Category Archives: Blogging

Whassup?

Posted on April 5, 2008 by | 7 comments

You must have noticed that there wasn’t too much effort on this blog over the past couple of weeks (except for the elaborate and too successful April Fools hoax). I’ve just been so busy lately. So, here is a quick recap, and some pictures.
Back on March 21, I went to Duke University to participate in a panel called Shaping the world, one job at a time: An altruistic/alternative career panel. From education, to public health in the developing world, to science journalism, writing, blogging and publishing. The room was full (80 people? Perhaps 100?!). I am not sure one hour was enough for all five of us to say everything we wanted, but I did manage to explain what PLoS is all about (especially PLoS ONE). Sheril was sitting in the front row and she took these pictures. Abel was sitting right next to her, and wrote more about one of the other panelists. As usually happens at such meetings, the most useful part was the hallway chatter right after. I talked to people who may be interested in publishing with us, or collaborating, or applying for an internship.
On March 22 we met at Miltown in Carrboro to say farewell to our friend Bharat. The weather was nice enough to sit outside. Anton (actually the waitress using Anton’s camera) took this picture. Bharat is going to Vancouver Island, all the way on the West coast of Canada to do some environmental work. There are many science bloggers in that part of the world, so perhaps they can invite Bharat to their blogger meetups (I cannot tell you his blog as I used his real name in this post, but I can facilitate connection).
Then on March 26th, again the weather was good for sitting outside at Milltown for a joint meetup between BlogTogether and the Orange Politics Happy Hour. There were about 20 people there, some old friends (including OP hosts Ruby Sinreich and Brian Russell, the camera master Wayne Sutton and Ginny Skalski from NBC, the Facebook guru Fred Stutzman, the Carrboro mayor Mark Chilton and many others), some new to me and fun was had by all. And we all had Moo.org cards to exchange with each other. They all tried really hard to get me on Twitter, with no success… 😉 Wayne took a bunch of pictures, but here is one of me, so my Mom can see that I look decent when I go out to meet people. Actually, I was dressed up for a funeral I went to earlier that day.
On March 28th, Sheril, Abel and I went to Duke and talked about Science 2.0 and blogging to a class on science/policy communication, which was great fun, and interesting pictures are circulating on the Web (check the links).
In the meantime, I got engrossed in reading the entire Framing Science flare-up, but decided not to write anything myself (except a few comments on a couple of other blogs) as I did not want to draw even more attention to it – that would be bad framing 😉 Greg has collected the links to the first wave of these posts. Now a second wave, quite more sober and mature, is popping up around the blogs so take a look.
Last week I went to the dentist twice. I was always so proud of my perfect teeth…until I lost dental insurance five years ago. Now there is something rotten with pretty much every tooth in my head. Finally employed and insured again, it’s time to aggressively pursue a pearly smile again. They did the two most critical teeth first, those that needed swift rescuing. We’ll do the rest in May and June.
I am also busy organizing my European trip – primarily the first part, in the UK. You can meet me in London or Cambridge. Then I’ll spend a weekend with Henry Gee (and no, I will not divulge all the PLoS secrets to a Nature editor!).
I am preparing myself for two panels (one on Open Access, one on science blogging) for the science FEST in Trieste, Italy, as well as an article in their journal there. I hope Franc will be able to come to Trieste so we can finally meet.
Later, I will be giving a talk about Open Access at the Ministry of Labor in Serbia and, hopefully, also at the Medical school at the University of Belgrade. I will enjoy my Mom’s cooking, meet my highschool and equestrian friends and local bloggers.
Bjoern is organizing a dinner for me and local bloggers in Berlin. On the way back, I will stay one day in London with my cousin and will be back home on May 3rd, just in time for the NC primaries/caucuses – perhaps I will make up my mind by then (and European media may help me clear my mind about US politics). Anyway, if you are in any of those places at any of those dates, please let me know and let’s meet.
I think I’ll take Amanda’s book and Vanessa’s book for airplane reading, then buy some SF once I am finished with these.
This morning I finished my last BIO101 Lab (just the lab – no time for the lecture and lab combined) and turned in the grades, so that is one more thing I don’t have to worry about for a while. And tomorrow I will start working on my poster for the SRBR meeting.
Due to the popular consensus, I have already scheduled all the Clock Quotes for the duration of the trip. I will do the “My picks from ScienceDaily”, and YouTube videos, and “New and Exiciting in PLoS” as regularly as I can while abroad. I will also repost some of the stuff from the Archives, e.g., some Greatest Hits and, as I tend to do every year, my Clock Tutorials for the new readers. And I will post pictures from the trip every day. So, there may not be much of new, long, deeply thoughtful posts next month, but there will be something every day.
Finally last Thursday, I met a bunch of friends at Town Hall Grill. Lenore, Andrea, Catharine, Rosalyn, Sheril, David and Vanessa were there. The food was delicious, and the pictures are under the fold (blurry, as the wine was too good to resist):

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Posted in Balkans, Blogging, North Carolina, Open Science, Personal

Beacons of the Bloggerati!

Posted on April 4, 2008 by | Comments Off on Beacons of the Bloggerati!

Last week, Sheril, Abel and I went to Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute on Public Policy to talk about science blogging and other aspects of Science 2.0 to a graduate class on science policy communication taught by Misha Angrist, who dubbed the three of us the Beacons of the Bloggerati! Sheril has an interesting picture, taken during lunch, in the balmy NC weather outside. Under the fold is an indoors picture taken by Misha, using Abel’s camera (I forgot to bring mine):

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Posted in Blogging

London, in a week

Posted on April 1, 2008 by | 1 comment

The trip to the UK is shaping up. Sing up here if you want to meet me during that week, or here if you want to meet me at the pub on April 9th (probably this one) or here if you want to go to the Museum and keep your eyes on those places for updates.

1 Comment

Posted in Blogging, Personal

‘Generation’ is the mindset, not age

Posted on March 31, 2008 by | 7 comments

Words of wisdom (via):

The internet isn’t a decoration on contemporary society, it’s a challenge to it. A society that has an internet is a different kind of society than a society that doesn’t.

I agree. And people, regardless of chronological age, appear to separate along “generational” lines, with the word “generation” really meaning how much they grok the immenseness of the societal change. It changes everything: politics, economics, media, science, environment, public health, business…. The “old” generation thinks of the Internet as yet another place to put their traditional advertising – a website as a billboard. Plus, by charging something, they may get some revenue. The “young” generation understands that traditional marketing looks awkward in the new medium and is inherently repellent. I agree with this sentiment:

On the one hand, there are those who see Web 2.0 tools as an enhancement of traditional collaboration and outreach capabilities. On the other hand – and to my mind more intriguing – there are those who believe that Web 2.0 is heralding a new business paradigm.
To the former, the failure to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon is a missed opportunity to tap into new audiences and fundraising possibilities. To the latter, it represents the risk to development organizations of becoming obsolete, bypassed by new players who are more adept to exploiting the innovative potential of “radical collaboration”.

