Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Happy Blogiversary
Byzantium's Shores just celebrated impressive
fourth birthday. Go say Hello.
Grand Rounds
The latest edition of Grand Rounds is up on
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure.
Circus of the Spineless #6
Welcome to the
Circus of the Spineless. I hope you all forgot the beauty and elegance of the previous edition of the Circus by now, so you won't say "Yeew, this is, like, soooo con-ven-tio-nal!".
I was thinking of organizing the carnival according to
Borges' Chinese Classification of Animals, but that did not work: "dogs" and "pigs" are explicitely forbidden here. How many Invertebrates are capable of breaking a vase? Not to mention that most invertebrates look like a fly from a distance anyway.
Then, I was thinking of making a similar type of classification myself, e.g., "pretty pictures", "blogs with yellow background", "bloggers with the middle name starting with T", but that did not work either: some categories were very full, and others quite empty.
In the end, I had to go with the conventional classification, which revealed a bias in itself. While we may complain about the propenderance of cat and dog pictures on blogs, why are there no posts about sponges, cnidarians and annelides, not to mention tardigrades, rotifers and chaetognaths? Ah, well, we go with what we have:
Butterflies and Moths
Let's start with
Some tropical lepidoptera from
Urban Dragon Hunters.
From Aydin Örstan's
Snail's Tales lots of kinky stuff:
An upside down butterfly,
What are these butterflies doing? and
Sex on the grass.
Firefly Forest Blog took some great pictures of a
Great Purple Hairstreak,
Gray Hairstreak Revealed and a
Texan Crescent.
Photography Class - Butterflies and
More butterflies (and a moth) from TBG from
Tortoise Trail.
Pharyngula explains a recent paper on the
Evolution of a polyphenism in moths.
Stridulations is an entomologist who adds more to the story in
The amazing polyphenic Manduca.
What
butterflies are these, asks
Annotated Budak.
Follow the life cycle of a sulphur:
Sulphur Chrysalis - "Artsy" Lighting,
Sulphur Chrysalis,
Sulphur Larva - Early Instar (otra vez),
Sulphur Larva - Early Instar,
Pigs (Two Different Ones),
Gorged on the greeenery and
Flower Afficionado on
The Taming of the Band-Aid.
Social Insects
Matt Dowling of
Ontogeny runs a series called Here's Your Moment of Friday Ant Zen. You can see some fancy ants there, including
Temnothorax curvispinosus,
Mexican Honeypot Ants, or
Torture-rack ants.
Matt is not the only one. You can find Friday Ant Blogging on
Henry's Webiocosm Blog, too:
Ants, Pupae and Larvae.
City Bees keeps a couple of hives of honeybees on her rooftop in New York City. You can see the hives in
Snow bees. Then, follow the daily adventures of a novice beekeper in
Let's Not Split Quite Yet,
Battling the Midwinter Mite Menace, Part 2,
The Spaghetti Method and
Dirty Bees.
Have you ever seen bee-swarms in a tree? Carola of
Bee-si-ness saw some
Swarms in January.
Bees Being 'Trained' as Odor Detectors from
Apitherapy News.
From the
Firefly Forest Blog some more:
The Assassinated Honeybee and a
Sweat Bee.
Other Insects
Chaotic Utopia is in a Kafkaesque mood this week. Ecdosteroids and Juvenile Hormone are in just the right alignment for the onset of
Metamorphosis.
From
Rigor Vitae, an illustrated discussion of the Orthoptera's importance to humans, as competitor and food:
If You Can't Beat 'em, Eat 'em! and an unfairly whimsical look at Megarhysa, the queen of North American insects:
Giant Ichneumon Wasps.
Carl Zimmer of
The Loom wrote about the wasp that parasitizes cockroaches in
The Wisdom of Parasites.
I added some more information in
Revenge of the Zombifying Wasp and Carl had an update:
Answers to your parasite questions.
A chorus for raucous souls also
comments.
Michael Brown of
Macro Art In Nature is a professional nature photographer (do not copy or download his pics - they are copyrighted!). Check out these beauties:
Nature's Dragons, And Understanding Them,
The Fly,
Swallowtail Butterfly and
A Final Moment In The Spotlight - Lacewing.
From
Naturally Connected some pictures:
Giant Stickbug and
Mantid Territory.
From
Concrete to Cottages a
Dragonfly At Rest.
From
Invasive Species Blog, Jennifer sends a
gypsy moth and an
ant.
Ben Cruachan shows us a
Tachinid fly.
This is old, but I don't think it was in an older edition of the Circus:
At home with the dragon.
Bug's Eyes caught a
tiger beetle, then wrote some more
about it.
ScienceBase explains
Cannibal Mormon Crickets.
Spiders
Chris Clarke has moved
Creek Running North to a new URL (so change your links accordingly). This month's entry,
The cursorial life, is really worth reading, as long as you are not afraid of spiders.
Annotated Budak, is a blogging duck who went to see a talk - all about
spiders.
Spiderblog ran away from scary and dangerous
assassin spiders to find a comfy new home under the new name of
Points Of Departure, where he observes a spider in action:
The Leaf Curler.
The Saga of a Spider in the Bathroom in two Acts:
Act I and
Act II.
Along Came A Spider and it's a Dockside.
Burning Silo is a wonderful new nature blog. Here are some
Watchful Spiders and
Assassin Spiders.
Ben Cruachan again, this time with a
Wife Frightener.
Firefly Forest Blog again: some
Mealybugs and a
Cricket.
Julie of
Stridulations lists some of her favourite bug-related
websites.
Other Arthropods
Nuthatch of
Bootstrap Analysis finds many legs in
Footloose.
Journal of the Plague Year has nothing but post after post of beautiful photographs of insects and other arthropods.
Nemesiario is a blog in Spanish. I think that
Parasitos refers to mites parasitising bees.
Also from
Burning Silo, you can see
Narceus Millipedes and a variety of
Snow Creatures.
The importance of
Krill Feces, from
Deep-Sea News.
Firefly Forest Blog has found a
Winged Aphid.
Molluscs
What is the meaning of snails?
The other ultimate question asked by
Snail's Tales. The answer? Just look at these beauties:
An alien in Florida: Subulina octona,
A twisted snail,
Gallandina annularis and
Land snails of Turkey: Discus rotundatusThere cannot be a Circus of the Spineless without the grogeous Nudibranchs of
Bouphonia. Check out
Flabellina expotata,
Kentodoris rubescens,
Discordoris boholensis and
Plocamopherus tilesii.
As most of you know, PZ Myers of
Pharyngula is the prime source of cephalopod blogging. First, there is a whole Friday Cephalopod Series:
Moroteuthis robusta,
Argonauta nodosa,
Sepioteuthis sepiodea in flagrante and
Iridoteuthis iris. But there is more, as in cuttlefish mating strategies:
Sensitivity, charm and cleverness: very sexy. PZ has also been moving some old cephalopod sex posts to the new blog:
The cephalopod sex series, most of which have predate the Circus of the Spineless.
If you have not seen this dramatic movie clip before, go to
Lancelet to see the Giant Octopus catching and eating a decent-sized shark.
Deep-Sea News reports on the invasion of
Humboldt Squid.
There are two blogs titled Squidblog. One is COM, the other is NET. From the
Squidblog.com a look into the role
squid are playing in William Gibson's new work. From the
Squidblog.net comes
Squids may help determine global warming impact: scientist.
Other Invertebrates
Snail's Tales messes up my classification by combining an arthropod and an "other invertebrate":
a water scorpion and a peanut worm.
Ragesoss 2.02 is doing us a great favour by scanning in and making freely available the gorgeous
Haeckel's illustrations.
How Vertebrates evolved out of Invertebrates is far from clear. A new study suggests a big reorganization of our understanding of the family relationships between vertebrates, tunicates, lancelets and echinoderms. Carl Zimmer of
The Loom explains in
The Dawn of Brains and Bones.
Since that study involves lancelets, it is expected that
Lancelet would pick it up, and he does:
Old icons will die hard.
And
Evolgen adds his own take in
Long Branch Attraction and the Branching Order of Deuterostomes.
The force that through... is enchanted by organisms that live in extreme environments, including the
Xtreme Worms.
Matt Downling of
Ontogeny explores toxins in
Marine Flatworm + Puffer Fish Toxin = Deadly Invertebrate.
Both
Matt and
Carl comment on the Evolution of Leeches.
Apostropher observes penis-fencing in
Moral degeneracy in flatworms (and
here is the movie).
A duck went to a museum and saw a lot of
different invertebrates.
Fragments From Floyd ponders
Parasites.
Bouphonia brings in some less-represented phila in
the wall charts of Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart.
In this post by
Deep-Sea News, you need to skip the Vertebrates in the beginning before you get to some Guinness record-holding
Invertebrates.
Other Organisms
Premenopaws is taking biology and just went over a cool lab with a bunch of
wonderful creatures.
Pim van Meurs on
Panda's Thumb wrote about humans. I know - these are Vertebrates, not really elligible for this carnival, but those are very Spineless-friendly humans:
Entomologists unite behind evolutionary theory.
I Got Bugs got bugs
of a different kind.
And that's all for this month.
Next month, let's get together again on March 31st. Look at the
homepage for detailed information as it comes in.
Monday, February 27, 2006
Ballot-box stuffing...
Someone accessed 40 Palm Beach County voting machines Nov 2004:
The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Read the rest...
(Hat-tip:
Mungowit's End)
Dennis Weaver, RIP
Sheriff
Sam McCloud rode into the sunset.
My brother and I never missed an episode when we were kids...
And he was fantastic in "Duel"
Koufax Update
Best Commenter category has been posted on Wampum. The semi-finals voting will start in a couple of days, I reckon...
Octavia Butler RIP
Edward Champion and
David Brin have more.
Science News
*
Claim of reversed human evolution sparks skepticism, interest:
Scientists' reactions have ranged from deep doubt to curiosity over last week's report of a mutation whose victims walk on all fours.
*
Jurassic 'beaver' from China found:
A fossil shows mammals conquered the water far earlier than we thought, researchers say.
*
Scientists report new kind of cosmic explosion:
Astronomers say they have detected a new type of blast that has sent scientists worldwide scrambling to telescopes.
OAC Blog
One America Blog had a great makeover - it looks great, it is more user-friendly than before and is full of information. Go and look around.
Carnival of the Green
The latest edition of Carnival of the Green has been posted on
The Naked Vegetarian.
Chris Mooney is starting to write a new book
If you liked "Republican War on Science" you are likely interested to know what the topic of Chris' new book will be. For that, you will have to click
here.
Another one gone to seed....
FrinkTank, a fun-looking blog new to me, has moved from its
old place to the SEED scienceblogs farm at
this new URL.
On John Edwards again
On the heels of
Edwards, Civil Liberties, and Abortion, Neil wrote another two posts that will make you think about Edwards again:
Don't Feed the Regionalism Monster and
Bipartisan Maverick Destruction Advice.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Tar Heel Tavern
The Hope And Perseverance edition of the Tar Heel Tavern is up on
Poetic Acceptance.
You can discuss the Nature research now
Take a look at the new
Nature Newsblog.
Stoat on ScienceBlogs
The Stoat has moved from its old address
here to its new address
here, joining the racing stable of SEED scienceblogs.
Hot Shot
My wife told me she saw this on CBS earlier tonight. A story about an autistic kid who scored 20 points in the last four minutes of the basketball game - the first time ever that he even suited up.
Internet is a fantastic thing - the movie is already online. Watch the
clip.
What is going on?
Is the US smuggling weapons from Bosnia to Rwanda:
US military planes criss-cross Europe using bogus call sign?
(hat-tip:
Yakima Gulag)
Are you a good shot?
Try to hit quail and miss Harry while playing this game at
Quail Hunting School. Also, see what happens if you hit Harry too many times.
Link-love: Catching up with the shifty alphabet of science blogs
Posting the links to the whole series (so far) over on
Majikthise, brought in a number of new blogs to my attention from the commenters. Some of those, of course, start with letters A through S, so I will have to make up for it first, before moving on to T and more the next time....
When averages are misleading,
Intelligent cosmology redux,
First they came for the evolutionary biologists... on
0xDE.
The tragedy of fabrication in biomedical research on
Oncology Updates.
Crappy paper,
Who do you think you are? and
Ferkristsake!!! on
A Scientist's Life.
Biopeer:
New bird flu cases in Cambodia and Germany,
Experimental new drug successful against all forms of TB,
China starts human trials for indigenous AIDS drug and much, much more...
Pursue the diagonal and you lose, my friends... by
Calamus.
Old crop corn starts to move and
Less-beany bean could fit in well in Georgia are just some of the latest offerings at
Ag Moment, run by the same guy who writes on
Common Sense for the Biochemist.David Brin, the SF writer who blogs on
Contrary Brin, sometimes takes a break from politics and posts about science, as in
Cool items... science, innovation move on....
Dotdotdot (or RatLab):
It's snow joke.
How Much Will People Sacrifice To Reduce Greenhouse Gases? and
On Falling DNA Sequencing Costs on
FuturePundit.
From The
Geomblog:
String theory and NP-hardness,
Grants.gov and
Concentration of Measure.
Guns, Germs & Steeled is a blog I recently discovered (in comments on Pharyngula) and like very much:
60 Minutes to Highlight Consequences of Global Warming,
Communication Strategies of the Intelligent Design Movement,
Restoring Scientific Integrity: One Can Make A Difference and
Intelligent Design and Evolution.
X Chromosome Inactivation in the Mothers of Gay Sons on
Ware Farms.
Heaven is not the sky:
Evolution Unfalsifiable? and
Limiting God by opposing evolution.
Humans in Science:
Where do they get the energy? and
Some good news: ID not by G-D but perhaps ET?.
Science: Uncovering and Discovering:
The Colours of Dyes.
The Scientist Errant:
Recycling, Boo! Toward an American Ethic of RestraintYou can get a feed for all of
ScienceBase blogs
here.
Life Science Tools of the Trade:
A Negative is a positive?,
The multi-purpose survival kit,
What the heck?!? and
Sour milk.
Common Rodent Friday: Eastern Gray Squirrel and
Friday Backyard Bird Blogging: Blue Jay - Cyanocitta cristata on
Henry's Webiocosm Blog.
Parsimony: Fisher vs. Wright,
Fisher on Genetic Drift,
Plug Away! and
3 Favorites for the Week on
Hpb Etc.
Qigong 101,
Irreducible Complexity and
6.5e+9 and Growing on
I ♥ Dr. Calvin.
In the Pipeline:
Because I Never Lie, and I'm Always Right,
Gold and Lasers and
NEJM vs. Its Contributors, Round Two.
White Pileated In Big Woods and
Searching Tips on
Ivory-bills LiVE!!Japing Ape is written by
a gorilla. Not always Safe For Work, but funny and insightful.
Google Earth in Nature on
Nascent.
Ear wax revisited,
Technorati for biology,
Why are some papers considered classics? and
Nodalpoint Forums on
Nodalpoint.
And biologists who know no mathematics also know no biology,
Welcome to the House of Books / Have yourself a slice of chocolate cake…. and
But that’s what makes us human! by William Tozier on
Notional Slurry.
A bra made of algae? Eww! and
Bernard (almost) gets it right are some of the recent offerings on
Ernie's 3D Pancakes.
Phawrongula mirrors Pharyngula, but
in verse.
Randy Olson's science communication suggestions, This is, for historians of science, the equivalent of finding one of the original gospels, The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex, then and now on
Ragesoss 2.02. This
post introduces several other History Of Science blogs, as well as
WikiProject History of Science.
Random John reloaded:
One of the funniest things ever …,
Culture wars: elephant vs. humans,
Theories that have gone to ruins and
While other people contemplate the politics of this, I’ll contemplate the statistics.
