jeff references his TEDx talk and a couple of his recent blog posts: The problem with comments isn't them and News(paper) in the cloud:
revere | April 21, 2010Yesterday we posted on our strong support for open access publishing of tax payer supported research. We are taxpayer supported scientists (at least our NIH grants are) and we consider our work to be the property of the public, who paid for it. Whenever possible (which is most of the time) we do publish in freely accessible journals. Making data freely accessible is more controversial, but we also support this, perhaps with a reasonable grace period to allow scientists to have priority for data they expended effort to collect and with reasonable safeguards for confidentiality and privacy when…
revere | April 21, 2010When two of the most loathsome members of the US Senate bring back again a bill that won't die, you'd think I'd be in high dudgeon. But I'm not. I hope the bill isn't killed or is allowed to die -- again -- and we finally get it. I'd much rather that the two right wing whack jobs, Senators Joe Liberman (morally corrupt Independent neé Democrat) and John Cornyn (morally corrupt Republican), spent their time sponsoring this kind of legislation than making their usual mischief that hurts everyone. What is this miracle legislation that brings me together with these usually worthless publicly…
revere | April 19, 2010When I was young there was a brief fad for 3-D movies. You had to wear those red/green glasses they gave you in the movie theater but the effects were pretty spectacular. I remember seeing Vincent Price in House of Wax and it was pretty impressive to my 11 year old psyche. But 3D faded. Something about those goofy glasses, maybe. Now it's back and the glasses are still part of it but much fancier. They are now high tech active motion glasses and they not just for theater 3-D, either (as in Avatar). 3-D television is making its debut.
I've not seen the new 3-D movies or the TVs but Mrs. R.…
clock | April 18, 2010Since I don't do PowerPoint but use the Web for presentations instead, and since the recordings from AAAS are not free (yes, you can buy them, I won't), and since some people have asked me to show what I showed at my panel there, here is the list of websites I showed there. I opened them up all in reverse chronological order beforehand, so during the presentation itself all I needed to do was close each window as I was done with it to reveal the next window underneath.
I started with http://www.scienceonline2010.com/ to explain the new interactive, collaborative methods in science journalism…
clock | April 18, 2010About a week ago I posted Twittering is a difficult art form - if you are doing it right. While Griff Wigley agreed, I also got two interesting and somewhat dissenting reactions from Kate and Heather.
First, in my defense, that post was targeting journalists and professional communicators, just one of many posts in a series, especially in this vein, exploring the best ways for media and comms folks to use Twitter.
Twitter is just another medium. Like blogs, Twitter can be used in any way one wants. I am not going to tell anyone "you are doing it wrong".
Some media companies just broadcast -…
clock | April 18, 2010The Bride Of Coturnix and I are flying to NYC early tomorrow morning and leaving Thursday afternoon. While we set Monday and Thursday to be "for us", we are flexible if anyone wants to meet for coffee or lunch - just let me know and we can arrange something. We plan to meet with my brother late Monday night for dinner or drinks (depending how timely is his flight in) but we can meet earlier.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will attend the 140 Characters Conference organized by Jeff Pulver:
At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls "The State of NOW" and the…
clock | April 17, 2010As this blog is getting close to having 10,000 posts, and my Archives/Categories are getting unweildy (and pretty useless), I need to get some of the collections of useful posts together, mainly to make it easier for myself to find them. I did that by collecting my best Biology posts a couple of weeks ago. Today, I am collecting my best posts from the categories of Media, Science Reporting, Framing Science and Blogging. There are thousands of posts in these categories combined, most with excellent links or videos, but here are some of the posts that have substantial proportion of my own…
clock | April 17, 2010Science in the Media: Rude or Ailing Health? was a panel that recently convened in the UK, in a response to a recent UK government report on science in the media . You can watch the video of the entire thing at this link.
The panelists were Natasha Loder of the Economist, Andrew Jack of the Financial Times, Fiona Fox of Science Media Centre (and the author of the report) and Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science blog.