This has been discussed mostly in terms of the demise of the newspaper:

Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago.
————————
Perhaps not, but trends in circulation and advertising–the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising–have created a palpable sense of doom.
———————-
In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad. Newspapers have created Web sites that benefit from the growth of online advertising, but the sums are not nearly enough to replace the loss in revenue from circulation and print ads.
———————–
Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper” (2004), predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody’s doorstep one day in 2043. It may be unkind to point out that all these parlous trends coincide with the opening, this spring, of the $450-million Newseum, in Washington, D.C., but, more and more, what Bill Keller calls “that lovable old-fashioned bundle of ink and cellulose” is starting to feel like an artifact ready for display under glass.
Taking its place, of course, is the Internet, which is about to pass newspapers as a source of political news for American readers. For young people, and for the most politically engaged, it has already done so. As early as May, 2004, newspapers had become the least preferred source for news among younger people. According to “Abandoning the News,” published by the Carnegie Corporation, thirty-nine per cent of respondents under the age of thirty-five told researchers that they expected to use the Internet in the future for news purposes; just eight per cent said that they would rely on a newspaper. It is a point of ironic injustice, perhaps, that when a reader surfs the Web in search of political news he frequently ends up at a site that is merely aggregating journalistic work that originated in a newspaper, but that fact is not likely to save any newspaper jobs or increase papers’ stock valuation.

But more and more, this is discussed in other areas as well, especially politics:

The Drudge Report’s link to the YouTube iteration of the CBS News piece transformed it into a cultural phenomenon reaching far beyond a third-place network news program’s nightly audience. It had more YouTube views than the inflammatory Wright sermons, more than even the promotional video of Britney Spears making her latest “comeback” on a TV sitcom. It was as this digital avalanche crashed down that Mrs. Clinton, backed into a corner, started offering the alibi of “sleep deprivation” and then tried to reignite the racial fires around Mr. Wright.
The Clinton campaign’s cluelessness about the Web has been apparent from the start, and not just in its lagging fund-raising. Witness the canned Hillary Web “chats” and “Hillcasts,” the soupy Web contest to choose a campaign song (the winner, an Air Canada advertising jingle sung by Celine Dion, was quickly dumped), and the little-watched electronic national town-hall meeting on the eve of Super Tuesday. Web surfers have rejected these stunts as the old-school infomercials they so blatantly are.
Senator Obama, for all his campaign’s Internet prowess, made his own media mistake by not getting ahead of the inevitable emergence of commercially available Wright videos on both cable TV and the Web. But he got lucky. YouTube videos of a candidate in full tilt or full humiliation, we’re learning, can outdraw videos of a candidate’s fire-breathing pastor. Both the CBS News piece on Mrs. Clinton in Bosnia and the full video of Mr. Obama’s speech on race have drawn more views than the most popular clips of a raging Mr. Wright.

And politics again:

“We’re all pioneers now,” Trippi concludes. No one knows the best way to use YouTube yet, for example. (Such as your humble correspondent, who can’t even hold a Flip video straight.) “And it probably won’t be a campaign, it’ll be an individual committing an act of journalism,” he adds, for example. “No one’s perfected it, but the Obama’s campaing is closest. I envy the tools they have…. I think we’re just still seeing the first birthing of this new politics, too.” I agree.

And government:

Blue NC highlights the absurdity of Easley appointing someone who doesn’t know how to use a computer to head the committee on North Carolina’s electronic records retention policy: “Don’t try to e-mail the state about e-mail.”
Way back in 2002, I was told that Howard Coble — then sponsoring a bad net-related bill — didn’t know how to turn on a computer. Coble’s staff said I was just picking on him by pointing that out, but it mattered — someone who had never seen a click-thru user agreement wouldn’t have understood the power the bill gave the recording industry.
As Rep. Rick Boucher said, “I think it is very important that members of Congress who make judgments on this have a working knowledge of computers and the Internet. Many do, but some members are technology-averse, including some, unfortunately, who are in positions of influence.”
Hard to believe it’s still an issue six years later.
Speaking of hard to believe — a candidate using a blog was national news back in 2002.

And of course business:

Is this the end of the organization? Probably not by name and certainly not in the broadest sense of the term. But the traditional, tightly controlled, top down, branded organization is finding itself having to adapt and change. The organizations of the future will not look like the organizations of today.
Whether the organization as we know it survives or not, it is by studying the changing patterns of communication that we will discover the new shape of civil society. Our methods of analysis – and possibly our methods of regulation, funding, and participation – will shift from those that reflect managerial thinking to those that reflect ecosystem thinking.

The definition of ‘work’ is rapidly changing:

What occurred to me is that coworking is generational if you change your definition. Coworking is about this “generation” of people altering the perception of “professional,” “work environment,” “colleague,” etc. It is about hip people writing their own ticket for work. Coworkers are skilled individuals who are prepared to be part of the global community.
——————
And businesses need to be aware of and adapt to this changing workforce. I have been researching this avenue quite a bit and as much as “coworking” is hip and trendy, it is smart and necessary in our changing economy. When software engineers end up doing business with colleagues halfway across the world, what’s to motivate them to come into a traditional office? Isn’t it more interesting for them to be in a coworking space where they can meet people in all walks of life? Businesses will be getting educated if they want to survive and stay competitive. It is just a matter of time before this “generation” of coworkers changes the way businesses do business.

The same goes for science publishing. Paper is dead. Some publishers think mainly about their hardcopy product, the paper journal that is sent out to libraries and subscribers. The website is almost an afterthought: “Hmmm, it would be cool to have something online. All the cool kids are doing it. Perhaps we can even get some revenue by placing our papers online and charging for access”. Other publishers are smarter – they are rethinking the business from scratch, adapting to a completely new world in which everything is online, the new generations find payment for information an abhorrent concept akin to censorship, and the paper is an afterthought – something that the end-user can just print out at home.

Update:
CNN: Telecommuters band together
Related: This is why collaborative education is so important.

7 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Politics, Society, Technology, Workplace

Yup, I usually try to keep it pretty clean around here…

Posted on March 29, 2008 by | 15 comments

The Blog-O-Cuss Meter - Do you cuss a lot in your blog or website?

15 Comments

Posted in Blogging

Are you addicted to the Internet?

Posted on March 25, 2008 by | 3 comments

While I don’t think there is such a thing as Internet Addiction, doing this quick test is fun:

“Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.”

3 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Fun

Triangle Blogger Meetup

Posted on March 24, 2008 by | Comments Off on Triangle Blogger Meetup

Next Triangle blogger meetup is this Wednesday at 6pm at Milltown (307 E. Main St., Carrboro). It is organized by our friends at Orange Politics, for several years the model for local political organizing online. It is likely some of the local politicos and candidates will show up. It is free and open for all and, heck, if you do not want to chat about politics, you don’t have to – we’ll chat about everything and anything anyway, as we usually do 😉

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Posted in Blogging, North Carolina, Politics

Around the intertubes….