I have no idea how it happened that I did not link to
RealClimate yet. Here are a couple of the latest posts:
Sir Nicholas Shackleton and
Cloudy outlook for albedo?.
Scientific Assessment is both a blog alliance and a group blog. I should post there more often. Recently:
Earth's Population To Hit 6.5 Billion At 7:16 pm Today,
Scientist's Visa Denial Sparks Outrage in India and
Science Blogger Conference?.
I've never been to
Slashdot in my life, but I just learned that they have a
science section.
Notes from the Lab: Multicore and more and
Guerilla Informatics – Genzyme Style on
Snowdeal.
Have you followed the
Green Blogathon? Several blogs blogging like crazy on all things environmental.
Previously in this series:
Link-Love: A little bit of science bloggingLink-Love: some more science bloggingLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part IIILink-love: more Alphabet Soup of science blogsLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part VLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science BlogsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part VIILink-Love: Science Blogs Qs and RsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part IX
Quail Tells All
Watch the
clip of quail's White House press conference.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Weekend Online Quizzes (because everyone is doing it)
| You Were a Snake |
You have a primal energy that drives you to explore the mysteries of life.
A nearly immortal soul, you'll live a very long life. |
| Your Brain's Pattern |
Structured and organized, you have a knack for thinking clearly.
You are very logical - and you don't let your thoughts get polluted with emotions.
And while your thoughts are pretty serious, they're anything from boring.
It's minds like yours that have built the great cities of the world! |
New Carnival!
A Hundred Flowers Blooming is a new carnival for Left/Liberal blogs, organized by Oolon Colluphid of
Cogito, Ergo Sum…Atheos
Carnival of Bad History - call for submissions
Next issue of the
Carnival of Bad History will be held on
Ahistoricality on Monday, March 13th.
Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown
Joe Bageant will make you think. Perhaps even act.
Edwards on Rocketboom
Amanda Congdon interviews John Edwards (I think this is the second time). See the
vlog here (hat-tip:
Benny)
Obligatory Reading of the Day
Read
On Patriotism by Paul Musgrave, one of the final essays before he shuts down the blog. Here is just a short excerpt - go read the rest:
If there is an idealized America–not merely a “purer” version of the United States that exists only in our imaginations like a Norman Rockwell painting, but a concept of the United States in a purely ideational sense–than patriotism for an American must mean loyalty to this idea above all. The leftist slogan “Dissent is Patriotic” expresses one of the implications of this idea, because in certain situations dissent from the policies of an American government will deviate from one’s ideal America; the obverse is that often it is loyalty which is patriotic, an understanding that the bold scribblers of the left (or the right when it is in opposition) are unlikely to champion when it is inexpedient.
(hat-tip:
Ed Brayton)
Friday, February 24, 2006
Circus of the Spineless - call for submissions
This is the last call for entries! I will be hosting
Circus of the Spineless - the blog carnival of Invertebrates - here on February 28th.
Pictures, stories and essays that have something to do with living organisms without spines (no, not politicians) are all welcome. Multiple entries are welcome. There are lots of species of Invertebrates, so there should be lots of posts about them - more than, let's say, cats or dogs.
Send the entries by 27th at 8pm EST to:
Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com
Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions
Despite of all the scary stuff happenning this week, Erin of
Poetic Acceptance intends to go ahead and host the
Tar Heel Tavern this weekend.
The theme of the week, quite appropriately, is Hope and Perseverence. So send your entries to
emonahan AT carolina DOT rr DOT com by Saturday 2/25 at 9PM and she'll have it up on Sunday morning.
South Dakota action
From JREG mail:
South Dakota's Legislature passed a bill today, a bill which if signed into law by the Governor, will set the stage of a new legal battle to attack--and if successful, overturn--Roe vs. Wade!
Governor Rounds of South Dakota has already stated that he is 'inclined' to sign the bill into law at this time!
While this story is still developing, it won't be long before this erupts across the blogosphere & when it does, we'll try to keep you updated on it all.
In the meantime, learn more about this issue by visiting JREG and voicing your concern. You can even contact Governor Rounds through the Address/Links provided in our Action Item on this issue.
Remember, this has not YET been signed into law, so there's still time to persuade Mr. Rounds that to do so would do nothing more than hurt the Citizens of South Dakota who undoubtably would be affected during this long drawn out court battle. A battle that would drain State resources and ultimately be met by being overturned by the courts.
This Bill helps none, but stands to hurt many.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Koufax Update
Award category
Best Blog, Professional/Sponsored Division is up on Wampum.
Messing with kids' heads - what the Right is good at
Do you remember the monstrosity that is
Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, a blatant Republican propaganda disguised as a children's book? I have linked to some good reviews
here and
here.
Well, another one came out, just as bad:
Help! Mom! Hollywood's in My Hamper!All those marginal types that the Right loves to portray as representative of the Democrats, like Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon....hey, where is Ward Churchill?
But there is now one that is even more insidious:
Why Mommy Is a Democrat (it is not on Amazon yet, if it is not an Internet hoax to begin with) that masquerades as a kids' book positive of Democrats, yet it seems to be a plant from the Right. The "values" portrayed in there are not liberal, but the straw-men that the Rightists always put up as being liberal. It is awful!
Nick Gillespie from The Left also thinks it is a plant. So does
Headmistress, zookeeper whose political affiliation I did not catch.
Only the
American Digest from The Right thinks it is serious - well, when did the Right ever have a sense of humor?
Pooflinger Is Back
After a long break,
Pooflingers Anonymous is blogging again. So, if you de-listed Matt it's time to re-list him and pay him a visit to say Hello.
What 'traditional' marriage?
Do the
pop quiz...
On Framing
You can watch George Lakoff give a talk
here (Hat-tip:
Sir Oolius)
Animalcules 1.2
The second edition of
Animalcules, the microbial carnival (microcarnival?) is up on Aetiology. Check out the
homepage and sign up to host if this is up your alley...
It was not PC that lost Summers his job
Neil and
Matt describe the inter-University power struggles that forced Summers to resign.
Pinky and the Brain
Several science blogs have posted
this link to the Pinky And The Brain clip explaining the anatomy of the brain.
While that cartoon is one of my favourites, I have a problem dissociating myself from the notion that these two characters depict Bush and Cheney....
Obligatory Readings of the Day
Incommensurate Worldviews by Allen MacNeill compares the worldviews of mathematical/physical scientists and biologists,
TMTOWTDI by Adam Lerymenko compares worledviews of computer programmers and biologists, while
The Salem Hypothesis by PZ Myers compares the worldviews of engineers and scientists. Now, put those three together...
Science BloggerCon?
There have been so many BloggerCons already that specialized conferences have already sprung up, like
BlogeHerCon and
Podcastercon.
So, why not have SciBloggerCon somewhere within the next year or so? There are apparently
gazillions of science bloggers around the world and it would be so cool to meet each other face-to-face and share a beer and stories.
It could be organized as an
Unconference, or it can have a more definite schedule. I can already think of several appropriate panel topics, e.g., :
- using blogs in popularization of science
- blogging against pseudoscience, medical quackery, bad history and all forms of Creationism
- blogs and other online tools in science instruction in high school and college
- Blogs In Action: fighting back against the Republican War On Science
- blogs and the perilous waters of academic job market
- online open-source journals and blog-posts as cited references: can a blogged hypothesis confer primacy?
- finding collaborators online: effects on scientists in the developing world
Any takers?
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Upcoming Science-Related Carnivals
Animalcules is a carnival collecting posts about microorganisms. It is scheduled to appear tomorrow, so send your entries by tonight - midnight CST - to
Aetiology at: aetiology AT gmail DOT com
Friday Ark collects posts about all living animals. It appears every Friday on
The Modulator and it is fine if you are a little late - it gets updates for a day or two afterwards.
Next
Carnival of the Green, devoted to the environment, will be hosted by
The Naked Vegetarian on February 27th.
Circus of the Spineless is the carnival that is nominally about Invertebrates, but in reality, anything alive that does not have a spinal cord is fair game. It can even have a notochord, or have no nervous system at all.... Pictures, stories, movies, essays. Held right here on
Science And Politics on February 28th. Deadline is February 27th at 8pm EST. Send entries to: Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.
Next edition of the medical carnival,
Grand Rounds, will be hosted on
A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure on February 28th.
Posts about birds go here:
I And The Bird will be held on
The Birdchaser on March 2nd (deadline is February 28th).
The Tangled Bank is the mother of all science carnivals, covering all topics about science, nature, medicine, environment and the inetraction between science and politics. Next edition will be hosted by Tara of
Aetiology next Wednesday (send by Monday night).
Koufax Update
The
Best Single Issue Blog category for the Koufax Awards is now up on Wampum.
The funny thing is, this blog you are reading right now, as eclectic as it is, got nominated by someone in this category...
Carnival of Feminists
The Ninth Carnival of Feminists is up on
Mind the Gap!
Sorry, Sacha Cohen...
Starting today, ice is
not slippery any more. Winter Olympics skating and hockey events cancelled.
Two Views On Erection
Was
Pinnochio an incomplete
genetic knock-out?
It is 6AM. Do you know what your Blood Alcohol Level is?
Well, it depends what you had to drink and when...I think
this is cool.
Balkan War Criminal Watch
So, has Gen.Ratko Mladic been arrested or not?
Developing. Stay
tuned.
Bloggers' Interviews
You may recall that a month or so ago I was interviewed by Simon Owens of
Bloggasm. That blog is carving a nice niche for itself by interviewing other interesting bloggers of all kinds. The blog crashed soon after my interview and had to be rebuilt by hand, post by post. Unfortunately, most of Simon's own posts are gone forever, but at least he has saved all the interviews and re-posted them one by one on the new address. Thus, the permalink for my interview has changed - you can find it
here.
Soon after my interview, Simon interviewed a whole bunch of bloggers from the Left, ranging from moderate center all the way to pure socialists. I was waiting for the new blog to be completely rebuilt before linking to those interviews. All of them got pretty much the same set of questions and it is really interesting to see on what points they all agree and on what points they differ (someone should analyze that!).
I am kinda glad I did not get that same set of questions - I think that questions concerning conservative War On Science fit me better than pure partisan politics.
Among the interviewees are some of my daily reads, including Lindsay Beyerstein of
Majikthise on whose blog I am happily guest-blogging this week. You should definitely read her
interview. Then, there is
Echidne of the Snakes and her
interview. NC blogging guru,
Ed Cone has also been
interviewed, as was Dr.Neiwert of
Orcinus (read his
interview) and
Madeleine Begun Kane (check out her
interview).
The list is long, but check these blogs out. While some of them are popular and I read them occasionally, and others are my colleagues on
Liberal Coalition or
The Liberal Prose, frankly, some of these were new to me!
Meat-Eating Leftist (
interview)
American Leftist (
interview)
Busy, Busy, Busy (
interview)
Brian Flemming (
interview)
Angry Bear (
interview)
Off The Kuff (
interview)
Tiny Revolution (
interview)
Talent Show (
interview)
Sirotablog (
interview)
Talk Left (
interview)
Rising Hegemon (
interview)
Dependable Renegade (
interview)
Aintnobaddude (
interview)
Lenin's Tomb (
interview)
Steve Gilliard (
interview)
ConWebWatch (
interview)
Taylor Marsh (
interview)
First Draft (
interview)
Demagogue (
interview)
Terminus (
interview)
Liberal Oasis (
interview)
Xoverboard (
interview)
Carnival of Education
Carnival of Education #55 is up on Education Wonks.
Carnival of Vanities
A DC Birding Blog is hosting the latest
Carnival of Vanities with extra natural history.
Obligatory Reading of the Day
An ongoing series on Mahablog, very much in tune with the
kind of stuff I (used to?) write on my blog:
Patriotism v. NationalismPatriotism v. ParanoiaPatriotism v. Francis FukuyamaPatriotism v. Hate SpeechThe posts are also peppered with links to other good stuff. Fix a lot of coffee before you get started, but start you should.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Science News
*
'Backward evolution' spawns ape-like people:
A newfound mutation is reported to make people walk on all fours and mouth a primitive language, possibly undoing a million years of evolution or more.
*
Galaxy smashups littered early universe, study finds:
Big galaxies formed through repeated mergers billions of years ago, astronomers say.
*
Acidifying oceans could cause mass extinction, scientist warns:
Researchers have found that Earth's oceans are gradually becoming a mild acid.
*
Your DNA may reveal your last name:
A study in Britain has found that men who share a surname are often related, which could be useful to police.
*
Science in images:
A menacing deep-sea anglerfish photographed during a recent Atlantic Ocean expedition by researchers with the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.
More militant fundamentalist jihadist embassy-burning scientists
To follow up on
this, here is another funny cartoon on the same topic (stolen from
One Good Move):
Mananimals
Sen.Brownback introduced a
bill to outlaw human chimaeras.
Daveawayfromhome has a humorous response.
Is this going to be outlawed?
Local Blogging - Local Organizing
I completely agree with
Kos (and so does
Atrios and many others), that the most important role of blogs will be in deciding local races. While blogging the Presidential campaign is exciting and sexy, it is here, on the ground, in local and statewide elections, that the real difference can be made.
Thus, I'd like to draw your attention to the experience of North Carolina bloggers, in many ways on the forefront of exactly that kind of local blogging. I have written at length about the NC blogging community and I'd like you to read and follow the links embedded in
this post in particular.
I hope that other areas of the country, especially those that are demographically similar - in terms of having a lot of small-to-medium-sized cities, towns and rural areas (i.e., probably not applicable to NYC, Chicago and LA) - will take a look at NC blogging and look at what appears to be working so well here.
One of the
best tools for the local bloggers to find out about each other is a state-wide
blog carnival. North Carolina started one first, and the
First Anniversary Edition just got posted last weekend. Other states are following. If you dig through the archives, you may notice that there is not too much politics there, and what there is spans the whole spectrum of political ideology. Don't let the appearances fool you - while enjoying the friendship and camaraderie of people that we generally do not agree with politically, we are also constantly looking for like-minded folks. Once the elections get closer, we'll know who is who and we can immediatelly start organizing. Blogging friendship is one thing - political organizing is different and both can coexist. Carnivals also breed MeetUps and other ways of face-to-face meetings of bloggers.
Out of many, many links in that post I first told you to check out, I'd particularly like to draw your attention to
Orange Politics (a nominee for the Koufax Award in the
Best Blog Community category). That blog is red-hot when it gets close to the elections. Information gets posted there before anyone else has it. People running in local races go there and post comments. Some regular commenters feel compelled to run for local office after the experience there.
It is the center of activity for all Progressive candidates and their supporters in the Orange County, NC (Chapel Hill/Carrboro area). When the Edwards's recently moved here, Elizabeth showed up in the comments clarifying some facts about their move and their intended political activity in local races. That is the kind of local political blog that Kos and Atrios had in mind - the kind that can make a difference in local and statewide races. Orange Politics has already proven that it can do exactly that.