It is interesting to watch and there is much one can say. But it is unfortunate that there was a part of the panel proceedings that descended into the old tired journalists vs.…
ddobbs | April 16, 2010The Columbia Journalismi review speaks plainly about Apple's insistence on editorial control of its iPad apps:
Look, let's face it. The iPad is the most exciting opportunity for the media in many years. But if the press is ceding gatekeeper status, even if it's only nominally, over its speech, then it is making a dangerous mistake. Unless Apple explicitly gives the press complete control over its ability to publish what it sees fit, the news media needs to yank its apps in protest.
Yes, this is that serious. It needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.
scientificactivist | April 14, 2010Actually, I should say that this is a very dumb analysis of a poll. The New York Times is really promoting its new NYT/CBS poll right now; as I write this, the top headline on the Times' homepage reads "Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated."
When I first saw that headline and read the email news alert that the Times sent out, I did agree that these appeared to be interesting and surprising findings. And, as I read the article, my interest--and then skepticism--continued to grow. According to the article, these "Tea Party supporters" are "wealthier and more well-educated…
clock | April 12, 2010Science Communicators of North Carolina and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, present:
"Using Multimedia to Advance Your Research" -- and - "Adventures in Self-Publishing"
By Dennis Meredith, author of Explaining Research: How to Reach Key Audiences to Advance Your Work (Oxford University Press)
April 26, 2010, 6:00 p.m.Sigma Xi Center, RTP
Dennis Meredith drew a standing-room-only crowd when he talked at the 2010 AAAS meeting about the role of multimedia in research. We've prevailed on Dennis, formerly of Duke University, to reprise his presentation for the home-state crowd.
From…
clock | April 11, 2010Yesterday, Jay Rosen on Twitter wrote that his goal on Twitter was to have "a Twitter feed that is 100 percent personal (my own view on things...) and zero percent private."
This is an excellent description of mindcasting. Its alternative, 'lifecasting' is 100% private made public.
There is nothing wrong with lifecasting, of course. It is a different style of communication. It is using Twitter with a different goal in mind.
Mindcasting is a method to use Twitter for exchange of news, information, analysis and opinion.
Lifecasting is a method to use Twitter to make friends and communicate…
pharyngula | April 11, 2010I was a bit suspicious of this story that Dawkins and Hitchens were going to "ambush" and "arrest" the Pope when he showed up in England. It was just a little too sensationalistic, too out of character. I was right.
Needless to say, I did NOT say "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" or anything so personally grandiloquent. You have to remember that The Sunday Times is a Murdoch newspaper, and that all newspapers follow the odd custom of entrusting headlines to a sub-editor, not the author of the article itself.
What I DID say to Marc Horne when he telephoned me out of the blue, and I repeat it…
clock | April 9, 2010Good stuff to keep you occupied over the next couple of days:
Systemic issues in science journalism - the reinforcing cycle of niche reporting
Investigative science journalism
The Bias of Veteran Journalists
Dangerous DNA: The truth about the 'warrior gene'
The Language of Science - it's 'just a theory'
Should journalists report on unpublished research?
Joe McLaughlin will be an excellent journalist
Scientists Embrace Openness with a good vibrant discussion of both Open Science and Open Journalism on FriendFeed.
Home Libraries Provide Huge Educational Advantage
Why Do We Dream?
NSF governing…
pharyngula | April 9, 2010I've spent far too much time in airports lately, and I think I might be going mad. I'm sitting, trying to type while waiting, and it's just noise, noise, noise, noise — there's the horrible repetition of "You are approaching the end of the moving walkway&hellip:You are approaching the end of the moving walkway&hellip:You are approaching the end of the moving walkway&hellip:You are approaching the end of…", the frequent intercom warnings that "The TSA has determined that the current threat level is orange…", which means nothing at all, and worst of all are the televisions located…
scientificactivist | April 6, 2010Oh boy, it was a real scorcher in our nation's capital today... at least by April standards! With temperatures in some locales surpassing 90 degrees, several area daily high temperature records were broken.
As I sweated through the day, I got to thinking: where are all of those oh-so-clever political cartoonists and global-warming-denying Republican politicians who just a couple of months ago were incessantly using February's record-breaking snows to "mock" the idea of global warming?
(Bueller...? Bueller...? Bueller...?)
The fact is that this is largely an irrelevant*** question (well,…