Posted on March 24, 2008 by | Comments Off on Around the intertubes….

Teaching Your Spouse or Lover to Speak Serbian
It literally rained mud here last Tuesday
Tales of buffoonery, keys
Can Technology make us Happy?
I will never watch The Simpsons again
The stupid, it burns
EMAIL I wish I had sent
Seminar thoughts
But you punch above your weight and you’re stronger than you look, And the ending’s not the same, they changed it from the book.

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Archy is Five

Posted on March 23, 2008 by | Comments Off on Archy is Five

And that is like half of Pleistocene in blogyears….

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Posted in Blogging

Meet me in London

Posted on March 22, 2008 by | 5 comments

If you live in the UK and would like to meet me on April 9th, go here to organize – add a comment with your preferences of place/time/menu/events….

5 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Personal

Around the intertubes….

Posted on March 22, 2008 by | Comments Off on Around the intertubes….

Emergence Among the Trees
The actual world needs better writers
…but is it the opiate of the masses?
In safe hands
Alan Keyes and other third party news
Sometimes I Cannot Believe What We Have Allowed to be Done in Our Name
Why Aren’t Students Interested in a Career in Science?, Humanistic Science Education and Air Pollution: Regional Influences & the Beijing Olympics
How to reinvent the newspaper business
How to get started in amateur astronomy. Step 1: Get real
Blogging is Subversive and Lessig’s Congressional Fixup Plan
Can Polaroid Sunglasses Help You See Venus in the daytime?
Lighting Up Field Theory
Justice
Legislating Civility: No Cussing Week
Pigshit in space
Lauri Lebo’s Book, ‘The Devil in Dover’
The X2 Club — massively multiplayer science is on the way!
This is what happens when physicists start drinking…
C is for Confrontation

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Posted in Blogging

A Cool Million

Posted on March 21, 2008 by | 9 comments

I know it’s an arbitrary number, but it still looks cool:
million.JPG
(Apparently, the 1000000th and the 1000001st visitors arrived simultaneously). Back when I just started I never thought this was even possible.
The millionth visitor came here from Oakland, California, entered the site at this post, and made 17 pageviews in 6 minutes 4 seconds.

9 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Housekeeping

Welcome the newest SciBling!

Posted on March 20, 2008 by | Comments Off on Welcome the newest SciBling!

Denialism blog has a new co-blogger. Go say Hello to PalMD.

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Around the intertubes….

Posted on March 20, 2008 by | 1 comment

Pre-accountability
Getting Jaked
Space Kimchi (but can they fix sarma on the Space Station?)
Flare Research – Well damn…
When Life Needs Porpoise
Live from Seattle: Fatal intracerebral mass bleeding edition
So my lovely oldest is 16 and a half…
A Few Important Posts (about animal rights)
Ocelot – Salvador Dali’s pet
Three levels of spiders
A sustainable culture begins with a healthy, sustainable attitude
Sharks and Condit
More Komodo Dragon Babies!
3/19/2003 – 3/19/2008
Weaver, Roseman and Stringer back at it with Neandertals, Natural Selection and a time of divergence
Cultural sustainability
Photographic rights and Exeter streets
Bacterial capitalism
Ten Valuable Resources
Time to move the scientific process on the web

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Posted in Blogging

Not all blogs are tech blogs

Posted on March 18, 2008 by | 8 comments

In one of those “if you like this you may also like this” e-mails from Amazon.com, I got a suggestion I may like a book called Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers. So, I took a look. I’ve been blogging since 2004, so I thought I knew who the top bloggers were and could find it interesting to see what they had to say.
As it turns out, the title is a misnomer. It should be “……American Top TECH Bloggers”. I recognize three names (Anderson, Scoble, Rubel).
Perhaps they say interesting things in the interviews, as observers of the blogosphere. But, I am not really interested in tech blogs. I mean, kudos to them – they built all the software that tens of millions of bloggers are using today. But, they usually do not write about things interesting to people outside their circle. I know nothing about software. I am a Luddite when it comes to gizmos and gadgets (got my first cell phone 6 months ago, OK?). I have no interest in the business shenanigans of tech corporations. I understand some people may be interested, but the title of the book should have been more truthful about it.
The book is also heavily male-slanted, with the editor’s explanation about as clueless as was Oransky’s back at the Conference.
I’m thinking, perhaps I’ll buy it anyway, and see if the contents is interesting to a broader audience.
Update/Clarification: Being clueless is not something to be ashamed of – I was clueless about this until about a year ago. Being a white man, I took some things for granted that I shouldn’t. Reading feminist blogs taught me some things. As Pat said in a comment (see the link above):

I thought his was a good post but that, unlike you, he didn’t understand that when a group hasn’t been at the table, sometimes it takes more than an invitation to get them there.

Exactly – an open invitation is not perceived as an open invitation by groups that historically were not invited. Just issuing an invitation is not enough. Women, non-Whites (in academia: undergraduates) and other minority groups have seen many invitations that were really by and for white men. When we say ‘open invitation’ we mean it, today, but it was not always like this and the people in groups that remember this will not conclude that they are really welcome. Even when the invitation is very specific, as in job ads that state “women and minorities are encouraged to apply”, this not usually seen as a true invitation but as ass-covering legalese language. Thus, if you really want to see diversity, you have to make an effort to demonstrate that you Really mean it – you talk to the representatives of those communities directly and issue direct invitations, not just circular letters.
Update/Correction 2:I may have been too harsh on Ivan Oransky above. Apparently, the editor did explain that they did ask female bloggers (as did the editor of the book that is the topic of this post) and they did not respond. Which makes it two examples of situations in which invited women did not respond. The question is why? I still think that the explanation above is valid, but perhaps there is more. Why did we manage to get a lot of women to moderate sessions at the Conference, while these editors could not get the replies? Is it because I invited women I already knew and had rapport with? Does it take more time and more work than just an invitation, even if it is a personal invitation?

8 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Books, Technology

Around the Intertubes….

Posted on March 18, 2008 by | Comments Off on Around the Intertubes….

Scenes from the science fair
Funerals Make Me Glad to Be an Atheist
Laurie Garrett talks global health at U of Iowa
Small Bodied Humans From Palau
Chinese Water Torture
Wheat and climate change
The Quail and They can hide, but they won’t run
Democrats Are Losing Perspective
Let’s see, what to call this….OK, how about ‘racist bullshit’?
What alien can you make up?
Sunday stroll: frozen puddles
EEA 2008: Butterfly Conservation
Ruby wants to know
Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature
John Edwards to endorse? Which candidate passes the moral test of our generation?
A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq
Did George Hodel Kill the Black Dahlia?
Notes from the Underground

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Around the Intertubes….