Creationist Troll
This IDiot just left several copies of the same Creationist nonsense on several evolution-related posts here, including some that are almost two years old. He also left the same crap on a post on Majikthise. Is there a way to ban someone on Blogspot?
| Domain Name |
| (Unknown) |
| IP Address |
| 70.161.23.# (Unknown Organization) 70.161.23.123 |
| ISP |
| Unknown ISP |
| Location |
| |
| Language |
| English
en |
| Operating System |
| Macintosh MacOSX |
| Browser |
| Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/312.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/312.5 |
| Javascript |
| version 1.5 |
| Monitor |
| | Resolution | : | 1440 x 900 | | Color Depth | : | 32 bits |
|
| Time of Visit |
| Feb 21 2006 6:41:20 am |
| Last Page View |
| Feb 21 2006 7:06:44 am |
| Visit Length |
| 25 minutes 24 seconds |
| Page Views |
| 10 |
| Referring URL |
| http://majikthise.ty...2/science_blogs.html |
| Visit Entry Page |
| http://sciencepoliti...cience-blogging.html |
| Visit Exit Page |
| http://sciencepoliti...-discussions-on.html |
| Time Zone |
| UTC-5:00
EST - Eastern Standard
EDT - Eastern Daylight Saving Time |
| Visitor's Time |
| Feb 21 2006 6:41:20 am |
| Visit Number |
| 130,070 |
I have left one copy of his tirade
here, so you can all see what a spectacular concentration of nonsense can be put in a relatively small space - the rest is pure spam.
It would be laughable, if it was not so depressing, even scary, that a human being can be so fearful, so emotionally insecure, so mentally undeveloped, and so intelectually impoverished, to allow oneself to become so thoroughly brainwashed and indoctrinated into dogma spewed by lazy, greedy, parasitic High Priests of fundamentalism. This is no sweet old religion that builds local community and urges old grannies to donate to charity and work in a soup kitchen - this is a politically motivated cult movement designed to engender complete control over obedient masses who can then be used for whatever heinous designs the High Priests have in mind.
This troll, Hilton, did not come here asking an evolutionary biologist questions about evolutionary biology. He has come here to proselytize his bullshit quasi-religion. He is unreachable. Reason does not work on him and his ilk - their eyes are fogged with fear, slef-righteousness and aggression. Fortunately, none of my readers will do more than laugh at his contortions. But I am sick of deleting spam.
Hilton did not come here trying to start a discussion. Discussion involves logic and reason - faculties Hilton does not poesses. I have had conservatives and libertarians come here and discuss issues with me without fear of deleting - they played by the basic rules: use of reason, logic and rational discourse. Hilton is incapable of such thought.
Grand Rounds
Doctor Andy is hosting the new edition of
Grand Rounds. Enjoy the best of medical blogging.
Link-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part IX
As always, first filling in the A-R blogs I missed so far, then plunging bravely into S's.
21st Century Lego: Synthetic Biology and Molecular Engineering on
Beta Rhythm (Music of the mind).
Scientists Visualize Protein Interaction That May Initiate Viral Infection,
Scientists find a way to make human collagen and
Findings advance use of adult stem cells for replacement bone on
Biosingularity.
Liberal Intelligent Design,
The Fine Art of Quote-Mining and
Scientific Theories and God, all found on
Deinonychus antirrhopus.
So, what's math for again? and
Poke in the eye from the
Confessions of a Science Librarian.
Multimedia Friday: Comics for PhDs - Piled Higher and Deeper and
NSF Special Report on Disasters on
Element List, also
mirrored on
Element FYI.
why do i have to take algebra? (UPDATED) and
On mathematics education from
Evolution-nextstep.
From
Nanobiology Notes:
Just add water...,
Chromosomes: Good things come in very small packages and
Fun with Molecular OrigamiLive longer and skinny, too? Pinch me says
Neuronerd.
Be Aggressive and Educate and a lot more on excellent
Northstate Science.
Ranking School Smarts by Major and many more caclulations and statistics on
Political Calculations.
Responsible Nanotechnology:
From Heaven to Doomsday and
Nanotechnology Safety.
One Giant Leap for Cane Toads,
American Competetive Edge Act revisited and
Will an Apple a Day Make You Deaf? from
Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog.
...finally got to blogs that start with S, of which there is a large number:
Only the nose knows...,
Travel to the future, one day at a time,
The algebra commotion,
Good news for those with progeria and
Social Security and Isovaleric Acidemia, all from
Saccharomyces.
Martin Rundkvist blogs on
Salto sobrius:
Viking Period horse gear revealed,
Space nationalism and
Break on through to the other side.
Sahotra Sarkar is a philosopher of Biology:
A Year in Texas: Lost Maples,
A Year in Texas: Austin’s Preserves,
A Year in Texas: Palmetto Images and much, much more (you may also wish to dig through the archives of his old blog
Sarkar Lab WebLog).
Savage Minds is an anthropology group blog:
Factory, lab, guild, studio by Rex,
Anthropology as Identity or Practice? by Maia,
Know How, Know What, Know Who by Maia and
Four-Fields Again: Finding a Way to Make it Work by Nancy are just some of the recent offerings there.
Getting Nuked on the Way to Mars and
Advertising and the Brainon
SciAm Observations, the blog by editors of Scientific American.
Finally got to myself -
Science And Politics - so here are some recent posts:
An attempt at communicating science to lay audience on a blog,
Books: 'Evolution's Rainbow' by Joan Roughgarden, and
Quail as well as a "best of"
collection.
Mirror neurons and
Headaches at NASA on
Science And Reason.
Loose feather and other birdy news and
Woodpecker Grand Slam on
Science And Sarcasm.
Stalking the giant collembola and not much since.... from
Science And Sensibility.
Science Blog is prolific - these are just today's posts:
MRI offers new hope for severe epilepsy sufferers,
Men in their 50s have more satisfying sex lives than men in their 30s,
Dragonflies offer insight into intricacies of flight,
The math of deadly waves and
Building a Better Guide to the Galaxy.
The
Science Creative Quarterly is not easy to navigate (you do not easily find "previous posts" or
archives by date), so I suggest you put it on your feed and read stuff as it comes online. It is...um...creative, and often a lot of fun.
CNN: Parents don't see a crisis over science and math,
Bush Increases '06 Office of Science Budget by $3.5bil and
Decline of Europe: A Rebuttal on
Science Crisis.
The Top 10 Science Discoveries . . . Ever! and not much since, on
Science In Action.
Magnets to target nanoparticles covered in therapeutics and
‘Roses Are Red, Viagra is Blue…’ Pfizer Knows Better - Shame on You! Says AHF on
Science Nerd Depot.
Science Notes:
The Quote Mine Project,
Argument for "irreducible complexity" collapses,
Political interference with public safety and
Invasive plants: dog-strangling vine or swallowwort.
You can get a single, collective
RSS feed for all the blogs on SEED Magazine's
Scienceblogs. This includes their Editor's Blog:
Sciencegate.
Animal Wrongs,
Double Drug Jeopardy and
Science Gets Googly are recent posts on
Scientific Activist, a relatively new blog that became instantly famous when NIck Anthis uncovered that a certain Mr.Deutch did not actually graduate from Texas A&T. He summarizes the experience in
What a Month!.
Scientific Assessment is a relatively new
blog alliance. Wanna join?
The Maternal Brain,
Oyster Awards,
Water on Mars and
Stupidity from
Shallow Thoughts to Profound Insights.She Falters To Rise:
I've been aiming too low,
Poetry, Dr. Phil, and Avoidance Strategies and
It doesn't take a brain surgeon.
Sir Oolius of Coeruleus (formerly known as
She Flies With Her Own Wings) is a neurobiolgist who occasionally blogs about science:
Buy CreationistDeveloping legs designed to invade Darwin!.
Psychologist questions merit of serious thought and other tales from the psychiatric ward can be found on
Shrinkette.
Michael Bains of
Silly Humans:
Daniel C. Dennett: 'Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon' - The New York Times Book Review.
Bayes' Original Paper and more on
Skepsisfera.
If you believe this you must be dreaming, says
Skeptico.
Sleepwalking to Jail,
Melatonin: A Safe Sleep Supplement?,
Sleep Gadgets and Gizmos,
Sleep Apnea and Musical Instruments and
Power Naps are the most recent posts on
Sleep Disorders.
Michael Rack is the
Sleepdoctor:
Sleeping Pill Wars,
I'd love to do a sleep study on this guy,
Oral Appliances for Sleep Apnea and
Watching television in bed.
An upside down butterfly,
Harbors far from the sea and
A beaver dam on
Snail's Tales.
Socratic Gadfly:
More NASA censorship comes to life,
Japanese whaling goes to the dogs and
Dick Pombo, National Parks hypocrite. Also check his other blog:
The Philosophy of the Socratic Gadfly.
Blue-Green Algae and the Unbearable Importance of Linking, and not much since, on
Some are Boojums.Abandoning Babbage,
While We're on the Subject...,
What NASA Should Be and
Push Prizes Do Their Stuff by Stephen Gordon and Phil Bowermaster of
Speculist.
Sporula has been on
a hiatus for a while now.
Squidblog is back with
The Shinjuku squid and its swarming skin and
Squid conference in Tasmania .
And on the other
Squidblog:
Leunig comments on the Tasmanian Squid Conference,
Squids may help determine global warming impact and
Thames whale died ‘trying to find squid’.
An Influenza primer,
The Evil Chemical,
Nature is still the boss,
Department of How could I have missed this? and
The doctor will not be in . . . on
Stayin' Alive.
Stephen Gloor:
The Result of the War on Science,
ExxonMobil's 2005 Energy Report - the Oil Resource,
Bogus Descriptions at CO2Science.com and
IPA Wind Power Submission.
Julie of
Stridulations is an entomologist and she suggests
Some of my favorite sites (really cool insect resources) and
The amazing polyphenic Manduca.
Mr. Luna: A Man with a Mission,
EarthTrends Announces Student Essay Contest,
Addressing Oil Addiction and
New NRDC Web Site Focuses on Green Building 'From Principle to Practice', on
Sustainablog.
SwampThings and
SwampStuff are blogs by a nature watcher and photographer in Northeast North Carolina.
Beastly Mispronunciations on
Syaffolee.
Next time, Ts and more.....
Previously in this series:
Link-Love: A little bit of science bloggingLink-Love: some more science bloggingLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part IIILink-love: more Alphabet Soup of science blogsLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part VLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science BlogsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part VIILink-Love: Science Blogs Qs and Rs
Is Prozac good or bad?
Obligatory Reading of the Day:Joseph of Corpus Callosum
makes connections (plus some history of psychiatry) between the Nation article
Brave Neuro World: The Ethics of the New Brain Science and the blog post
Prozac Feminism?
Monday, February 20, 2006
Koufax Update
Koufax Awards semi-finalists in the categories of
Best Group Blog and
Best Blog Community are now up on Wampum.
Militant fundamentalist jihadist embassy-burning scientists
I could not resist stealing this from
Modern Science(click to enlarge):
Environmentalist Carnival
Carnival of the Green #15 is up on
Hip & Zen Pen.
Carnival of the Liberals - call for submissions
Hamilton Habs from
Throw Away Your TV is back from vacation and has posted his first
call for submissions for
Carnival of the Liberals #7. CotL #7 will be on Wednesday, March 1, but Hamilton needs your submissions by next Monday, Feb. 27 at Noon EST. This will be the first time CotL will be hosted on a video blog which makes for a nice opportunity to experiment with using video in your own posts.
The design of everything that flows and moves
You may remember when I
reviewed the new 'constructal theory' of animal movement.
Apparently, the same principle can be applied to other systems. Science Daily just reported on the way the model was used to
predict global climate patterns. Quite exciting!
You can see other applications on a website
devoted to this way of thinking. I am naturally skeptical when I see theories that explain everything, but this looks pretty good. What do you all think about it?
Terra Sigillata
When the
name of your blog is a clue in the
Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle, and they offer 200 pounds for the correctly solved puzzle, then you get a lot of hits from Google, which you use to educate people about what a blog is. And of course, you make the new visitors happy by providing them with the solution to the clue....
More on communicating science to lay audience
Matt Nisbet gave a lecture on framing in science at the AAAS meeting yesetrday. This morning he posted a
summary.
Put down your coffee before reading this
Dean Dad has graded too many freshmen papers in his career. He now has the superhuman ability to write one, too:
Men in Hats
Edwards watch
Neil the Ethical Werewolf, guest-posting on Ezra Klein's blog (yup, Ezra is also in Amsterdam) wrote a nice summary on
John Edwards.
Blogs on Wieseltier on Dennett
Awful
Leon Wieseltier's review of Daniel Dennett's book Breaking the Spell has already been ably fisked by
PZ Myers of Pharyngula,
Michael Bains of Silly Humans and
Brian Leiter of Leiter Reports. I have nothing to add to those brilliant fiskings, so just go and read the Grand Masters.
If you are hungry for more, there are some other interesting reviews of the review on
Stumblings in the dark,
The Little Green Blog,
Shotgunfreude and
The Secular Outpost.
The rest of the blogosphere, predictably, is cheerleading Wieseltier as he coddles them in their supernatural superstitions and beliefs, and provides them with material for today's Minute Of Hate for all things rational.
An attempt at communicating science to lay audience on a blog
Last night I wrote a long post on Circadiana about a new study linking
Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder. I wrote that post while having fresh in my mind the
recent discussions about the strategies that scientists can use to communicate their findings to the lay audience.
Thus, I tried to write that post, although it is about a paper that describes yet another little detail in the complexity of nitty-gritty details of the circadian clock, with lay audience in mind. This is what I tried to do, and you tell me if I succeeded or not, and if not, what I could have done better:
First, with the title and the first paragraph or two, I tried to hook the audience. People
love diseases, so I put Bipolar Disorder right up front.
Then, I provided a little bit of historical background which also highlights some aspects of scientific method, specifically the differences in approach between the time when a new discipline just begins and later when the discipline is mature.
Next, I showed how two seemingly distant areas of research got connected to each other and briefly highlighted a couple of studies provoked by the realization of that connection.
Then, in order to be able to explain the new paper, I went all the way back to BIO101 and explained briefly how transcription and translation work. I covered only those aspects of it that are relevant to the main story, leaving much detail out. I tried to leave the specialized terminology out as well. Actually, those few terms that I used I tried to slyly slide in without drawing attention to the fact that those words are specialized scientific terms. First time I use a term, I use it in a colloquial manner (though correctly), and the second time I use it in a more conventional way, but with no fuss (and no italics or bold either). Do not scare people with language!
I then moved on to the description of the molecular mechanism of the mammalian circadian clock. Again, I only cover aspects of it that are essential for understanding the new research, leaving a lot of details out. I use the terminology I just explained in the preceeding paragraphs exactly in the way I used them there.
At the end of that portion of the post, I feel that the reader naturally comes to the correct question that needs to be asked (I am leading the reader there all along) and then show that the new paper addresses exactly that question. The paper itself is full of difficult detail. I omit all that and describe, in simplest possible terms, the main gist of the paper, and how it connects lithium to circadian clocks to Bipolar Disorder.
I placed a lot of pictures in the post that should help the reader visualize and understand what I am saying. I also provide links for people who want to learn more.
Let me know how YOU felt when reading that and if you think some aspects of the presentation can be improved and in waht way.
Obligatory Readings of the Day
#1
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA - The Newest Marxist? by Publius on Legal Fiction:
If you want a more detailed background on idealism vs. materialism, you can read my post here. The gist of it is that idealists think that ideas can move and shape history, whereas materialists tend to see ideas as the byproduct (or superstructure) of material forces such as economic relationships and power imbalances.
Iraq provides an excellent example of how these schools of thought work. Because materialists see democracy as the byproduct of (relatively) evenly balanced and widespread wealth, the materialist would stress economic reforms as a necessary precondition of democracy promotion. The idealist, however, believes that introducing the idea of democracy is enough – or more specifically, that introducing the idea can produce the economic wealth. The actual invasion of Iraq (and the greater neocon vision for the Middle East) depends entirely on idealism in that it bets the house on imposing Western ideas top-down rather than helping them develop from the bottom-up.
Read the rest...
#2
The Panglossian Paradigm, or as science moves forward, creationists move back by Josh Rosenau of Thought From Kansas:
The same spirit that moved Gould and Lewontin to decry this approach to the analysis of biological systems also moved people to crack down on "just-so stories," but to be clear about how a given hypothesis about a structure might be tested. The Index of Creationist Claims explains more. Creationists like to toss that word around now, but it was biologists who saw the problem and have fixed it.