Posted on March 17, 2008 by | 1 comment

Are you Okay?
A Definition of Insanity
Eastern Bunny
Imposter Syndrome and Imposter Syndrome part 2
Why, yes, it IS my job
Frog hot spots
This week’s educational rant
Greener Grass
Wireless Balloons
The Problem of Growth
I’m a Wikipedia Inclusionist
KTU 1.114 – A Student Exercise?
Blood transfusion afterthoughts
On banning prostitution (of a particular sort)
That talking thing… smith-mundt edition
Argh! (A Play in Infinite Acts)
(Don’t) Stand By Your Man!
Insanely overpowered hardware, and video games as art
Palm trees and crocodiles in the Arctic
The Frequency of Lunar Eclipses
Less heat, more light: solving the energy crisis
Vaccinations — Why Worry?
Neuroscience and Web 2.0: Participation may vary
Grin And Bear It

1 Comment

Posted in Blogging

Around the Intertubes….

Posted on March 16, 2008 by | 5 comments

Funny…
Facebook: Community for Loners
Would You Prefer Stupidity Or Apathy With Your Incompetence? and Birth Of A Nation
Paralyzed
Bad Science Journalism: The Myth of the Oppressed Underdog and Statisticians are verifiably insane
Do periods of rest improve learning?
Barnacle sex.
Second Life exhibition about the pleasure of the table in Roma
Snakes versus newts – FIGHT!
Gas passings
Harmony between humans and animals created via Photoshop
Misleading headline of the day: sea level is falling!
NY Times: Kafka’s cockroach real! (Really?)
Sentencing Crack-down
Anyone have a spare Andy Goldsworthy?
3.14
The World Why’d Webb?
Pregnant and New Moms Have Anxious Dreams
The Politics of Fear: Right vs. Left
With Opponents Like These, Who Needs Allies?
Evolution as a Heuristic, and Evidence for it
Elections in Serbia, again, Macedonia’s government collapses too and Swords Paperclips from the North
I just got two of these, from different students.
Paper Writing
T ‘takes the fun out of science’ D
In Which I Am Angry At Great Length, 1

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Posted in Blogging

Around the Intertubes….

Posted on March 16, 2008 by | 2 comments

Visualizing biblical social networks (via)
Publishing and blogging pseudonymously.
What to carry with you when you go birding?
What blogs do journalists read? And the Science of Getting Money Out of Rich People
Vibrations make you sleepy (as in a car, on a train or a plane).
When the media boil over.
The Cost of Copyright
The spring came early to North Carolina. Not everywhere, though….
Inter-laboratory communication….
Aldous makes a comeback, and, Can The World Afford a Global Middle Class?
Flux
The Halo Effect
Destination Sleep

2 Comments

Posted in Blogging

Networking?

Posted on March 15, 2008 by | 3 comments

Just a reminder that you can make me your friend on Facebook, as well as join the groups of fans of A Blog Around The Clock, or the ScienceBlogs Fan Club or the PLoS group. I am also on Dopplr, LinkedIn, Flickr and Stumbleupon so you can find me there if you search and make a connection. I don’t care for my profiles on MySpace, Change.org, Pownce and probably some other sites I don’t even remember. And I am still resisting Twitter.

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SuperReaders

Posted on March 14, 2008 by | Comments Off on SuperReaders

It%27superreader.gifThe SuperReaders, site-wide around scienceblogs.com, have been selected. I had considered a number of people (some contacted me, I contacted some), some said No, and after a long and hard deliberation (it was tough, I wish I could have chosen ten people or so) I chose my two SuperReaders and sent in the names. They have been green-lighted by the Overlords and contacted. Unfortunately, their identities will have to remain secret. But they will be the select few (OK, 70 blogs X 2 = 140 people) who will have the ability to form the new RSS feed as well as a special advisory focus group that can help improve the site etc. in the future.

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SciBarCamp

Posted on March 14, 2008 by | Comments Off on SciBarCamp

Toronto SciBarCamp starts tonight and I am so jealous for not being there. Perhaps next time. For now, I’ll just follow it via blogs.

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Posted in Blogging, Open Science, Science Education, Science Reporting

SCONC/BlogTogether joint meetup

Posted on March 13, 2008 by | 1 comment

Yesterday we had our first blogger meetup since the Conference, the Triangle bloggers jointly with the NC science communicators. Who was there? Anton Zuiker, Russ Campbell, Brian Russell, Ernie Hood, Chris Brodie, Abel Pharmboy and Lenore Ramm who took the pictures. We talked about plans for foodblogging, wineblogging and blogging101 events, about local jobs in academia, about the next Conference, about Sigma Xi, about Eve Carson (the helicopters were in the sky above, helping catch the second suspect), and about Carrboro Coworking. Fun was had by all (the weather was gorgeous as well – 65 degrees). Next meetup is in two weeks, organized by the good folks of Orange Politics.

1 Comment

Posted in Blogging, North Carolina

Another hit-job on blogs

Posted on March 13, 2008 by | Comments Off on Another hit-job on blogs

David Neiwert:

But I also noticed this line:
“Unlike traditional, mainstream media, blogs often adopt a specific point of view. Critics complain they can contain unchecked facts, are poorly edited and use unreliable sources.”
And this distinguishes them from the mainstream press exactly … how?

Athenae:

What critics? We do not know. The reporter doesn’t tell us. Apparently it’s one of those things, like “the sky is blue” and “Democrats are weak on national security” that is so obvious we don’t need to cite a source of any kind to just blurt it out there and attribute it to “critics.” And all blogs, apparently, are subject to all these complaints. Equally. At once.

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Posted in Blogging, Media

Triangle Bloggers AND Science Communicators joint Meetup

Posted on March 9, 2008 by | Comments Off on Triangle Bloggers AND Science Communicators joint Meetup

SCONC Second Wednesday AND the BlogTogether bloggers meetup will occur jointly this month, at Tyler’s Taproom, Durham!

Does science make you thirsty?
Jargon got you down?
Want to kick back with other SCONCs?
We’re here for you. Come hang with other science communicators on Wednesday, March 12 and talk shop. Or not. Whatever. This is a social event, a chance to talk with people who share your passion for explaining science.
There’s no official start time, but say 5-ish. Early arrivers: grab a table. Wear your SCONC pin to find each other.
Tyler’s Taproom is on the American Tobacco Campus next to the Durham Bulls stadium.
Our meeting coincides with the regularly scheduled meetup of the blogtogether community in Durham.

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Posted in Blogging, North Carolina, Science Reporting

8000

Posted on March 9, 2008 by | Comments Off on 8000

Congratulations to Rev. BigDumbChimp for posting the 8000th comment on this blog!