Furthermore, modern creationism often takes on exactly this approach. The classic example is Privileged Planet, the book and movie which the Discovery Institute has been pushing as a case for Design in the Universe. The book is, so far as I've been able to determine, an extended Panglossian diatribe. Our moon is the best of all possible moons because its position is just-so. Our solar system, our planet, our galaxy, the galaxies around us, our atmosphere, our eyes, our mountains, our orbit, our sun, all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Read the rest...
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Koufax update
The tallying of nominations for the Koufax Awards is in a minor crisis. But you can help by dropping a couple of bucks in the tip-jar over at
Wampum so they can fix their overheating computer.
Robustness of the Circadian Oscillator
Ricardo Azevedo of Newtons' Binomium wrote a great pair of posts on the robustness of biological systems, using circadian clock as the example.
Check them out:
Blind Watchmaker or Swiss Designer? (Part I) and
Blind Watchmaker or Swiss Designer? (Part II).
Circadian news
You may be interested in my new post over on Circadiana:
Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder
More on Innumeracy
I have
previously linked to a bunch of good early responses to the amazing confession of ignorance by a certain op-ed writer named Cohen.
Since then, there was a lot more blog response, some of the best being by
Dr.Free-ride,
Lance Mannion,
Josh Rosenau,
Hiram Ulysses,
Shades of Grey,
Byzantium Shores,
Mike the Mad Biologist,
Saccharomyces,
Cieran and
Allogenes.
Carnival of the Godless
CARNIVAL OF THE GODLESS #34 is up on Goosing the Anthithesis.
Tar Heel Tavern - Happy Anniversary
Welcome to the First Anniversary Edition of the
Tar Heel Tavern. How time flies! I can't believe it's already been a year since we started this and I am so happy that it took off and found a life of its own in our blogging community.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than we must be doing something right with the Tar Heel Tavern, as bloggers from several other states have started their own carnivals since then:
New York,
Wisconsin,
New Jersey,
Arizona,
Illinois,
Montana,
Kansas,
Ohio and
Virginia.
Well, let's get started. I was really happy to see so many submissions and I added only a couple of my own Editor's Choice posts. Click on images to enlarge.
Gingerivers is keeping time and meter in her poem:
Jo Bray.
Marcus of
Fixin' Healthcare:
The Lifestyle Chronicles - Best Friend. This post is about the contribution of dogs to healthy lifestyle by getting people more active physically. How does this relate to time? Well, people with dogs spend almost twice as much time walking than people without dogs. You'll get the minutes when you click on the link.
Cicero of
Nothing Could Be Finer writes that
Woman Claims Police Action Excessive, but There's More to the Story.
Laurie of
Slowly She Turned has a sense of urgency:
No NAIS!
Erin of
Poetic Acceptance is trying to deal with
postponment. What a difference a day makes.
Mandie of
Captivated By Mandie knows it is the right time of year to tend to
her plot.
Billy is editing a friend's memoir - a life time of memories:
SWEETFEED
The Autobiography Of Jack T. Mule.
Sara of
Clothed [in joy] lists things
she loves, some timeless, some right in the moment.
Mel writes, in her
Kitchen, about
Death and the past and meatloaf. Made me cry.
Anton of
Mistersugar knows that minor delays pale in comparison to
major disasters in history.
Some things happen again and again, notes Justin from
The View From the Cheap Seats in
The pew and the ballot box - A Bad Idea Gets New Life.
Some things grow fast! Just ask Russ of
Russlings:
Brave Little Giraffe.
Real Paul Jones has
started a
new blog. New beginnings.
Stonehendge was supposed to be an ancient calendar of some sort.. Ask Melinama of
Pratie Place what is
Stonefridge for.
Ron Hudson takes us on a trip down the memory lane, all the way back to the
Big Hair Days.
Lenslinger used to be an
Early Bird. Not always getting the worm, though....
Anonymoses is not sure if he has detected someone's
very slow aging process...
Jude of
Iddybud deconstructs
David Brooks. That did not take very much time at all.
Dirty Greek found another
living anachronism.
My
other blog is devoted to time in the biological realm, for instance how it changes with
puberty.
And finally, a post by
me, how
fast our kids grow.
We cannot finish this carnival without addressing the concept of being late. Here's an
example from
Scrutiny Hooligans.
Next week, the Tavern will open on
Poetic Acceptance, so make sure to remember to send your entries on time. In the meantime you can get all the information about the Tavern on the
homepage, see all the previous issues in the
archives and get the code for our nifty little logo
here. If you want to host a future edition of the carnival, please let me know.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Books: "Evolution's Rainbow" by Joan Roughgarden
I see that Joan Roughgarden has a
new paper in
Science this week:
Reproductive Social Behavior: Cooperative Games to Replace Sexual SelectionTheories about sexual selection can be traced back to Darwin in 1871. He proposed that males fertilize as many females as possible with inexpensive sperm, whereas females, with a limited supply of large eggs, select the genetically highest quality males to endow their offspring with superior capabilities. Since its proposal, problems with this narrative have continued to accumulate, and it is our view that sexual selection theory needs to be replaced. We suggest an approach that relies on the exchange of direct ecological benefits among cooperating animals without reference to genetic benefits. This approach can be expressed mathematically in a branch of game theory that pertains to bargaining and side payments.
This is bound to provoke strong responses in the evolutionary community, just as her last book did. A few years ago I read
Evolution's Rainbow and it sure is controversial. The trick is not to accept or reject her book 100%. There is too much stuff in there, some clearly correct, some pretty clearly wrong (or at least far too exagerated), some thought-provoking even if the jury is still out, to just dismiss the book wholesale.
The strongest parts are in the beginning - first six chapters or so - where she describes a lot of examples (and I mean a LOT!) of alternative sex-roles in the animal kingdom and I really like her re-definition of 'gender' as it pertains to non-human animals: "Gender is the appearance, behavior, and life history of a sexed body". In other words, it is not true that all animals have sexes, but only humans have genders. This also means that "gender, unlike gamete size, is not limited to two".
Next three chapters are the most provocative, as she strongly dismisses the whole edifice of sexual selection. Proceed with care.
Chapters 10 through 14 are, again, masterful explanations of basic biology, the role of genes in development, sex determination and differentiation, and the ontogeny of sex, gender, and sexual orientation. I see nothing controversial there, and these chapters provide a great resource - all the stuff in one place - for people interested in this topic. As a transgender herself, she clearly studied this issue with passion for years, and as much that means she has an axe to grind, it is a good axe and her scholarship on this is impeccable.
Afterwards she dives into topics she is not such an expert on - psychology, biotechnology and sociology and she makes one cringe on many occasions. Chapter 20 is a dissection of all the places in the Bible that are used by Regressives to argue against gay marriage. While Biblical scholars are certain not to like her interpretations, in my opinion she skillfully debunks the myth that Bible says anything at all about homosexuality. Progressives should read this chapter in order to get the ammunition neccessary to debunk the anti-gay Bible-thumpers.
But, back to sexual selection. Last summer she published an article -
The Myth of Sexual Selection - that succinctly reviews her stance against the theory of sexual selection. I strongly suggest you click on that link and read the whole thing and I would like to hear your reactions to it.
Among else, she writes:
"Clearly, the idea that males and females conform to rigid gender profiles still dominates sex role discussions. According to this model, passionate males with cheap sperm pursue coy females with expensive eggs. Females look for males with the best genes, whereas males want to fertilize as many females as possible. Genetically superior males distinguish themselves as the winners of male-male combat, as with jousting elk, or by having the most expensive and beautiful ornaments, as among peacocks. These male and female profiles, together with the cheap sperm/expensive egg rationale, comprise what biologists call "sexual-selection theory." Throughout nature, it would seem, delicate discerning damsels welcome horny handsome warriors to bed.
This is rubbish."
This is Evolutionary Psychology she is debunking, not evolutionary biology. Straw-man!
This is interesting:
"Sexual selection theory also teaches that because eggs are larger and more expensive to produce, females must conserve this resource by playing hard to get. Conversely, because sperm are small and easy to manufacture, males can spread them around with little loss on investment. But in fact, sperm are not cheap. The relevant comparison is not between individual sperm and egg, but between ejaculate and egg. An ejaculate often has a million sperm whereas an individual egg is often a million times as large as an individual sperm, making the mating investment of both male and female about the same. As a result, in many species a mating for a male may be just as costly as for a female, even when there is no male investment in raising the offspring."
Now the alternative she proposes:
"Sexual selection views mating as solely for conception. But the point of mating is not usually to make babies; it usually serves a social function. Mating occurs too often relative to number of offspring produced to be solely for conception. The intimacy of sex strengthens relationships between adults, defuses social tensions, and helps keep groups together, as in our closest living relative the bonobo. Strong social bonds help ensure males and females will work well as a team to protect and raise young.
Same-gender sex can promote friendships as well, helping to explain why homosexual sex has been observed in more than 300 species of vertebrates as a regular component of social interactions."
I actually like this. I just don't think it is an alternative to anything.
"I suggest that we replace sexual-selection theory with a new approach that I call social selection theory. I argue that reproductive social behavior, including mate choice and family organization, can be completely explained by focusing solely on the direct ecological benefits each individual obtains from the interactions it has with others. Indirect genetic benefits can be ignored; they don't realistically factor into mating decisions at all.
Social selection theory proposes that every animal has a time budget for its social interactions. Each animal interacts with others in ways that improve the number of offspring he or she can successfully rear. Animals may pursue their most beneficial course by acting independently or by acting together in teams, but usually in teams. From a group's many instantaneous decisions as to whom to associate with and what actions to perform with one another, a unique social system emerges for each species in each ecological situation."
Good. But, I do not see the two ideas as mutually exclusive at all. One can certainly have both sexual selection and social selection operating, even in the same species. Why not?
Now comes the axe she grinds:
"To a naturalist, the failure of sexual- selection to describe and explain animal behavior is reason enough to reject it at this time. But the stakes are even higher. Sexual selection is not innocent. It promotes a view of nature as violent and deceitful, emphasizing male-male combat and war between the sexes. It licenses male promiscuity. It views female choice of mates as a broom to clean the gene pool of males with bad genes. It persecutes diverse expressions of gender identity and sexuality. Social scientists and the popular media uncritically reproduce its myths."
Again, that is an attack on Evolutionary Psychology, not on sexual selection theory per se. Also, see how she rejects it for its social implications, then goes on to argue the opposite:
"To be clear, the scientific truth, or lack of it, of sexual selection is logically independent of its social implications. Yet, the ethical wrongs issuing from sexual selection's narrative require holding it to the highest standards of scientific rigor. It fails. After 130 years, sexual selection is still not confirmed and I suggest it never will be.
Once scientists start looking through the lens of social-selection, animal behaviors become much easier to understand, and many of the apparent contradictions fall away. Instead of trying to shore up Darwin's sinking theory of sexual selection, we should be improving our understanding of gender and sexuality, because friendship, love, and sex are important."
So, yes. Simplistic gender roles as espoused by Evolutionary Psychology are bunk. Social selection theory is just fine - Frans de Waal probably likes the idea. But I do not see any reason to ditch sexual selection as an explanation for a lot of what is going on in nature. I do not agree that sexual selection is not confirmed. Even the first arguments, those of Darwin in
Descent of Man are pretty strong, not to mention all of the research that followed from it over the last century and a half.
A few years ago I did an almost exactly same experiment in two very different species: the Japanese quail and the crayfish. The results from the crayfish experiment were consistent with sexual selection and not with social selection theory. The data from quail were not consistent with sexual selection but were nicely explained by Roughgarden's social selection theory (sorry, no details, both studies are unpublished yet).
So, do not dismiss sexual selection yet, but don't dismiss Joan Roughgarden's ideas, either. Read
the book - it will make you think in some very different ways. While you should keep your skeptical antennae on alert while reaidng it, it will also set your thinking free to go in directions you may not have anticipated before.
I tried to teach Bart Simpson algebra seven years in a row...
Made on
Simpsomaker (from
Just a Bump in the Beltway via
Pharyngula). Tips for saving teh image from commenters on PZ's blog: If you're on a Windows machine, try hitting "alt+prt scr" to save the window image to the clipboard (that is what I did). Then go to your favorite graphic editor (MS Paint if you can't think of anything else) and paste (ctrl+v (that is what I did)). Use the Grab utility in Mac OS X.
If you don't know what the title refers to, check out the best (out of
many) blog coverage
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here and many,
many more.... Those are ALL your obligatory reads of the day! By the way, without basic algebra, you'd never resolve
this problem!
White House Press. What White House Press?
Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy by Jay Rosen on PressThink is today's Obligatory Reading.
Quail
In the wake of last weekend's events, it is not surprising that everyone and their brother had something to say about the shooting. I certainly wish someone would put together a linkfest of the best blog responses to the events of last Saturday and the whole Mediafest that followed.
I saw posts and comments by hunters, physicians, cops, lawyers, forensic experts, media analysts, professional journalists, political pundits, Friends of Bill, Friends of Dick, George and Harry, conspiracy theorists, and of course, Wingnut apologists. I felt there was absolutely nothing I could add to that avalanche that wasn't said already by someone somehere online. But then I noticed that nobody has paid attention to the main victims of the Cheney expedition, the victims of the mass killing that happened that day. After all, Harry survived while hundreds died - that is, hundreds of quail.
In many blog posts that related to the type of hunting involved, it was difficult to figure out if the writer was talking about the last week's hunt in Texas or the Pennsylvania hunt two years ago. In 2004, what Cheney and others hunted were
Ring-necked Pheasants :
and Mallard Ducks.
Last week, apparent target were quail. I have not seen any clarification of whic type of quail it was, but it is 99.9% certain that they were hunting Bobwhite Quail. That is the only North American species of quail that normally inhabits Texas (are those Republican quail?). It is also the only species of quail that is intensely bred in captivity, primarily for release for hunting (the tiny
Button Quail is bred as a house pet and the Japanese quail is bred for meat and eggs, as well as a laboratory animal).
Bobwhite Quail (
Colinus virginianus) is an Animal, a Chordate, a Vertebrate and a Bird. It belongs to order
Galliformes which also contains such familiar species as
Chicken
Black Grouse
Guinea-fowl
Turkey
and Peacock:
In most resources I have seen (online and books), the genus
Colinus is placed in the family
Phasianidae. I was surprised to see Wikipedia dissenting. I am assuming that I am the one behind the times and have not noticed the reclassification that must have happened relatively recently. Wikipedia places the
Bobwhite quail in the family
Odontophoridae, together with all the other New World quails, and separated from
Phasianidae that now apparently contains only Old World Quails. Here are some other species of quails and relatives:
Chukar Partridge
California Quail
Gambel's Quail
Button Quail
Scaled Quail
Mountain Quail
Potatoe Quail (also a Vice President)
You can find more information about the Bobwhite Quail
here,
here and
here. Here are some pictures of the Bobwhite, just so you can see what Cheney was shooting at, at least most of the time:
Aren't they beuatiful when they are alive and free?
Here are some young ones in a rearing pen.
Waiting to be released to be hunted by their cousins, the chicken-hawks:
Why am I interested? Because my online handle is
Coturnix, another genus of Old World quail, containing, among others, Chinese Quail, European Migratory (or 'Common') Quail and Asian Migratory (or 'Japanese') Quail. Japanese quail is the animal I use in my
laboratory research.