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Posted in Blogging, Housekeeping

Intro to the Semantic Web

Posted on March 9, 2008 by | Comments Off on Intro to the Semantic Web

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Posted in Blogging, Technology

The Grand LOL-PZ Birthday Bash Linkfest

Posted on March 9, 2008 by | 15 comments

Today is PZ Myers‘ 51st birthday.
squidLOL.jpg
We’ve done it last year and the year before. As I did last time, I will collect a linkfest of all the posts – especially those that use the LOLCats generator (Greg has collected some pictures if you want to use them).
First out of the starting gate:
Greg Laden: Happy Birthday PZ Myers!
Maryannaville: There’s a Page looking for a Mr PZ Myers located in the lobby
Tangled Up in Blue Guy: Happy Birthday PZ
Of Two Minds: Happy B-Day PZ!
Evolving Thoughts: So, here I am in Arizona, still
Effect Measure: Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: a PZ Myers Revelation
Page 3.14: Happy Birthday Davy “PZ” Jones
Aardvarchaeology: Mean Emcee wid’ a Mastah Flow
Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge: LOL LABRAKEET
Adventures in Ethics and Science: Happy birthday PZ!
Stranger Fruit: Today in Science
Green Gabbro: Borg Business
Science After Sunclipse: Happy Birthday, PZ
decorabilia: happy birthday, PZ
Teacherninja: Happy Birthday PZ!
Blue Collar Scientist: Happy Birthday….
Discovering Biology in a Digital World: The day PZ visited Seattle and became a pirate
Rev. BigDumbChimp: Happy Birthday PZed
Afarensis: Happy Birthday PZ Mzfegryzzz*
bathtubnz: Happy Birthday
Jyunri Kankei: Happy Birthday, PZ!
The Beagle Project Blog: A very British happy birthday from the land of Darwin
Archy: Let the evil conspiracy continue
Sandwalk: Happy Birthday PZ Myers
Thinking for Free: Happy 51 to PZ
Thoughts in a Haystack: Cephalopod Kowtow
Archaeoporn: Happy Birthday PZ Myers
Terra Sigillata: Happy 51st, Professor Myers!
Mythusmage Opines: One Year Closer to Tunicatehood
Synapostasy: Paying My Elders Their Proper Respect
Dynamics of Cats: birthday boy
Mom of 2 Dancers: Sunday Ramblings …
Science Notes: Happy birthday, PZ Myers
The Inverse Square Blog: PZ’s Birthday — with Gravitas
The Greenbelt: Happy Birthday, PZ!

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SuperReaders

Posted on March 8, 2008 by | Comments Off on SuperReaders

DrugMonkey, Nick, Afarensis, Chad and John explain it better, but in short, each SciBling needs to pick two regular readers who will, over a longish period of time in the future, tag (in delicious, with a special tag) three site-wide scienceblogs.com posts of their interest. These posts will be included into a special reader-generated feed to which you can subscribe, and it will be visible on the front page. I am not sure, but I think the final list will be secret and I do not know for how long it will be valid, i.e., at what time intervals we need to pick new two people (every six months, year?).
So, help me out in the comments and nominate each other (or yourself) for this position. Who reads multiple scienceblogs regularly (daily?), has good taste in posts, knows how to use de.licio.us (or is willing to learn – it is super-easy), perhaps prefers topics that may not be overwhelmingly popular site-wide (so the feed does not turn just into anti-Creationist rants, for instance, but has diversity)? Let me know in the comments or by e-mail. I think we have some time to turn in our two names (and they have to make sure that nobody was picked by two or more SciBlings) so take your time thinking and commenting.

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New on…

Posted on March 6, 2008 by | 2 comments

…the intertubes. Busy week. Here are some good links:
Leaving your literary estate to the public domain:

This page has been circulating around the Web in recent days (apparently since February 26 or later). It depicts a sticker which an individual can apply to her ID card, in the manner of an organ donor sticker, indicating the individual wishes her copyrights to be released to the public domain upon her death.

The cloning of the bulls:

The story adds to last year’s discussion about horse cloning (horserace horse cloning?). But here the main theme is the affection that owners have for their bulls.

Hyena-Primate Convergence: The Social Brain Hypothesis:

They suggest that the intricate social dynamics of spotted hyena society has led to selection pressures on cognition which are analogous to primate brain evolution.

Why do people publish in Open Access journals?:

Just talked to a job candidate, who must remain nameless for now, whose work is involved in looking into who publishes in Open Access journals and who doesn’t and why? This got me to thinking of the various factors that academics weigh when deciding where to publish an article (also part of his work) and what kinds of things can be done to influence those choices.

Audubon’s Birds of America:

The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist.
While Audubon was creating Birds of America, he was also working on a companion publication, namely, his Ornithological Biography. Both of these sets were acquired by William M. Darlington in the mid-nineteenth century and later donated, as part of his extensive library, to the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing that the Darlington Library includes significant historical materials, such as rare books, maps, atlases, illustrations, and manuscripts, the ULS charted an ambitious course to digitize a large portion of Mr. Darlington’s collection, including the Birds of America.
We are pleased to present our complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography, through this Web site. Together these sets comprise an unprecedented online combination.

All Peer Reviewers are Equal, But Some Peer Reviewers are More Equal Than Others:

Ok, so the journal has these lists of scientists on the Editorial Board. What are they doing?

Teachers Under Fire:

In other words, when it comes to teaching evolutionary biology in the public school classroom, the creationists have won the battle: They’ve forced evolution into a corner, surrounded it, eviscerated, driven it into the swamp.

Henry Gee: Against Stupidity (with which I vehemently disagree on almost every point):

It used to be that scientists did what they did, and would attempt to explain this to the uncaring multitudes, in as reasonable a way as possible, cognizant of the fact that whereas the multitudes might understand little of what the scientists were on about, the scientists had a duty to try to explain their activities nonetheless, gently, given that the multitudes, untimately, paid their wages.

Fortunately, Mike Dunford picked up on a small positive piece of it and responded:
Huns, Visigoths, and the Citadel of Science:

When there’s a horde of angry, armed people outside your walls, and they start settling in and making themselves at home, you might start to wonder if you’re looking at a siege. When the catapults come out and rocks, stones, jars of burning oil, and diseased animal carcasses start flying over the walls, the folks inside often feel besieged. By the time the attackers disappear in the middle of the night, leaving behind only the remains of their camp, a long-term sanitation crisis, and a large wooden rabbit, the full-fledged siege mentality has usually set in.

Henry responds: The Release Of Calcium From Intracellular Stores (And Other Stuff):

The problem, in my experience, is an attitude that whereas it might take years of training and a certain skill to write a scientific paper, any half-baked twit can write a press release, irrespective of experience. Writing press releases is often delegated to the most junior member of staff, when crafting an effective press release is extremely hard, requires a certain authorial skill and, if it is about science, the scientific knowledge equal to that of any science journalist.

And Mike responds again: Elephants, Mice, Red Flags, Bulls, and Science:

We don’t need to do a better job of talking to the general public. We need to start talking to the general public.

Related: The Scientist Delusion? Nature Column on AAAS Panel:

In the column titled “The Scientist Delusion,” Goldston notes that even very religious publics often strongly support many areas of science.