Japanese Quail
Common Quail:
The U.S. government has tried for a couple of decades to stock our forests with Japanese quail (which are, by the way, about half the size of Bobwhites) for hunting, but had to abandon the project in early 1980s as they could never find any of the released animals again. The official report guesses they were all eaten by predators to which they are not used to, but it does not mention that this is the only long-distant migrant in the whole Order of Gallinaceous birds - even if a few of them survived the predators, they likely flew away to Cuba or CostaRica or some such nice tropical place in the winter and never came back.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Belgrade Underground
This is almost two years old - why didn't I know about this?
Secret Complex Exists Underneath Belgrade----------snip-----------
The entrance is hidden beneath a hilltop army barracks in Belgrade's Topcider district, which is home to several embassies and luxurious diplomatic residences.
According to media reports citing unnamed military sources, a 185-foot-deep elevator shaft leads down to a six-story underground complex dug into rock and reinforced by 10-foot-thick concrete walls.
Retired Gen. Momcilo Perisic, who was the army's chief of staff until 1999, confirmed that the sprawling complex is intended as a wartime command center.
The main hall is as big as a subway station and could be used to shelter tanks and trucks, the reports by the Vecernje Novosti newspaper and other media said.
Tunnels stretching for hundreds of yards link palaces, bunkers and safe houses. Rooms are separated by steel vault doors 10 feet high and a foot thick. The complex has its own power supply and ventilation.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is believed to have convened his war Cabinet there in 1999 while NATO bombs fell on his country for 78 days to punish him for cracking down on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
The complex is so well designed that Yugoslav construction firms were reportedly hired by deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to build a duplicate bunker near his hometown of Tikrit in the 1980s.
It would appear the ideal hiding place for a fugitive like Mladic, who is believed to have the support of Milosevic-era generals still commanding the army. The Bosnian Serb army chief was indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands for the 1995 massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia.
Serbian Defense Minister Prvoslav Davinic has insisted that no war-crimes suspects have been found inside. Otherwise, the military has been tightlipped about the complex, even threatening to prosecute media that have described it for violating laws on disclosing state secrets.
But once-unsuspecting neighbors make no secret about their desire to get a peek at Tito's tunnels.
"I didn't have any idea that I have been living on top of a major military secret," said Radmila Spasic, a 60-year-old housewife. "Now that the big secret is revealed, the army should open the complex to the public. It would became Belgrade's major tourist attraction."
More details
here.
London Underground
Not just the 'tube', though, but information and photographs of a bunch of other underground tunnels, bunkers, viaducts etc., more-or-less secretly built under the city of London, some more than a century ago. Definitely
worth a look (via
Lippard blog).
Follow the links within that post (and within comments) and links within links for more London Underground, Belgrade Underground, Beijing Underground, etc.
(Cross-posted on
Majikthise)
Coyote Carnival
The newest on the growing list of state blog carnivals, the carnival of Arizona bloggers is off to a great start with its
inaugural edition.
Neanderthals among us
Alley Oop
e-mailed John Hawks.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
The Best Sneetches on the Beaches
When I went to pick up Coturnix Junior from school today (he is in 7th grade), we bumped into his English teacher who informed me that he did not turn in his book review. He started coming up with excuses, that he lost the book, or it was stolen, etc. She said something like "Well, you better read something really fast, so you can turn in the review tomorrow. And it has to be something at middle-school level, not Dr.Seuss".
I doubt Dr.Seuss ever crossed hs mind up till that moment, but he was quick to see an opening when it presented itself, so he shot back "Sure Dr.Seuss is at middle-school level!" She laughed and said "OK, instead of a book review, write an essay that will persuade me that Dr.Seuss is on middle-school level"
Coturnix Jr. thought she was joking and was quite distraught about his predicament once we got home. He would not believe me that she was not kidding and that this was really his assignment. Fortunately, later this afternoon, we went back to his school for Science Night and bumped into the English teacher again. I asked and she confirmed that she was not kidding and that this indeed was his assignment.
That gave him fire. As soon as we got home, he pulled out all of the Dr.Seuss books (and we have most of them), checked them out, re-viewed a couple of tapes to make it faster (he's read all the books many times before so I gave him a pass on that shortcut), then got on a computer and wrote the essay in half an hour.
When I read what he printed out I was floored. After dismissing some of the Dr.Seuss books as pure fun with words and rhymes, he started arguing that some of the books are much more serious. While little kids may still enjoy the wordplay, it takes some age and knowledge to understand the real message of those books.
Then he proceeded to look at four such books. The short version of it (in my words - he squirreled away his work before I could copy and paste here):
Green Eggs And Ham, he wrote, is about the difficulty in facing the unknown and doing stuff one is not used to doing.
Sneetches is a metaphor for racism, in which one group asserts superiority over another just because they look different on the surface.
Lorax is about greed that leads not just to the irreversible destruction of the environment, but also to the bankrupcy of the company. Moreover,
thneed is really oil - something that we will run out of if we are not greedy.
Finally, the stand-off between the Northgoing and Southgoing
Zax is a parable of the Cold War, with two superpowers stubborny refusing to yield, while the world around them moves on.
Where on Earth did he get all those ideas? Ah, well....he picked up stuff eavesdropping on his parents, I guess.... I bet he'll get an A for this.
Science News
*
Rats found to understand cause and effect:
The discovery contradicts common assumptions among scientists, according to researchers.
*
Sex, cleaner of genomes:
Sometimes, evolution needs a little help erasing harmful mutations. Sex may come to the rescue, a study has found.
*
Study: stock market acts oddly before a crashBefore and after crashes, stock prices behave in some ways like heartbeats and earthquakes, physicists have found.
*
Study: complex decisions best left to your unconscious:
It may be best to forget about a decision temporarily before making it, scientists say.
*
Next dinosaur news likely to come from small packages:
Dinosaurs seem bigger than life. But the next big answers about them may come from tiny remains, scientists predict.
Koufax Update
The Koufax Awards category for
Best Expert Blog is now up on Wampum. Go check it out.
No liberal bias found on a conservative campus
From the
Independent Weekly:
NCSU students reject 'Academic Bill of Rights':
Conservative organizations attempting to crack down on what they say is liberal bias in the nation's universities lost a battle this month in N.C. State University's Student Senate.
----------snip---------
Bruck summed up his opposition by saying the Academic Bill of Rights is "not academic, certainly not a bill, and no one gets any rights.
From the
Technician:
Committee opts to kill academic freedom bill:
More than an hour of discussion and debate yielded few answers Wednesday night as members of the Student Senate's Public Affairs Committee tabled indefinitely a controversial proposal regarding academic freedoms.
The resolution, entitled the Academic Bill of Rights, supports a bill in the N.C. General Assembly of the same name that focuses on ensuring "free inquiry and free speech within the academic community" in the UNC System.....
If Horowitz so easily lost at NCSU, he'll lose everywhere but Bob Jones University.
Obligatory Reading of the Day
Secular Modes of Redemption on Bouphonia:
Like many people, I've toyed with the notion that American fundamentalism is a cargo cult, living for the day when some Republican prophet - syncretically identified with a post-Darwinian Christ whose central teaching is "Blessed are the fit, for they shall survive" - will bestow untold wealth and power on his followers.
Read the rest. Lots about John Frum cult.
Link-Love: Science Blogs Qs and Rs
As usual, first a little catching up on blogs that I missed previously starting with A through P, then moving on to Qs and Rs.
Science blogs going mainstream? Plus, bonus disturbing parasite story and
A moment of evolutionary emo from
A chorus for raucous souls.Action Potential is the Blog of Nature Neuroscience. Check out
Runx-o-rama.
When whales walked the land… and looked like antelopes… and mimicked crocodiles…. and evolved trunks. What?,
Eagle owls take over Britain,
Tortoises that drink with their noses, or: alas, goodbye Hololissa? and much, much more on
Darren Naish: Tetrapod Zoology.
Frogs and Lollipops has
built a great resource - an aggregator of biology and medical science blogs with all kinds of cool statistics. It is called
Postgenomic and it watches what papers are commented on a lot and who does it, who writes the wordiest posts, etc. The only thing I do not understand is if the "links per post" means incoming or outgoing links. I also find additional
advice and tips for aggregated blogs confusing - it is targeted at Techno-geeks who actually speak that language, and I know that many science bloggers do not. I have no idea what he is talking about.
Pregnancy tests and frogs...,
Civil disobedience or something else? and
Faith Based Science? are on the
Force That Through...Galactic Interactions on
What is “Cold”? and
Punctuated Equilibrium.
Jane Goodall Institute started their
own blog, called
Gombe Chimpanzee Blog.
I Got Bugs on
Euglena and
Ladybugs.
Interested-Participant suggest using Preparation H to put the
cane toads to sleep before turning them into fertilizer.
Check out the
latest articles on
LabLit.com.
Questionable Authority is
Going Different Directions in the Same Space.
ID vs. QM (1): Jump, they say and
Tuesday Afternoon Physics Poetry, the Ornithology Edition on
Qulog.
Quoth the Raven has not been
posting much lately.
Read
Pure Joy on
Ratty's Ghost.
Science and religion discussion on
Reality Conditions.
RebelDoctor took a
Psychotic Break.
Red State Rabble is a Kansas blog that pummels Creationists several times a day. Try
Lies, Damn Lies, and Discovery Public Opinion Polls.
Orac of
Respectful Insolence appears to have settled comfortably in his new home on SEED scienceblogs. Check out
Angst in my pants*: Academic surgeons lament their lot,
Blogging Alzheimer's,
Ohio rejects intelligent design and
Teenage graffiti as cave art.
Radagast of Rhosgobel is
Growing ferns and answers a question about
Colorblindness in heterozygous females.
Rigor Vitae: Life Unyielding is the home of a magnificient nature artist. Check out
SINGING WINGS,
UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF FROG DECLINE: GETTING WARMER or
GROUSING OVER SAGE HABITAT.
The Great Asteroid Mining Con,
ETHANOL – But more politely this time and
RU486? No I'm much younger on
Ronald Brak.
Roundrock Journal explores nature in
Boulder,
Scented Candles,
Past Repast and
In which I . . ..
How Ethical Are Scientists?, asks
Ruminating Dude.
Rurality has been lucky lately, taking pictures of a
bobcat and a
deer.
Russlings is the
blog by the Director of the NC Zoo in Asheville. It is updated daily with great pictures of animals, factos and factoids, news from teh Zoo world, etc. This is where I first learned that the
Zoo Director will Run for the office of New Orleans Mayor and is already better funded than Nagin.
Next time, all those blogs that start with S....
Previously in this series:
Link-Love: A little bit of science bloggingLink-Love: some more science bloggingLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part IIILink-love: more Alphabet Soup of science blogsLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part VLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science BlogsLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part VII
NC Rocks!
American Idol is down to the 24 finalists and North Carolina is represented by no less than four contenders. As if Fantasia and Clay Aiken were not enough.
Dent has more, but Stewie got the
real scoop: he got to talk to them and take their pictures, so go check it out.
John Edwards...
...is
everywhere (hat-tip to kmr of
Dent).
Update:
More here:
Hotel Workers Rising: lifting one another above the poverty line.
And the official press release:
Hotel Workers Rising Campaign Kick-Off
WHAT: A nationwide tour to launch a new campaign to empower thousands of hotel workers in cities across North America as they work to improve their jobs and secure better lives for themselves and their families.
WHO:
- Senator John Edwards
- Actor/Director Danny Glover
- Mayors and other elected officials
- UNITE HERE Presidents Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm
- Thousands of hotel workers
- Other community, union and entertainment figures
WHEN and WHERE:
Parc 55 Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin Street (between Eddy and Ellis)
- 4:30 p.m. - Rally with Senator Edwards, Danny Glover, Mayor Newsom,
hotel workers and other special guests Ballroom, 4th Floor
Downtown Sheraton Hotel, 711 South Hope Street
- 4:30 p.m. - Rally with Senator Edwards, Danny Glover, Mayor Villaraigosa,
hotel workers, UNITE HERE Presidents Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm.
The Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton (at Michigan Ave), Ballroom
- 4:30 p.m. - Rally with Senator Edwards, hotel workers,
UNITE HERE Presidents Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm
The Ritz-Carlton Boston, 15 Arlington Street, Grand Ballroom
- 11:30 a.m. - Rally with Senator Edwards, Danny Glover, hotel workers,
union leaders and other special guests
Dick Gordon debuts today
Connection was one of my favourite shows on NPR and I was dismayed when it was suddenly and inexplicably pulled by its Boston host station last year. Fortunately for me and my neighbors, WUNC had the sense (and the money) to bring Dick Gordon here, to Chapel Hill. He has developed a new show, called
The Story, which debuts today at 1pm EST. For the first month or so, it will run only on Thursdays, and then spread to five weekdays afterwards.
This week's edition of Raleigh Independent has a scoop on the new show:
Dick Gordon connects with the Triangle, written by one of my favourite Indy writers, Cat Warren. The whole article is worth a read (man, she can turn an article about grass slowly growing into a riveting read!), but I especially like the last part, about the attempt to make this show a bottom-up, audience-driven show, not with call-ins (there will be none), but with an attempt at real citizen journalism - listeners picking topics, mailing in stories and participating in making stories for the show:
What if The Story, instead of ground-pounding for its stories and sources, partly depended on tens of thousands of listeners across the nation? These listeners wouldn't just sit and passively talk back to their radios, or send a pissed off or a congratulatory e-mail after a story ran--an e-mail that might get distilled to two sentences and read on the air. What if the audience itself helped create and report the stories, a feed-in loop, not just a feedback loop? Wiki journalism. This kind of participatory journalism via the Internet is right on the verge, too. It's also a nice big smack upside the head of a recalcitrant, if not shin-splinted, mainstream media.
I hope Dick Gordon succeeds. As a blogger, thus a so-called "citizen journalist" myself, I applaud the attempt and have the faith that this will be a success - actually I expect it to be much more of a success than even Gordon and the producers are expecting right now:
"The venerable profession of journalism finds itself at a rare moment in history where, for the first time, its hegemony as gatekeeper of the news is threatened by not just new technology and competitors but by the audience it serves," noted an influential report by the American Press Institute in 2003. Darned audiences.
"There's a resistance," notes Gordon with his trademark restraint. "It means we're not in charge anymore. Who am I to decide, in fact, what the story is?" So the new game in reporting town essentially repeats this mantra: "My readers and listeners know more than I know." Imagine.
To take that seriously, you can't just be launching editors' blogs here or hosting reader or listener response forums there. Horizontal, open-source journalism means you take thousands of readers and listeners, you ask them regularly for their input, and you mine them like crazy to help define, frame and even sometimes report the stories.
As they say, go read the
whole thing.
Hal Crowther on Cuba
Hal Crowther, Independent Weekly journalist (formerly of TIME), went on a trip to Havana and wrote an intriguing article about it:
Big boats, little boats.
It's bound to make you re-think some notions about Cuba you may have had. Also, he's been interviewed about the trip - read it
here for more insight.
Skeptical Birds
I And The Bird #17 is up on Wild Bird On The Fly and the
Skeptic's Circle #28 is up on Unused And Probably Unusable.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Guest Blogging
Starting tomorrow, and for the whole week afterwards, I will be guest-blogging over on
Majikthise, while Lindsay is frolicking in Amsterdam.
Why is she going there? Weed? Prostitutes? Tulips? Naaaah! Blogging. You can find more information
here,
here and
here.
This does not mean that blogging here will grind to a halt as I intend to cross-post most of the stuff. And I don't have to go too crazy over there, either, as I will have company of
several other amazing bloggers. Together, we'll try to keep Majikthise audience from abandoning ship. I hope we don't cause them to do so instead ;-)
Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions
Next edition of the
Tar Heel Tavern will be the First Anniversary Edition and it will be hosted by me right here on Science And Politics. I intend to post it around midnight between Saturday and Sunday, so send me your permalinks by Saturday evening at 8pm EST.
The overarching theme is TIME. I can find a way to make a connection between time and pretty much anything you write, but if you need inspiration, think about time and something may come up. Have you bought a clock recently? Was there an important birthday or anniversary? Did you experience the time standing still while you were doing something? Has anyone experienced one of those big markers of passage of time, like birth, Bar Mitzvah, graduation, wedding, retirement, death? Are you too busy to squeeze everything into just 24 hours in a day? Perhaps you will listen to the new Dick Gordon show tomorrow on 91.5 MegaHerz? Whatever it is, let's make this issue really big and good.
Koufax Update
The semi-finalists in the category of
Best Writing are now up on Wampum.
Carnivals
Besides the brilliantly done edition of the
Teaching Carnival (just below), a number of other carnivals are making their appearance today:
Tangled Bank is up on
Kete Were.
Carnival of the Liberals is up on
Slant Truth.
History Carnival is up on
Philobiblion.
Carnival of Education is up on
EdWahoo.
God Or Not is up on
Cadmusings.
Teaching Carnival - Science Edition
Welcome to the Sixth edition of the
Teaching Carnival.
While Technorati Tags is, to put it cheritably, less than perfect technology at this point, I did some judicious searching, digging and cross-checking and believe that all tagged, and some non-tagged but relevant posts are here. If something is missing, please let me know ASAP so I can add the posts in question.
As I teach science, I took it as my sacred duty to pull in some more science bloggers into this carnival, so I reserved a whole section on Science Teaching below. I hope you like what they have to offer. Anyway, it's a big carnival, so we better get started right away...
Administrative StuffLet's start with the Dean and the very funny
elephant in the room. I only recently discovered Dean's blog and it is now a daily read for me. He brings in a perspective that few of us understand and appreciate. Definitely check out this post:
'Results Oriented' and Constructive Failure.
Profgrrrrl of
Playing School, Irreverently blogged her
3rd Year Review process.
Career MovesPost-PhD Blues is wondering if breaking new ground and creating a new niche hurts one's job prospects:
Some new ideas.
Once
ABDmom ceases to be ABD, what is she going to do with her blog?
The Future.
New Kid On The Hallway has some
Employment ideas. Kid also has good advice on
Junior faculty workloads and on getting poor student evaluations:
Grrr. Argh..
Teaching strategies and methods From
the reflective teacher, an excellent exercise:
Metaphors are Tools: A Lesson for TeachersI really can't make them do jumping jacks . . ., says
Ancrene Wiseass, wondering how to make the class more interesting to students. Well, there is a way:
In which being a shameless hussy in the classroom pays off. But, not everything is gloomy:
Why I do what I do: a parable. Or perhaps it is:
The importance of being absent. Finally, we all understand:
Fear and Loathing in Grading.
Academic Coach sent this post -
Musical Engagements - and it gave me some great ideas next time I teach.
Amy of
midgebop.blog-city is using student blogs in teaching and has collected their initial posts into
ENG122/HUM122 Introductions Carnival. Ah, all the frustrations and second-guessing that goes into teaching! See, for instance,
Poor Planner Me--textbook reality and
Contract grading experiment. Or
Setting the Bar too High.
Hugo Schweizer has pretty unique things to worry about when he teaches. A very thoughtful and thought-provoking post:
A long bit on teaching the body as a male professor.
I don't know what happened in class, but it appears that
Hiram had a bad day when he wrote this:
We Interrupt this Blog for a Short Exercise in Self-Flagellation. He is teaching some hard classes:
The Day Before. He also asks some questions about proper relationship between
Professors and Students and writes about the utility of
letters of recommendation and
student evaluations.
jill/txt is
quizzing students and
teaching internet invention to 100 undergrads.
Lots of stuff from
Fumbling Towards Geekdom. First, two interesting posts on academic blogging:
Blogging as the academic sand-pit and
Pseudo-pseudonymanonymity and academic etiquette. Then,
Some thoughts on exams and plagiarism. Finally, a never-ending saga:
The Tutor and the Beast. Part one of an exciting, semester-long adventure,
The Tutor and the Beast: Part Two,
The Tutor and the Beast: Part Three,
The Tutor and the Beast: Part Four and
The Tutor and the Beast. Part whatever-we've-got-up-to-now..
John of
Machina Memorialis is teaching a SF course:
First Class, Defining SF, and a Book on Books and is undergoing a
Mid-Dissertation Crisis.
As
Scrivener discovered,
adrenaline helps.
See Jane Compute wrote a
miniseries on blogging about teaching computer science, including
The intro courses,
The intro courses, part 2,
The mid-tier courses and
The upper-level electives. Also, an excellent post on
Technologically savvy students.
The Salt-Box is analysing
The problem with last semester and the semester's book club choice -
My freshman year.
Caveat: Venter had a stroke of inspiration and it turned out great:
Speed Dating Meets Academia.
Teaching ScienceJanet of
Adventures is Ethics and Science wrote about the talk she gives to her students at the beginning of the term about why she thinks plagiarism is evil:
Taking it Personally. Excellent discussion in the comments section. She also wrote about the way she moved from studying chemistry to becoming a philosopher in
Changing career paths and
Changing sides/forsaking science.
John Lynch of
Stranger Fruit also changed careers over time:
What a long strange trip .... He is teaching some really cool courses:
Musings on the life academic and
First real week of teaching.
Tara of
Aetiology asks about strategies for improving science education in
What do you think? and wonders if she should bring high-school students into her lab for some science training in
Lab coat idol.
Sandra Porter of
Discovering Biology in a Digital World is a great resource for biology teachers who want to get up-to-speed on the use of technology and Internet in teaching. She has assembled a list of the most important links in
Subjects.
Nelumbo of
Biology Educators cherishes college students in
Post-traumatic student stress, asks for ideas in
Teaching Microbes with Oral Reports and is just a very sweet blogger with lots of ideas for lab activities.
On my other blog,
The Magic School Bus I've been musing about
Teaching Biology To Adults.
PZ Myers of
Pharyngula teaches his audience in every post and attracts great commenters. Here, he dissects a bad proposal in
Cut-rate professors, education done cheap and praises his school in
I know this irritates my critics....
Politics of Higher EdOne of the most linked blog posts of all January was
Michael Berube's long essay on
Academic Freedom - a must read!
EdWonk comments on the new proposal to cut back on the student loan program and raise the interest rates for those who do get loans:
Hitting Parents Where It Hurts: Cutting Student Loans.
A number of people reacted to the news that standardized testing at college level is in the making. As expected, the responses were negative, with bewilderment. Here are Daniel of
A Concerned Scientist in
Standardized Testing in Higher Ed?!, Zandperl of
Modern Science, in
Higher Ed,
Bitch, PhD in
Testing, testing... and
Anthonares, in
Standardizing Higher Education.
That's all I could find. Frankly, I prefer the traditional method of e-mailing submissions to the host, or using one of the Universal Carnival Submission Forms, like
this one (thanks to the two people who did it this way - it made my job so much quicker and easier), but this worked OK in the end, I think. And reading all these wonderful posts made the job extremely pleasurable, so I am not complaining.
Update: After a Freudian slip (I hate Delicious almost as much as I detest the practice of Tagging - totally non-functional gizmos and gadgets that techno-geeks are enamored with and are not aware that most bloggers, by definition Internet-savvy, do not share their infatuation), I was notified that some posts could be found there. So, here they are and sorry for the delay:
From
In Favor of Thinking a post on
graduate education .
Community College Dean on
Section Triage.
From
Playing School, Irreverently some
Monday morning thoughts,
girl? (raised eyebrow),
And this is how it ends and
Little successes.
From
Just Tenured, a
Permission to Sigh, Please?From
A Ianqui in the Village, a question:
What ever happened to the enthusiasm for learning?One Bright Star (1B*) Reignited says:
oh, yeah... I do have a job that involves teaching, too.Reassigned Time wonders
Why Is It That "Short Weeks" Always Seem to Take Forever?. Also:
From Teaching to Brokeback Mountain. And
And This, My Friends, Is Why I Resist Incorporating Technology in My Classes. Also:
The Things I'm Not.
Joe,
Writing As Joe is happy when
Semester begins and
Revision.
La Lecturess wrote
An open letter to my colleague or colleagues.
Fear and Trembling (in Academe) on
Online Teaching is to the Holidays like Base Jumping is to (Fill in the Blank)Cheeky Prof:
And The Email Roll In As the Semester Begins.
The Salt-Box gave a
del.icio.us assignment.
Raining Cats and Dogma states
Why I Like to Teach Composition.
New Kid on the Hallway wrote:
I'd rather be soaking in a bubble bath right now.
Lisa of
The Paper ChaseMarx and the unpleasant professor.
From
The Little Professor:
The agony and the ecstasy; or, revising syllabi for the new semester.
Rudbeckia Hirta of
Learning Curves is
Settling In With My Honors Class.
A Bewildered Academic laments
When students pay for the teacher's mistake.
Pretty Hard, Dammit explains
What I Do Each Week.
In Saecula Saeculorum explains the ease of
Getting students to talk, for reals and how ir continues on:
I knew it!.
From
Scrivenings:
Group Work and Comparative Essays.
A Delicate Boy In the Hysterical Realm has a whole series:
Someday I'll Learn Why...,
There are Many Possibilities...,
The Circle of Life...,
You Want Some Fries with That... and
All You Do to Me is Talk, Talk....
Cbd:
Del.icio.us and teaching.
Ancarett's Abode is
Back in the swing.
m2h blogging writes:
Go Girls!From
Schenectady Synecdoche:
Of free speech and student materiality.
From
Collin vs. Blog:
Facebook drama at SU,
When Journalists Attack! (more on Facebook),
When Colleagues Attack! (Yet more...) and
Avast, ye windmill!.
From
Unit Structures :: Fred Stutzman:
Student expelled for sharing his sexual orientation in the Facebook and Xanga and
Adopting Social-Technical Communication Behavior.
Next edition of the
Teaching Carnival will be hosted by
The Salt-Box on March 15th. Make sure you remember to tag your posts or e-mail them to the next host before the deadline.
technorati tag: teaching-carnival
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
The big butt
From
David Sifry (via
Jeff Jarvis), a new term - David calls is the "magic middle" and Jeff calls it "the big butt" - used to describe the blogs positioned somewhere between the A-list "big head" and the myriads of small and new blogs making up the "long tail". David defines it as blogs that have between 20 and 1000 people linking to them. About 155,000 blogs fit in this territory. So, with about 400+ incoming links, I am proudly smack in the middle of the blogosphere's ass (yes, I know what word you are about to use to describe me, especially if you are a Bush-devoted Republican).
Jeff thinks that these middle-bloggers are often niche bloggers, which also means that many of those are authoraitative. In other words, those are blogs written by experts about topics of their expertise. He writes:
These middle tier blogs also define communities of interest in the blogosphere. Its easy to think of the blogosphere as a cacophony of voices spread out over a big long tail distribution. But Blog Finder and Explore help resolve these thousands of blogs into topical, relevant communities of interest that interlink, refer to one another and often wrestle with ideas, discuss them and move them along.
Definitely go and read David's report - there is a lot of good stuff. 'Explore' is a new feature on Technorati that I intend to try out. Of course, David is touting his own wares, but, you know what I am going to say: the best way to find good niche-blogs with expertise are
blog carnivals.
Last call for submissions for the Teaching Carnival
I will be posting the next
Teaching Carnival here some time tomorrow. For more information how to participate, see
here.
Happy Valentine's Day
(what did you expect from a scientist?)
A new carnival
The Carnival of English Language Teaching is already on its third edition.
Grand Rounds
Time for me to pass the torch. Maria of Intueri has posted the new edition of
Grand Rounds.
Science News
*
Race matters to 3-month-olds, study finds:
Early in life, many of us start to prefer faces of people from our own race to others, according to researchers.
*
Dark energy might not exist, scientists say:
Some theorists propose corrections to the law of gravity could explain effects usually attributed to a mysterious force.
*
Tomb discoveries stun:
Archaeologists report the largest ancient Greek tomb found, as well as the first tomb uncovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings since that of KingTut.
*
Predicting the next hit:
Why are some songs so much more popular than others? A study has found quality has a bit to do with it, but peer influence much more.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Carnival of the Green
14th Carnival of the Green is up on Groovy Green.
Orac has moved
Orac of
Respectful Insolence (http://oracknows.blogspot.com) has moved to ScienceBlogs today. The new URL is:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolenceRSS feed is: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/index.xml
Taxes
Yup, I
ranted about this before. Reducing taxes from 90% to 80% does not stimulate the economy - it removes the inhibition. Any further cuts do nothing, apart from allowing rich people to buy more yachts and racehorses. But half of the country dislikes the idea of paying taxes and cannot even fathom that the other half does not feel that way.
I have no problem with paying my taxes, even now when I am aware that my money is going to fund the Disaster in Iraq, the spying on US citizens, enforcement of NCLB, Dick Cheney's mobile ambulance, faith-based inititatives, Creationist thinktanks, salaries of criminals occupying the White House as well as their re-election campaigns, and host of other monstrosities.
I pay taxes cheerfully when I know that my money will go towards a sane and efficient defense, law-enforcement that atually makes us safe, investment into infrastructure, investment into scientific and technological research, towards education, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, efficient social services that help people when they are out of luck and help poor people get out of poverty and get on their own feet - you know, the stuff that government is supposed to be doing and does well.
Thus, the obligatory reading of the day:
Tax Cuts Raise Revenue COMPLETELY DEBUNKED by Hale Stewart
Teaching Biology To Adults
I wrote some ideas about this on
my other blog. Go take a look and comment.
Framing Explained
And nobody does it as well as Chris:
What Framing Analysis Is. That is your obligatory reading of the day.
Quotes: Science And Religion
It was on this day in 1533 that Galileo Galilei, then 70 years old, was confined to the residence of the Tuscan ambassador to Rome while the Inquisition inquired into his heresy that the earth orbits the sun. Although he was allowed to reside with the archbishop of Siena in June and return to his home in Florence in December, he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest for asserting a fact of nature. Here are some thoughts on the conflict between science and religion.
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955
No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy. - Lyman Beecher, 1775 - 1863
The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882
Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences. - Freeman John Dyson
The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science. But he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art-forms. - J. B. S. Haldane, 1892 - 1964
It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment. - Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642
From
Quotes Of The Day
Obligatory Reading of the Day
Do Bush followers have a political ideology?by Glenn Greenwald
Update: Pam has a good post with additional commentary on Glenn's essay.
Update 2: After an avalanche of responses from the blogosphere,
Glenn now has a follow-up.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
I Think I Am Safe...
If Cheney missed a bobwhite quail (
Colinus virignianus), he's never going to hit the smaller Japanese quail (
Coturnix japonica). Thus, Coturnix, Yours Truly, is probably safe....
A brief rest from politics
If you scroll down the page, or more, you will see there is nothing here about Alito, filibuster, DeLay, Abramoff, NSA spying on Americans, Iraq, Danish cartoons, West Virginia miners, Katrina, Brownie, Bush, Cheney shooting a man, WaPo war on bloggers, Dobson, Falwell, mid-term elections, Frist, Rice, misnamed War on Terror, spineless Democrats, crazy Conservatives, etc. I guess I am just saturated at the moment. About three months ago I started a long post about Lakoffian stuff and never finished it. I started a review of Mooney's book "Republican War on Science" and have not finished it (I will, one day, just not yet).
I need to rest from politics a little, at least as a blogger. I do read about all of this and follow the news. I even turned on the TV to watch the CNN special on the lies that resulted in the war in Iraq. I know I will come back to it. Once November gets closer, I know I will do something to support congressional and local candidates, I may donate money if I have any at the time, I will try to make myself useful before and on the day of the election, and I am likely to post something about it here. I am certainly not turning off and becoming apolitical and uninformed.