Why Opting Out Isn’t Really an Option:

So the system stinks. It demands the impossible of us. When we see a mom leave the lab bench, professoriate, engineering firm, or courtroom, she’s not gaily deciding to spend more time baking cookies. She’s agonized, stressed out, exhausted. She’s probably reached her breaking point. Given the unrelenting demands of her family and her job, she’s decided that the job has to go, because she has moral and legal obligations to take care of her family.

Puzzling Research Interpretations :

You may remember an earlier study which found an elevated breast cancer risk for women who had taken hormone replacement therapy at menopause, compared to a control group who took a placebo. Now a follow-up study suggests that the higher breast cancer risk remains, even after the women had ceased taking estrogen and progestin. I’m unhappy with some of the interpretations that this study has been given.

Social Science:

The stereotype that a lot of scientists are not well socially adjusted has a lot of supporting evidence. Some of the most awkward people I have ever met have been scientists. People who think that plaid on plaid makes for a well-matched outfit weird. No conversation skills kind of weird.

Why Republicans Reject Science:

To summarize, I think some Republicans do not reject science per se, rather what they reject is the tendency for scientific facts to be used for planning. By planning, I mean active organization of a system to achieve a desirable (to some) outcome. Planning can be applied to any complex system — societies, economies, climate, etc., and it is predicated on the assumption the knowledge of how a system works gives one the ability to control the outcome.

A win for the cetaceans:

I’ve been trying to monitor the situation involving the Bush administration’s attempts to bypass the law and proceed with its cetacean-killing sonar tests along the Pacific Coast. This week there was an important victory on this front, picked up by Hunter at Random — a court ruling requiring the Navy to stop with its current plans.

Prozac and Placebos:

Anyway, it turns out that this study was misinterpreted by the press more than most…

Should I be ABD before I have a baby? (and other questions about academic motherhood):

If I were comparing my emotional and mental well being during my grad school pregnancies and their aftermath to that of a normal human being, it might not be a favorable comparison. On the other hand, compared to my emotional and mental well being as a graduate student struggling to find a topic and write a dissertation prior to the pregnancy and parenting? Pregnancy and parenting may actually have been better for me.

Moths remember what they learn as caterpillars:

According to popular belief, within the pupa, the caterpillar’s body is completely overhauled, broken down into a form of soup and rebuilt into a winged adult. Richard Buckmister Fuller once said that “there is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” Indeed, as the butterfly or moth quite literally flies off into a new world, it is tempting to think that there is no connection between its new life and its old existence as an eating machine. But not so.

Beef and dairy can be good for the planet: Making a case for cows:

For starters, cow farts aren’t really the problem; burps are. As it turns out, bovine burps are responsible for the vast majority of the methane released. But that is far from the only misconception about cows’ role in making the planet suitable–or not–for human habitation.

New adventures in science:

Back in the late 1980s, many gay men–like me–had two sets of medical records. At the outset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, no one wanted his chart to show an HIV diagnosis, nor the fact that you had simply taken the HIV antibody test, because that meant–some way, some how–that you considered yourself at risk for the disease even if your results proved otherwise. Notably, we feared this information becoming known to health insurers, even our employers, sometimes our friends and families, because of the very real possibility of discrimination. That’s why my doctor kept two sets of records: the one on the right side of my chart was the official one; the other side harbored our secrets.

Colonization of the New World:

One of the problems I see in this sort of analysis is placing the evinced genetic splits in populations in space. This paper does a reasonably good job at arguing for an early split in Asia and subsequent population changes happening in the New World. However, if we change the timing of when the Ice Free Corrider was available to facilitate the movement of people, or if we change the rate of DNA mutation that is used to place population events in time, then the model may change fundamentally. I do not have lot of faith in the estimates used for DNA mutation rates. Nonetheless, this is a good, the best so far, synthesis of the available data with new information added.

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Welcome the newest SciBling!

Posted on March 6, 2008 by | 1 comment

Go say Hello to Jane at See Jane Compute!

1 Comment

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Zoo School X-Press

Posted on March 6, 2008 by | Comments Off on Zoo School X-Press

Regular readers must be familiar by now with the ZooSchool in Asheboro, NC. Today’s news from the school – their students have put up the first issue of their online newspaper, the ZSX-Press. Go check it out!
In related news, and also at the Asheboro Zoo and related to education, The NC Zoo and NC Zoo Society will be hosting the No Child Left Inside Conference Thursday (today), March 6th, which will be held in the MPR [multi-purpose room] of the Stedman Education Building. I wish I could go. Perhaps someone there will write about it and post something online.

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Posted in Blogging, Education, Media, North Carolina, Science Education

Welcome the newest SciBling!

Posted on March 3, 2008 by | 2 comments

Go say Hello to Josh Donlan, the new co-blogger on Shifting Baselines who will add a terrestrial component to the marine stuff already there. Josh’s arrival is also bound to provoke some interesting blogging around the scienceblogs.com, as his ideas of ‘rewilding’ the American West are greeted with a whole spectrum of responses by our resident bloggers and comenters (see this, this and this for some examples). This is going ot be fun!

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Welcome Of Two Minds!

Posted on March 3, 2008 by | Comments Off on Welcome Of Two Minds!

Retrospectacle and Omni Brain, as of now, have officially fused into the new, double-headed scibling – Of Two Minds. Go say Hello!

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Blogs for Beginners

Posted on March 2, 2008 by | Comments Off on Blogs for Beginners

Under the fold, as the movie appears to slow down loading of my front page:

Continue reading →

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Link Journalism

Posted on March 2, 2008 by | 4 comments

The proposal for link journalism is not a new concept, though the phrase is good. This is something that bloggers have been doing for years and have been imploring the corporate media to adopt for years. On paper, you can provide references in the footnotes or endnotes, or you can mention “unnamed sources”, but in the age of the Web, it is sheer blindness not to use links – nobody will trust you if they cannot click and instantly verify your statements. Remember – no links, no reputation.

4 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Media

ConvergeSouth2008

Posted on March 2, 2008 by | Comments Off on ConvergeSouth2008

Sue announces that the website will be up in two weeks, and the blog is already up and running. You can help with organization. In any case, mark you calendars:

ConvergeSouth 2008 will be held on October 16-17, 2008 in Greensboro, North Carolina. BlogHer will be held on October 18.

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Posted in Blogging, Media, North Carolina

You cannot resist the power of The ScienceBorg!

Posted on February 29, 2008 by | 3 comments

Just try this link: http://scienceborg.com

3 Comments

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Various updates

Posted on February 28, 2008 by | 3 comments

First, the interviews will continue….when I get some answers from one of the six people I sent questions to…. I will also be sending questionnaires to more people soon.
Second, there are some responses now to the 1-2-3, the Goosed/Book meme. First, Chad Orzel provides several interesting quotes. And now Tom Levenson responded with not one but two elaborate, illustrated posts: I’ve Been Tagged! Reading and writing and all that jazz. and I’ve Been Tagged! — Darwin follow up. Update: Eric Roston and Jennifer Ouellette did it, too. And Vanessa as well.
I was also tagged by another meme, about a historical figure, and once I picked the person I realized I first had to order and read a book! So, this will take a fe wmore days.
Third, I will reciprocate to Arunn and write a BPR3-style post soon. I have a stack of printed-out papers as well as half a desktop covered with icons of PDF files of papers accumulated over the last six months or so that I want to comment on. I’ll try to find some time very soon to do this. Perhaps more than one.
Finally, the conversation about What is a Science Blog? continues, so check out the posts by Greg Laden, Mike the Mad Biologist, PhysioProf (and again), John Hawks, Mike Haubrich, Razib, ~C4Chaos and Julia . Update: Janet Stemwedel and John Wilkins add their thoughts. As do Abel and Brian…And Jason and Selva and Greg again. And Lim Leng Hiong, Michael White and Ignored Ethos…And Greg and Chris…And Chad and Arunn….

3 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Housekeeping

What is a Science Blog?

Posted on February 27, 2008 by | 15 comments

A blog is software.
Importantly: a blog is free software.
Everyone can use it in any way they want. If there are 100 million blogs out there, there are 100 million blogging styles and 100 million ideas what blogging “is”. And anyone who dares tell others how to do it incurs the wrath of the other 100 million who are NOT going to be told what to do. Blogosphere is democratic – the voice of millions of individuals who finally have the ability to have their voices heard. They will never accept any authority telling them how to do it and what they can or cannot write.
This means that one also cannot define the sub-nodes of the blogosphere. If you say “I am a science blogger”, you are. Technorati will not remove your “science” tag if you are spewing creationist crap every day. That’s just how it is. But if you do post creationist screeds, don’t expect not to get called on it or accepted into the science blogging community. And who is the science blogging community? People who consider each other members of it.
So, what is a science blog? A blog that is written by a scientist OR a blog that more or less regularly covers science-related topics, links to and gets links from other science blogs. It is about perspective. A scientist has a scientific outlook on life. A scientist even does LOLcats differently than others. And every science blogger does it differently which is his/her prerogative.
Which brings us to the most recent upheaval, coming from this post on Bayblab. Greg, Chad, Brian, PZ, Dave, Ian, Larry, PhysioProf, Michael and DrugMonkey give good, useful and, of course, being bloggers, idiosyncratic responses.
Of course, this discussion is nothing new. We had a big one a couple of years ago – if you missed it, I have collected all the links here.
And what came out of that discussion? A bunch of stuff:
1) Two Science Blogging Conferences and some very informative discussions coming out of them – see the blog coverage from the first one and the second one. See the series of post-Conference interviews for a variety of opinions about science blogging.
2) We (and by we I mean science bloggers, not sciencebloggers) collectively edited two Science Blogging Anthologies – see the OpenLab 2006 and OpenLab 2007. Less then half of the chosen entries are from SB bloggers in both books. If you look inside, very few of the chosen posts are comments on the latest paper. They cover some aspect of science, often much broader than a single paper, often from a historical, philosophical, political or personal perspective. They explain something scientific, or some aspect of the business of science, or the life in science, in a personal voice, often with humor, but also always with authority. These are the posts that most people liked and agreed were the best that science blogging has to offer.
3) Scienceblogs.com grew from 14 to 71 blogs. Yes, a few invited bloggers refused to join and a few left, but for the most part, this is the place to be and a great honor. The overall traffic skyrocketed. A number of us commented how much more careful we are about mouthing off on various topics, scientific or not, since we joined as our scienceblogging peers are right here and quick to point out our BS. And yes, we are a community, we are friends, we meet each other in meatspace whenever we can because we have common interests and similar outlook on life. That is good, what blogging is all about, not cliquishness.
4) Others are forming science blogging communities and trying to learn from the success of scienceblogs.com. See how bloggers on Nature Blog Network are using our experience to build a stronger community there. Reading each other, commenting on each others’ blogs, linking to each other, and meeting each other in meatspace – all those are important elements of building a community.
Scientificblogging.com is another blogging community. They have a different model. Almost all of it is commentary on the freshest papers. This is fine, but is unlikely to draw much of an audience. Popular magazines, like Wired, are trying to do the same.
What we do is draw people in with things they are interested in, then deliver them to science posts and show them it is exciting, interesting and fun – and they did not even know it before. They came by googling for “Britney Spears” or “naked Harry Potter” or something about creationism or atheism, and they stay to read posts about science. That is one of the services we as science bloggers provide. And once we draw those readers in, we also send them, via links, to other people – both inside and outside our network – to read about even more science, perhaps to bloggers who do not like to blog about LOLcats or politics, but do a good job covering latest research. There is a role for every style.
And, as SB is the most popular such network (The Borg) we are very aware of our responsibility to not let the bloggers outside bite our dust. We consciously link to non-SB bloggers all the time. Scroll through my front page and compare the number of links to Sciblings and a number of links to outside bloggers. Check my blogroll. Do the same exercise on other SB blogs. Don’t use postgenomics (great tool, but does not even try to measure the popularity of individual science blogs) to order the blogs – check their traffic, see who links to them using Technorati. Yes, some of the best are here, but also, some of the best are not here. The editors are trying to put together a diverse group – diversity in topics, styles, formats and voices. They often listen to our advice when choosing who to invite next – thus people we read and linked to before, when they were outside, our now SciBlings and we continue to read each other. And meet for beer when we can. That is how a community organically grows. Nobody is snubbed a priori. There is no closed impenetrable circle. Write a good blog, let me know and if I like it I’ll link to you and blogroll you – you all know this by now. If I really, really like your new blog and keep liking it for several months, you bet I will be bothering the overlords daily to send you an invite – it worked for several people already.
Another way we support the broader science blogging community is by starting, organizing, hosting, participating in and linking to science/nature/medicine/education blog carnivals (see this, this, this, this and this to see how carnivals build community).
Oh, yes, we get paid. My blog is usually one of the top 10-12 blogs here by traffic and what I get paid on a very, very good month (i.e,. getting slahdotted, dugg, stumbled, reditted, linked from DailyKos, Pharyngula, Pandagon, Shakesville, etc.) pays for a quarter of my rent. When I first moved here, I earned about as much as I did through blogads on the old blog. I forget about it on most months and am surprised when I find the check in the mail. The only thing when signing the contract, I think they pleaded with us not to post porn. We can do with our blogs whatever we want. SB can be considered just a blogging platform for us, with tech support, and the fact that many of us feel like belonging to a community is a definite plus.
It’s been a while since I last wrote a post on a recent paper. I post a lot of other stuff and almost all of it is somewhat related to science. My readers include scientists and science bloggers, but also liberal and atheist bloggers, North Carolina and Balkans bloggers, and my Mom. Some of them like my Quotes, others like personal posts, others like a good political rant (rare these days, I know), some use my blog to keep up with what’s new in Open Access and PLoS, and others just like me for idisyncratic reasons. So, yes, I am a science blogger but not ONLY a science blogger. I am a more complicated person, and I will let all those complications get revealed on the blog. People like to see that I am a human, not just a pipetter.
My most popular post ever is this one – it combines science, society, sex, personality and even literature in one long post. It mentions several scientific papers, including one that was published right around that time, but it also summarizes the results of decades of research in several areas. And it still gets hits three years later.
About a third of my daily traffic goes to my BIO101 lecture notes – no blogging on recent papers there. Every now and then someone teaches a chronobiology course and my Clock Tutorials get some traffic. The Lysenko post is used in a California class every year. Science posts covering the basics, infused with personality and humor, seem to be the most lasting posts, with the greatest long-term impact. Harry Potter posts, just like posts on the latest scientific papers, come and go fast. Nothing wrong with blogging on both, and I did it a large number of times, but those are peripherals for me. Building and keeping a community, making friends, networking, proselytizing my pet causes (e.g., Open Access) and making good clear explanations of basics easy to find by Google are reasons why I blog. And I will never tell you how and why you should blog yourself. None of my business.

15 Comments

Posted in Blogging

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery: Blogging like a Coturnix!

Posted on February 27, 2008 by | 2 comments

As John quips, who is crazy to try to blog around a clock like Coturnix? Not me, for sure. But Arunn is, at least for one day! In the past 24 hours Arunn has posted 15 (fifteen!) posts on his blog. I hope this did not disrupt his marital harmony too much!
OK, so here are the fifteen posts – go check them out:
Bora At My Blog
Nature India
IITM Blogs a partially differentiated list
The silliness of WLAN
Introduction to Microlithography
How to make a gun with a hankie
Notebook Quotes
How to do Research
Snake Ears and Magudi Music
Science Writer Reading List
My Science Daily picks for Today
Contemporary Science Popularizers
First Harmonic Guru
For Sri Nameless Freedom-fighter
I am a Gemini and Geminians don’t believe in Astrology
and the sign-off:
BAMBing Complete
Wonderful! Now, Arunn, go get some sleep. You need it. And next time, use automated scheduling of posts…that’s what I do.

2 Comments

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Welcome the newest SciBling!

Posted on February 25, 2008 by | Comments Off on Welcome the newest SciBling!

Go say Hello to Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science

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Scienceblogs.com readers Meetup

Posted on February 25, 2008 by | Comments Off on Scienceblogs.com readers Meetup

If you attended the Science Blogging Conference or read what people blogged about it, or said about it in subsequent interviews, you know how much fun it is to meet your favourite bloggers in real life. You gain a new perspective, you read them more diligently, you understand them better, and you have some calamari and beer.
So, we would like all the readers of Scienceblogs.com to organize local meetups. The organizing has already started (see here, here, here, here and here for examples). Rare are the people who read only one of us – most of our readers are shared across at least a few scienceblogs. Let’s all meet in many locations around the country and the world.
How to organize? Join the Scienceblogs.com Facebook fan group and use the Wall and the Discussion Board to organize. The idea is for readers to organize this, not bloggers (we’ll just show up if we live close by). So, if you are a reader, fan, commenter – do this, see who else in the group is from your area and decide on the place, date and time and let us know.
Recent new additions to scienceblogs.com may have changed this, but I think that North Carolina, with seven SciBlings, is still in the numerical lead over any other state or country. Thus, I expect there may be quite a lot of readers here as well. Heck, there are three of us hugging the few miles of US15-501 in the middle of the Triangle so even if just Sheril, Abel and I show up, it is already quite a meetup! And if it grows big, perhaps the other four will come from the western part of the state as well (or alternatively, organize another meetup in Charlotte).
Oh, and while you are on Facebook anyway, you might just as well join the A Blog Around The Clock readers’ group, or the PLoS fan group, or just make me your friend.

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BluSci interview now online

Posted on February 23, 2008 by | 1 comment

I%20Blog%20You.JPGMico Tatalovic of Blue Sci, the Cambridge’s popular science magazine, interviewed me back in April 2007 and wrote an article on science blogging based on that interview. It came out in the Issue #9 as a PDF in October, and is finally found online on Blue Sci.

1 Comment

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Totally obligatory reading of the day!

Posted on February 22, 2008 by | Comments Off on Totally obligatory reading of the day!

Chez describes how and why CNN fired him for blogging and then piles on!
Spread the word. The old media needs to learn to respect the people formerly known as audience.

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Posted in Blogging, Media, Politics

Excellent, excellent!

Posted on February 22, 2008 by | 4 comments

This blog has just been notified that a bank in Sierra Leone has…nope, no millions of dollars in spam-money. Something much better – Maryannaville gave us the Excellent Blogger Award! Thank you!
Recepients of this award can proudly place this image on their side-bars:
excellentblog.jpg
And now, I need to pick ten recipients. Ten!? Per minute? Yikes – this is hard. Let’s just assume that all of my SciBlings are Excellent by definition and take a look at some good ones outside of The Borg:
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets
The Beagle Project Blog
Sandwalk
The INFO Project Blog
The Inverse Square Blog
Mind the Gap
Creek Running North
Pondering Pikaia
Archy
The Natural Patriot

4 Comments

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Discovering scholarly information and data

Posted on February 21, 2008 by | Comments Off on Discovering scholarly information and data

Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards
March 27-28, 2008
Chapel Hill, NC
Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery — search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery — tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools?

Richard Akerman and my SciBling Dave Munger are among the participants. I’ll try to make it…

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Posted in Academia, Blogging, Open Science

The miniLegends mentoring program – using blogs in the classroom.

Posted on February 21, 2008 by | Comments Off on The miniLegends mentoring program – using blogs in the classroom.

Wow! Al Upton teaches kids aged 8 and 9 and he is teaching them how to run their own blogs. Each young blogger also gets an adult mentor and you can sign up to be a mentor if you want. Sue Waters, who provides some good tips on classroom blogging, provides more detail about Upton’s work and points to two of his good posts: Class blogs – management, moderation and protection and Class blogs – personalise your blog, a sequence of settings, which are full of good information and advice for any age students.

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Posted in Blogging, Education

The miniLegends mentoring program – using blogs in the classroom.

Posted on February 21, 2008 by | 18 comments

Wow! Al Upton teaches kids aged 8 and 9 and he is teaching them how to run their own blogs. Each young blogger also gets an adult mentor and you can sign up to be a mentor if you want. Sue Waters, who provides some good tips on classroom blogging, provides more detail about Upton’s work and points to two of his good posts: Class blogs – management, moderation and protection and Class blogs – personalise your blog, a sequence of settings, which are full of good information and advice for any age students.

18 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Education

ConvergeSouth08

Posted on February 19, 2008 by | Comments Off on ConvergeSouth08

Sue and Ed are starting to plan the fourth ConvergeSouth and are asking the community to help with the planning.

Comments Off on ConvergeSouth08

Posted in Blogging, Media, North Carolina