But I am tired of writing about it and debating politics online. I need to rest and write what I enjoy writing about right now - science, teaching, blogging...you know - normal stuff of life. I know that some thing or another will prompt me occasionally to write a political post, but it is not going to be a daily event. Stay tuned. An excuse to break this promise may appear tomorrow, one never knows.
Carnival of Cats
99th edition of the
Carnival of Cats is up on Watermark.
Tar Heel Tavern
The 51st edition of the
Tar Heel Tavern is up on Captivated By Mandie. It is beautiful (well, what do you expect from a photoblogger, after all!?).
Next Sunday, the First Anniversary edition of the Tavern will appear here on Science And Politics. I'd like to see it be very BIG. So, send me your entries by Saturday. I'll take anything, although I'd love to get posts that in one way or another can be described as TIME! Passage of time, anniversaries and birthdays, buying a new watch, perfect timing, something along those lines, if you can. If not, I'll figure out a way to fit it in anyway.
Also, we need new hosts, starting on March 7th. Let me know if you want to host. Check out the archives at the
Tavern homepage.
Link-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs - Part VII
Catching up on As though Os first:
Breast Cancer Researchers given Powerful New Tools and
Cell Senescence, Cancer, Longevity, Telomeres from
Al Fin.
Teaching Microbes with Oral Reports,
Activities with Plant Anatomy,
The bread that wouldn't mold - update,
Bringing life into the biology lab,
Buy a Hernia on ebay and
Fun with Lima Beans, all from
Biology Educators.
From
Complex Medium:
WHO and Gates tackle sleeping sickness.
Tracking food products with Internet on
Emerging Technology Trends.
Natural Selection, Sparrows, and a Stochastic God,
A Third Way and
Princeton President Defends Evolution on
Evolution List.
The start of something old and
The start of something old. More on memory are fictionalized musing on science, but orcs and ents of teh Middle Earth, all happening on
The Grove.
Modern Science blog:
NASA budget increases for stupid things and
Higher Ed.
Machines learn to assemble sensory stimuli by copying nature and
Autistic mice created? on
Multipolarity Memes.
Born This Day: Barnum Brown and
Seeing The Fossil Universe on
Paleoblog.
Science versus science or religion versus religion and
Confessions of a Darwinist from the premier anti-Creationist group blog -
Panda's Thumb.
Leah
Penn:
Examination of Ethics in Oregon State Forestry.
Aristotle: Materialist or Vitalist? by Warren Platts on another great group blog,
Philosophy of Biology.
Varying religious views of stem cell research,
Bush reduced U.S. to cell farm for foreign scientists and
Chimeras on
Pluripotentate.
Hwang Woo Suk on
Politics and Ethics of Science.
It's the decision-model... on
The Post-Normal Times - Perspectives on Environmental Science and Policy Decisions.
'Busy as a Parasitic Butterfly' and 'Uncertainty, Vagueness, Ambiguity' on
Premenopaws (sorry - cannot find permalinks - just scroll down).
I'm sure Ken Ham is sincere in his faith…,
A supplementary text for my human physiology course and
My Friday with Darwin are just three recent post on the most popular science blog out there -
Pharyngula.
Next time, Qs and Rs....
Previously in this series:
Link-Love: A little bit of science bloggingLink-Love: some more science bloggingLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part IIILink-love: more Alphabet Soup of science blogsLink-Love: science-blogs down the alphabet, Part VLink-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs
Are you teaching in college AND you are a blogger?
This is a call for submissions for the sixth edition of the
Teaching Carnival that I will be hosting here on February 15th, 2006. Unlike Carnival of Education which covers all aspects of teaching at all levels, this one is focused on Higher Ed.
As a lot of science bloggers read my blog and a certain proportion of them teach at the University level, I hope to strengthen the science section of the carnival next month. Hopefully some of my neighbors, the North Carolina bloggers, will see this post and contribute their posts, too. Also, posts about higher ed from students' perspective are welcome. English-language posts only, please.
There are a couple of different ways to submit your entries. The easiest, most direct way is to e-mail me the Permalink at:
Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.
You'll get a thank-you note and thus be sure that I have received it.
You can also try to submit via the submission form at
Blogcarnival.com, but I do not know who will receieve it and if it is guaranteed I will get it on time.
The best way to submit, the way favoured by the folks running this carnival, is to tag your posts with the teaching-carnival tag. If you do not know how to tag a post, you can go
here for an explanation and the exact code.
I will, starting about tomorrow and ending about two hours before posting the carnival, search the
del.icio.us tags,
Technorati tags and
Technorati search for posts written and tagged since the
last edition went up on January 15th, 2006.
Also, feel free to recommend other bloggers' posts to me to the above e-mail address. You can check the previous editions of the Teaching Carnival in the archives on the sidebar of the
carnival homepage.
I will move this post to the top every now and then as a reminder to all of you to write and submit a post dealing with college teaching!
technorati tag: teaching-carnival
On Lakoff
I have written
quite a lot of posts that are losely based on, or building upon, or critiquing the Conservative-Liberal model of political psychology by George Lakoff.
Author of this post:
How People Think, Why They Think, and If There is Anything to Think About, contacted me a couple of days ago and asked me for comment.
I have been swamped with Real Life these days, focusing whatever time I had for blogging on science, and not being really into Lakoff or really any political blogging too much these days. My response to that post would take a couple of days to write, mostly repetitions from my old posts, and I just cannot make myself do it.
It is an interesting and different perspective he puts forward, a critique of Lakoff from a different angle. Needless to say, I disagree with many points, but this is not a typical Wingnut rant nor a typical Progressive misunderstanding of framing - it is a thoughtfull and well-written post, so I encourage everyone to go there and debate politely in the comments section.
Carnivals
Carnival of the Balkans needs a host for February 20th.
From March 7th on, we need new hosts for
Tar Heel Tavern.
Carnival of Bad History needs a host for the next issue, to be posted around March 15th.
Let me know if you are interested in hosting one of these.
While we are on the topic of carnivals, next
Tangled Bank is this Wednesday on
Kete Were, so send your science-ralated entries there.
Carnival of the Liberals - call for submissions
A brief reminder that Carnival of the Liberals #6 is coming up on us fast. CotL#6 is being hosted by Kevin Andre Elliot over at
Slant Truth this week, Wednesday, Feb. 15th. Kevin needs all posts intended for CotL #6 to be in by 10:00PM EDT on Tuesday, Feb. 14th. Also, Kevin is challenging everyone to submit posts on some specific topics:
* Progressive politics? What do we mean?
* Homophobia and the Black (or any other minority) Community.
* Can art be political, and if so is it still art?It'd be great to see a lot of posts address these interesting, and timely topics but any great blog post on liberalism, or from a liberal perspective is welcome.
Happy Birthday, Chuck
Charles Darwin just turned 197 years old. Also, check out
Carl Buell's rendition.
Obligatory post of the day
Solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish by Benjamin Hellie, guest-blogging on Leiter Reports:
Looking at the data from 1992 to 2004, Shellenberger and Nordhaus found a country whose citizens are increasingly authoritarian while at the same time feeling evermore adrift, isolated, and nihilistic. They found a society at once more libertine and more puritanical than in the past, a society where solidarity among citizens was deteriorating, and, most worrisomely to them, a progressive clock that seemed to be unwinding backward on broad questions of social equity.
Read the whole thing...
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Blog Word Cloud
You don't need to buy the shirt, but you can generate your own blog's
word cloud. Here's mine - no real surprises here:
Also, no surprises for Circadiana:
Friday, February 10, 2006
Koufax Update
Most Humorous Blog category for Koufax Awards is now up on Wampum.
Send your loved one...
...a
Darwin Valentine card.
LGF
A great parody blog:
Little Green Fascists. They don't really need to do much but copy and paste what the real LGF blog writes - it is a parody of humanity in itself.
Friday Ark
Friday Ark #73 is up on Modulator.
Amazing Juggling Act
Check out
Chris Bliss.
Social Responsibility in Science and Technology
From an e-mail I got yesterday:
As you may already know, Student Pugwash’s mission is to promote social responsibility in science and technology. We prepare science, technology, and policy students to make social responsibility a guiding focus of their academic and professional endeavors. Please visit Student Pugwash USA for details.
We are launching a series of regional conferences this year. The first will be held in the Midwest region at Purdue University, March 31- April 1. It’s open to science students of all disciplines—including science and philosophy and policy students. The conference will feature Dr. Arden Bement, Director of the National Science Foundation and focus on the topic of scientific integrity in the pharmaceutical industry.
A more detailed agenda will be posted shortly at Purdue Student Pugwash. It would be wonderful if professors could forward this information on to interested students.
FYI, the other upcoming conferences this year will be held at Rockefeller University, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley, with the possibility of a conference in the North Carolina research triangle area as well. (We are considering North Carolina as a location for our national conference in 2007.)
Thursday, February 09, 2006
The victory of the snail mail
It is
the fastest! (I know it is all over the Internets, but I could not resist)
Animalcules are crawling!
The very first inaugural edition of
Animalcules, the carnival of all things microbial, is up on Aetiology.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
New Carnival!
The inaugural edition of
The Big Fat Carnival is up on Alas, A Blog and it is huge - about 50 entries, one better than the other. You HAVE to check it out.
Wednesday Cat Blogging: Biscuit and Miss Marbles
I never do anything the same way others do. If everyone posts cat pictures on Fridays, it is just sooooo 'me' to post some on Wednesday, so here they are. First the older cat, Biscuit, taking in science fiction by osmosis (is there a way to eliminate the "green eye effect"?):
And then the new kitten, Miss Marbles, engaging her supper in the Barbie House:
You can see how much she has grown in just a couuple of weeks
here.
Evolution of Polyphenic Development
The new
Science paper by Suzuki and Nijhout is a beautiful piece of work in evo-devo. You can read the associated
Science editorial, the paper itself if you subscribe to Science Magazine (
Text/
PDF), the official Duke University
press release, and commentaries on
Biology News Net,
LiveScience and
The Scientist (the latter one has some more interesting links).
The first blog I read that commented on the study was
Paleoblog. Later,
Evolution did it, too, mentioning their own pet term - "Baldwin Effect". Then, John Wilkins of
Evolving Thoughts mentioned it, invoking the term "canalization". All of those were short reports without too much explanation of the study.
I
tried to prompt PZ to write about it - it's his field after all - but I guess he was, at the time, still recovering from his
age-inappropriate activities on Friday night. So, I wanted to take a crack at it and write on this myself. Then I got bogged down in details and wrote something far too long, too complicated and too confusing for a blog post. Then I prepared the Grand Rounds. I was about to give up on the whole thing.
But today, PZ came through and explained the study beautifully in
this post which I strongly urge you to go and read.
Science News
*
T. rex "granddaddy" described as vicious little monster:
Fossils suggest Tyrannosaurus Rex's earliest known ancestor was a fierce hunter who wore a crown for the ladies, scientists say.
Carl Zimmer has an excellent write-up on this.
*
Lost World of wildlife found in jungle:
An expedition to an isolated Asian jungle revealed new species, giant flowers and exotic animals unafraid of humans, according to scientists.
Hedwig has the best summary.
*
For women, eating "good" fats found more important than eating less fat:
A popular theory, that cutting fat intake alone helps prevent cancer and heart disease, is in question, researchers suggest.
Carnival of Education
Carnival of Education is one year old today. Check out the anniversary edition.
Grand Rounds is good for your Sitemeter
1,147 visits over the duration of the day. And that is without an Instalanche (he does not do that any more - he has a little window on the sidebar for recent carnivals). Thank you for all who linked here - too many people to name everyone here.
945 on the second day. Nice!
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
I Am Not Funny
Another category in the Koufax Awards has been posted on Wampum:
Most Humorous Post. I have nothing there. I am just not funny.
But go there and read the others. I remember several of those posts from before, when they first came out, and will check out the rest over the next couple of days. Also, do not forget to keep checking out the nominees in other categories posted so far:
Blogs Deserving Wider Recognition,
Best New Blogs,
Best State And Local Blogs and
Best Post.
Writing in a foreign language is not easy. One can learn to write well. One can learn to do excellent technical and scientific writing. But it is hard to write with flourish (which may be good - simpler language has its benefits in clarity), and almost impossible to write satire.
Satire requires not just a good control of the language, but also an ear for the culture - something that is not easy to gain. Perhaps one needs to be born into and raised within a culture in order to be able to do effective humor and satire in that language.
Humor depends on coming very close to an invisible line between appropriate and inappropriate, yet never crossing it. I do not have the confidence to try. Either I won't come close enough, and the attempt at humor will fall flat, or I'll cross over the line and insult someone. I admire and envy bloggers who routinely write posts using the F-word three times per sentence yet NOT ever being insulting and vulgar. That's an art.
I have another thought, or is that a question... As you read the nominees for the Most Humorous Post, do you find them funnier if you are already familiar with the author? Is the humor-factor of a post by
Jesus General or
Fafblog or
Rude Pundit dependent on us knowing who they are and our familiarity with their entire output? They write humor and satire every day, each in their own style. If you've never been to their blogs before or never even heard of them, do you find their isolated posts funny?
That goes also for
other bloggers who may be
serious most of the time, though perhaps snarky, and have their own
characterisitc voices, so once in a while when they write something satirical we know what to expect and thus find it funny. How important is the context and the familiarity with the person?
So, do not expect great humor and satire from me - I am way to cautious. On the other hand, if you want a funny rant in Serbian....Jebo ti ja pas mater....
Carnival of Feminists
The 8th
Carnival of Feminists is up on Gendergeek.
New Stats by David Sifry
OK, so there are currently 27.2 million blogs
tracked by Technorati. I should be delirious with happiness: Science And Politics ranks 2,555th (though slipping slowly - it was in 1,900ds a couple of months ago) and Circadiana is 9,102th and slowly rising.
New Carnival!
This is exciting. Tara Smith is starting a
brand new blog carnival for posts that, in whichever way, deal with organisms that you need a microscope to see, the maligned, the unicellular, the Animalcules! Click on the link for more information.
Tar Heel Tavern - call for submissions
This weekend, the Tar Heel Tavern will be hosted by
Captivated By Mandie. The theme is Winter. Send your entries by Sunday morning to:
mandie [at] captivatedbymandie -dot- com.
Link-Love: Continuing with the Alphabet of Science Blogs
Before I move on with the alphabet onto the Ps, Qs and Rs, I need to catch up with the A-through-N blogs I missed so far.
Accidental Blogger:
Look out, they've got GERMS!Resource Scarcity and Asteroid Mining on
Anthonares.
Everything Scientific Vol. VII and
Happy hour: And how do we smell? on
Balancing LifeBartholomew Cubbins on RNA has good movies:
Bartholomew Cubbins on RNA Episode 6: Famous RNA Investigator Fun and
Bartholomew Cubbins on RNA Episode 7: What Not To Do During a Group Meeting.
A lone grave and the “coffin tree” and the
Tachinid fly on
Ben Cruachan Blog.
Amniotic Fluid Protein Profiling Identifies Infection and Pre-term Birth Risk and
Turmeric: Potential Cure for Cancer, Cystic Fibrosis and Alzheimer's Disease? are some of the recent posts on
The Biotech Weblog.
From
Chaotic Utopia:
Just what did that groundhog see yesterday? and
The Battle of the Skeptic and the Empath.
Circadian Shift is not really a science blog, but it has a scientific name.
Bush Budget Cuts MSHA and OSHA Staffing, reports
Confined Space.
Fluorescent proteins and the currency of Darwin on The
Dyticas Chronicles.
Eide Neurolearning Blog:
Teach with Me, Not at Me.
Miracle Planet and
The Human/Chimp Family on
Evolutionary Middleman.
This one is new to me. I am skeptical, of course, when someone proposes a "new theory of evolution", but what I see on the blog are mainly reports on the mainstream evolution papers, mostly evo-devo, and some accent on Baldwin Effect and related stuff, so it can be a useful resource:
Evolution - An Internal Evolutionary Mechanism?.
Expert Opinion on
The crayfish and the computer.
Moment Of Science is having the science-blogging community all abuzz with the
Metabolism of Evolution Information in the Blogosphere.
Ms. Frizzle is a science teacher. Try
When all you have to do is ask... and
Animals on the Underground.
Nice Shoes, Wanna Fock? is a brand new group blog by
five physics grad students.
Finding the Love of Your Life ( A Lesson in Probability) by
Ominidictum: Essays in Science.
You'll have to wait for Ps (I know, I know, Panda's Thumb and Pharyngula....) until tomorrow or later....
Grand Rounds
Welcome to the
Grand Rounds Vol. 2. No.20. This
carnival has certainly grown!
I decided to include all the entries that were submitted this week (I understand some hosts may prefer to make more of an editorial choice, which is fine). After all, I am a biologist, not a Doctor or a Nurse (though my wife is a MICU nurse and my personal hero), so I may not be the best arbiter on some of the topics. If you disagree with someone, blast them in their comments threads!
I am eager to get started and I hope you are, too, so, here is the carnival, organized into some (very) losely defined categories.
HumorI like to start a carnival with humor, to break the ice. So, we'll begin with Robin from the Internet Institute for the Easily Amused who exclaimed: Help, I've Been Shot... By a Nurse!Doc Shazam of Mr. Hassle's Long Underpants wrote a post that is the marriage of two of her favorite topics, Brain Imaging and the Pittsburgh Steelers: Ventriculus Quartus and the Steel Industry!From the The Daily Rhino, irreverent as usual, Medical Student Teaching #4.
Medicine in Action: Cool Cases, Nursing and Patient CareMilliner's Dream is a nurse in training. The other day, she had a very interesting patient. Read more in Diamonds (and cats) are a girl's best friend....How many bits and pieces we have to leave in a child at the end of a heart surgery? GeekNurse tells it in Pieces of Plastic.From Kim of Emergiblog, every day a surprise! This title is a little bit odd, but it's about her first experience with psych patients so it makes sense if you read it! Dorothy Hamill and Andy Gibb = One Theraputic Relationship.Dr Dork sent a patient tale that personally touched him, from when he worked in palliative medicine: Palliating Ron. Part I and Palliating Ron. Part II.Doctor provides an analysis of the types of injury likely suffered by reporter Bob Woodruff in Bob Woodruff: A Look at the Injuries, with a follow-up in Woodruff and Vogt: an Update.From Doctor Hébert's Medical Gumbo a lovely post: Good Moon Rising is about practicing medicine and the nocturnal life, about how his late working hours are now affecting his life.Doc Around the Clock sent a post about his experience in treating two cancer patients, each with similar diagnoses, but with whom he had two completely different interactions: Tale of 2 Patients.
Teaching, Learning, and Educating the PublicTara Smith of Aetiology is enjoying her new digs on Seed Magazine's ScienceBlogs. She looks at the reception, in the USA, of the possibility of Quarantine in case of an avian flu outbreak.From Orac of Respectful Insolence, one of his last submissions from the Blogspot domain before his move to the Seed Magazine's new stable of ScienceBlogs. As usual, Orac debunks medical quackery and pseudoscience in two posts: Ineffective alternative medicine is not always harmless and Coretta Scott King: A victim of alternative medicine?Barbados Butterfly is an Australian surgical registrar (and the host of the previous edition of Grand Rounds). Here, Barb launches into song to educate her interns on the appropriate time to Call a Code.Today is NHS Blog Doctor's birthday. His post, Sex education: don't wait for it, attracted a lot of comments which went from medical confidentiality, to children’s rights and somehow got onto ID and pornography.Clinical Cases and Images - Blog asks Do We Need a Free Medical Encyclopedia? What do you think?From HealthyConcerns, two posts. The first one is more technical, a comparison of the same health-related search across three search engines, Google and two health-specific search tools: An alternative to WebMD: HealthLine. The second is a story about a friend who is frustrated by her ill friend's reliance on "alternative" approaches to treat her cancer. Even though she has some alternative theories on illness herself: Healthy Story: 'give me healing energy and drive me to the doctor'.
Science and Research: What's New In Medicine?From DiseaseProof an interesting study on Reversing Heart Disease with a Nutrient Dense Diet.There was quite a lot of commentary around the blogs concerning the geography and genetics of ear wax. But The Blog That Ate Manhattan remembered something from the past and did some digging through the literature, discovering the potential connection between ear wax and breast cancer risk in Gene For Ear Wax.From A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure two posts: I Have Trouble Remembering Which End to Use...... and Goodbye to the Finger Wave...On my other blog, Circadiana I gave a little primer on the Seasonal Affective Disorder - The Basics.From the BioTech Weblog, something close to my heart: Sleep Regulator Melatonin Lowers Blood Pressure.Dr.Charles lets us into a secret about Propranolol. More people should know about this since it has the power to affect their lives for the better.From Sumer's Radiology Site comes MRI- A New Test of truth telling and deception. Is polygraph the thing of the past?Dr Emer of Parallel Universes says that getting angry has its price. Don't Be Angry! is a commentary on the new study that shows a raised risk of injury when people are extremely angry. Also, 'Wowowee' Tragedy: Reactions, Causes, and Why? summarizes reactions, comments, and possible reasons why a stampede that killed 73 people happened early Saturday morning in the Philippines.From the Kidney Notes, two entries: The Strange Story of the Drug Aprotinin (Trasylol): from 'This Drug is Safe, Why Do We Need to Study This Further?' to 'This Drug Kills People' and Efficacy and Safety of Benazepril for Advanced Chronic Renal Insufficiency.Now, this from Interested-Participant is really strange: Sense of Smell Linked to Body Position. A research team at McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute, led by post-doctoral researcher Johan Lundstrom, has found that a person's sense of smell is more acute when sitting or standing compared to when he/she is reclining. But...why?Two recent studies challenge the fear of interference from cell phones on sensitive medical equipment. On The Wards takes a look: Are Mobile Phones Safe Around Medical Equipment?In Depression Treatments and Sexual Dysfunction, Dr. William Hapworth of the Anxiety, Addiction and Depression Treatments blog looks at sexual dysfunction and the difficulties that it can pose in the treatment of depression.The Healthcare System: Business, Administration and PoliticsFrom Odd Time Signatures a personal look at Insurance: Caremark: Our New Doctor.The Healthcare IT Guy is concerned with security, especially concerning patient data. Two cases of stolen data occured recently, and the IT Guy covered them, as well as some common-sense security advice, in How to manage tape backups in health IT shops and How we carry $10,000 cash versus patient data backup tapes worth much, much more.From the Diabetes Mine blog, on the fuzzy state of diabetes statistics in the US: Counfounded Statistics and on "patient reaction" to the approval of inhaled insulin: Inhaled Insulin Approved by the FDA: Speaking for the OC?From Hospital Impact, two posts: Our Healthcare System and Ford vs. Toyota is about how our healthcare system is making Toyota more competitive than Ford. The second post, So, what do you do? 'I'm in healthcare' asks: "how do we explain the problems of healthcare in 30 seconds at a cocktail party?"From Marcus of Fixin' Healthcare (my fellow North Carolinian) comes The Lifestyle Chronicles - Balance and Stability, somewhat of a summary of the health care system in the USA, speaks to the current situation and outlines a course of action with orientation to the local community. The so-called "donut hole" in Medicare Part D is not just a problem, it's a "unique" problem. InsureBlog explores how and why in Speaking of Donut Holes .Stuart of Medviews gives his own annual speech: State of Health.Is it the The End of Primary Care?, asks the California Medicine Man.Is GruntDoc Grinding to a Halt? No, but the US HealthCare system may be. Very long and interesting comment thread to dig through....Over on The Health Care Blog Matthew Holt wonders about Wellpoint: Too much fawning over Len Schaeffer?.David E. Williams of the Health business blog wrote Excuse me while I second guess you, Doc.The Cheerful Oncologist's latest, Controversial Cancer Countermeasures Cost Considerably! (but check the permalink for the alternative title) is about Canada's difficulties in deciding whether or not to pay for expensive new anti-cancer targeted therapy agents.Retail Clinics: How Can Primary Care Docs Compete? is a post from The Medical Blog Network. It should be read in the context of the newsletter with all the contributors of the MBN: Weekly Digest: Issue #2.From Niels Olson of The Haversian Canal, comes Rally For Charity Hospital. There will be a rally to save Charity Hospital in New Orleans on 25 March in front of the hospital. The citizens of New Orleans, the doctors, staff, and all those who are there helping to rebuild, desparately need the state and federal governments to stop bickering and open the doors of the region's trauma center, which has been closed since Katrina.Believe it or not - that's it! I think - the more the merrier. I hope that there is something here for everyone.
Next week,
Grand Rounds will be hosted by
Intueri so send your entries to
maria at intueri dot org by next Monday.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Science And Politics profiled on Medscape and a call for submissions for Grand Rounds
There is a really nice interview with Yours Truly on Medscape (subscription is free):
Serbian Immigrant Ponders Links Between Politics and Science.
It is the way the hosts of Grand Rounds are introduced to the broader medical online community. Which reminds me - send the entries to me by February 6th at 8pm EST at:
Coturnix1 AT aol DOT com.
Obligatory Readings of the Day
Amanda and
Sebastian Holsclaw. Deeeeeeep thoughts.
Are you SAD?
Earlier today (actually, it is already yesterday) I posted a very basic explanation of the
Seasonal Affective Disorder (aka "Winter Blues") over on Circadiana, so if you are interested, go check it out.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Nice!
Hey, this blog just got its 120,000th visitor. From Australia. Welcome.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
I know I am a couple of days late, but Skeptico is
celebrating the first blogiversary with a wonderful list of responses to the old question "Why did the chicken cross the road?". Instead of the standard list of Einstein, Freud, Plato, Colonel Saunders etc., Skeptico assembled a list of well-known quacks, pseudoscientists, IDiots and then, in the end, the skeptical bloggers. He REALLY nailed Orac! Very funny. Go say Hi to Skeptico.
And then I thought, why not try some of the recent political theorists. Feel free to add more in the comments.
Thomas Frank:Why did the chicken cross the road in the middle of Topeka when it is against its economic interests? What's wrong with Kansas chickens?
Stephen Ducat:The chicken crossed the road due to its fear of appearing feminine in front of his male friends. He is much more likely to overcome the fear of crossing roads than to overcome the fear of having his (likewise femiphobic) buddies see that he is afraid of Hillary Clinton as a personification of Vagina Dentata.
George Lakoff:"Chicken crossing the road" is a slogan that came out of Frank Luntz framing factory in the 1990s. Democrats are not going to win any elections as long as they believe that Truth will set you Free. It does not matter that it is true that chicken never crossed the road. What matters is that, through years of repetition, every mention of chickens, crossings and roads, automatically elicits conservative frames. The phrase appeals to the conservative moral core. Every time a liberal goe son TV and states that "Chicken Did Not Cross the Road", the conservative frame is strengthened. When Nixon siad "I am not a crook" what did everyone listening think of? Crooks, of course. Just negating a frame does not counter it. It reinforces it. Liberals have to come up with their own ways of saying the truth that the chicken did not cross the road, ways that do not automatically invoke the conservative frames. How about, for instance: "America is strong only if all poultry remains on the same side of the street"?
Michael Parenti:Chicken crossed the road because it is Superpatriotic. A real patriot does not need to cross the road. A real patriot defends his country by remaining on the right side of the road.
Anyone dare do Chomsky?
Carnival of the Godless
New
Carnival of the Godless is up on Superlicious.
Tar Heel Tavern
The new edition of
Tar Heel Tavern is up on Ogre's place.
Made insane by the behavior of Blogger over the past three days, I forgot to send my own entry. Ah, well...the Tavern is just as good without my contribution, so head over there and enjoy the best of NC blogging.
Carnivalesque
The Early Modern edition of
Carnivalesque is up on Pilgrim/Heretic.
Blogger Ate My Visitors
Blogger/Blogspot has been very erratic over the last three days or so, going offline for several hours at a time with no warning. I managed to post several posts without losing them (some people lost theirs, I hear) but nobody could read them for hours.
Also, as a result, my daily stats are almost halved. On the last three days, I had 319, 268 and 172 visits (according to Sitemeter), despite quite a lot of posting, commenting, having posts on carnivals, etc. Compare that to the previous three days when there were no outages: 370, 404 and 391.
posted by coturnix @ 12:42 PM |
permalink | (5 comments) |
Do you remember the monstrosity that is Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, a blatant Republican propaganda disguised as a children's book? I have linked to some good reviews here and here.
Gingerivers is keeping time and meter in her poem: Jo Bray.
Marcus of Fixin' Healthcare: The Lifestyle Chronicles - Best Friend. This post is about the contribution of dogs to healthy lifestyle by getting people more active physically. How does this relate to time? Well, people with dogs spend almost twice as much time walking than people without dogs. You'll get the minutes when you click on the link.
Cicero of Nothing Could Be Finer writes that Woman Claims Police Action Excessive, but There's More to the Story.
Laurie of Slowly She Turned has a sense of urgency: No NAIS!
Erin of Poetic Acceptance is trying to deal with postponment. What a difference a day makes.
Mandie of Captivated By Mandie knows it is the right time of year to tend to her plot.
Billy is editing a friend's memoir - a life time of memories: SWEETFEED
Sara of Clothed [in joy] lists things she loves, some timeless, some right in the moment.
Mel writes, in her Kitchen, about Death and the past and meatloaf. Made me cry.
Anton of Mistersugar knows that minor delays pale in comparison to major disasters in history.
Some things happen again and again, notes Justin from The View From the Cheap Seats in The pew and the ballot box - A Bad Idea Gets New Life.
Some things grow fast! Just ask Russ of Russlings: Brave Little Giraffe.
Real Paul Jones has started a new blog. New beginnings.
Stonehendge was supposed to be an ancient calendar of some sort.. Ask Melinama of Pratie Place what is Stonefridge for.
Ron Hudson takes us on a trip down the memory lane, all the way back to the Big Hair Days.
Lenslinger used to be an Early Bird. Not always getting the worm, though....
Anonymoses is not sure if he has detected someone's very slow aging process...
Jude of Iddybud deconstructs David Brooks. That did not take very much time at all.
Dirty Greek found another living anachronism.
My other blog is devoted to time in the biological realm, for instance how it changes with puberty.
And finally, a post by me, how fast our kids grow.
We cannot finish this carnival without addressing the concept of being late. Here's an example from Scrutiny Hooligans.
Made on Simpsomaker (from Just a Bump in the Beltway via Pharyngula). Tips for saving teh image from commenters on PZ's blog: If you're on a Windows machine, try hitting "alt+prt scr" to save the window image to the clipboard (that is what I did). Then go to your favorite graphic editor (MS Paint if you can't think of anything else) and paste (ctrl+v (that is what I did)). Use the Grab utility in Mac OS X.
and Mallard Ducks.
Black Grouse
Turkey
Chukar Partridge
Gambel's Quail
Scaled Quail
Potatoe Quail (also a Vice President)
Here are some young ones in a rearing pen.
Waiting to be released to be hunted by their cousins, the chicken-hawks:
Japanese Quail
Common Quail:
