Dipity
Tomorrow, the NCSE will release a response to Ray Comfort's tricked-out version of Darwin's Origin of Species. I got a sneak preview of the web site and if you are good, I can let you see it too. ...
Though the Sun is gone, I have a light. -Kurt Cobain Last time we visited dark energy, we discussed its initial discovery. This came about from the fact that supernovae observed with a certain re...
Check out the Popular Culture Translator. Alien Cow Abductions ... it's a real problem. Click here to find out more. Finally, all the important philosophical quotes you will ever need in one plac...
I forgot, but it was four days ago. Read the comments on this post...
Louis Menand has a must-read article on what's wrong with graduate education in the Harvard Magazine:Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many p...
The Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago revoked a speaking invitation to Sunsara Taylor, which led to much drama. I've already posted Taylor's version of events; now the society has sent me theirs,...
Shulinab Nursery School is located in a small village of 500 people. The school can't get enough water from rainwater, so they need to set up a system that will let them get water pumped from a nea...
In the intro to his self-published (on Lulu.com) collection of blog posts, The Wreck of the Henry Clay, New Yorker contributor Caleb Crain sums up nicely the anxieties shared by at least one other...
Zombies are attacking Detroit! This is why all of the brains are disappearing out of the city! Check out the picture here's the undeniable evidence:Not only are the Zombies eating Detroit's brain...
tags: birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz[Mystery bird] photographed at Bob Road, Bolivar Peninsula, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]Image: Joseph Kennedy, 4 August 2009 [larger...
And the current issue is HERE. Read the comments on this post...
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are certainly aware that PLoS has started making article-level metrics available for all articles.Today, we added one of the most important sets of suc...
The Guardian has a really appalling article about a group of Islamist hardliners in Iraq targeting and killing gays in that country.Sitting on the floor, wearing traditional Islamic clothes and hol...
Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement and we will make the goal. - Jerome P. Fleishman Read the comm...
quality? popularity? utility? I'm pretty sure I've blogged about MESUR (a research project that studied how usage statistics - as we call them in the industry - can be a metric like citations are)....
Pity poor Peter Duesberg.Back in the 1980s, he was on the top of the world, scientifically speaking. A brilliant virologist with an impressive record of accomplishment, publication, and funding, he...
Read the comments on this post...
In the current debate over health care, the Right is pissing me off. They are whining about a "government takeover" that will lead to rationing and death panels, but also about runaway costs. Gue...
Influenza kills somewhere around 36,000 Americans every year (and perhaps twice that number, depending on the estimate). The novel A H1N1 ("swine") flu circulating this year has found a world pop...
The move is complete (finally) ... so maybe I can settle down a bit, right? Right? The world's deadliest volcano?Anyway, a few things I stumbled across this week: Forbes Traveler.com has a list bol...
This is a very fun video to watch for so many reasons ... Read the comments on this post...
Judging by the comments, it would appear that I wasn't as clear in my last post as I should have been. I apologize. Let me try again. Here's what PZ wrote: I think I'd have a few questions for ...
Oh. My. God.We played Sedalia all the time in high school. They were in our conference our district or whatever. I remember them being skankie, but not THIS skankie.Apparently, this years band th...
Fellow Blogger Pat on Fairer Science has a tribute. And, for some reason, so does MIT, the school. Read the comments on this post...
In the contentious health care reform debate that has raged on lo these many months, one of the cries of protest we've heard has centered around how we might be infringing upon the rights of young,...
PZ called my attention to the fact that former US Army 2nd Lieutenant William Calley has, for the first time, publicly apologized for his conduct at My Lai. Something that Paul wrote got me thinki...
Mirror neurons are a classic illustration of a scientific idea that's so elegant and intriguing our theories get ahead of the facts. They're an anatomical quirk rumored to solve so many different c...
I've struggled with being introverted all of my life. I am not exactly shy (although I tend to be in many circumstances), but I am reserved. Many people find this intimidating, and I have been told...
One of the frustrating things about health insurance reform is that those opposing meaningful reform are completely beholden to insurance companies. Well, there is something you can do: reward th...
If you pay attention to environmental matters in North Carolina, you already know this, but I'm still catching up on a month's neglect:The NC Senate voted 42-1 earlier this month to ban most wind t...
As a "prominent" (as hard as I find it that anyone would apply the word to me) blogger about the anti-vaccine movement, somehow I ended up on the Every Child By Two mailing list. ECBT, as you may r...
I am a fan of Oliver Sacks, and will read just about anything he has written - though, interestingly enough, I find myself so far unable to make my way through Migraine. Perhaps this has something...
on Quiche Moraine. Read the comments on this post...
I'll sleep when I'm dead. - Warren Zevon Read the comments on this post...
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a blog carnival tha...
A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.More Read the comments on...
Festival of The Trees: Edition #38 is up on Trees, Plants and more Read the comments on this post...
By way of Universal Hub, I came across this video of Boston in the 1920s. Not only is neat to see a lot of the same buildings, but I find it really interesting that Boston is described as conserva...
Jud Süß is a 1940 Nazi anti-Semetic propaganda film that was widely loved in much of Europe, especially Germany (and also vilified and banned in various places). The production and showing of this...
The Boneyard is back! The latest edition is up at The Dragon's TalesGrand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 44 are up on Doc Gurley
Did Past Climate Changes Promote Speciation in the Amazon? Any time you've got a whopping big river like the Amazon (or a mountain chain like the Andes, or an ocean, or whatever), you've gotta fig...
One of the assumptions in the study of circadian organization is that, at the level of molecules and cells, all vertebrate (and perhaps all animal) clocks work in roughly the same way. The diversi...
Lots of FUD about climate models get thrown around in the Climate Wars, but what is it they are really doing anyway?The contrarians would have us believe they just take in a bunch of contrived para...
David Weigel has an amusing post at the Washington Independent about Orly Taitz, the chief lawyer for the Obama birthers, and her penchant for misstating the truth. Taitz keeps coming up with reaso...
Jonathan Adler writes about yet another betrayed promise of transparency from the Obama administration:A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration officially abandoned the President's "Sunlight befor...
Eric Jayne has put together a list of his top 30 atheist songs. It seems like it ought to be longer — to my mind, if it isn't praising Jesus or any other supernatural entity, it's an atheist song…w...
I have to warn you before you begin, I have no idea exactly where this is going. I haven't outlined this post like I normally do in advance to be sure that it delivers maximal hilarity. Mostly I ...
The naming of new amphibian species is a fairly routine thing. This doesn't mean that - despite the global amphibian crisis - amphibians are actually ok and that we can stop worrying; it means that...
At his lounge, the Lab Lemming poses an excellent hypothetical question about manuscript review: Suppose you are reviewing a paper. Also assume, that like most papers these days, that it has multip...
Earlier, I blogged about the seriously flawed Telegraph article about rape. Now Carl Zimmer has discovered that the newspaper has yanked the article from its site. No explanation, no apology - it's...
Sure, you're jealous that I won a prize off of all your back-breaking mouse clicking. So here's your chance to win $100 for just clicking a few keys in the right order. It's a creative writing cont...
Chilingar has republished his paper that shows that if you assume CO2 is not a greenhouse gas then it doesn't warm the planetin Enviromental Geology. This paper is so bad that S Fred Singer has res...
Nothing is typical. As I'm sitting here in the lobby of the hotel noticing that far fewer than half of the people waking back and forth in this busy hotel are wearing unusual science fiction or fa...
There has been much speculation as to why Sarah Palin announced her sudden decision to withdraw as Governor of Alaska Friday. Nate Silver at 538.com speculates:There seem to be three* basic theori...
Just wondering how the conspiracy theories about the climatological-industrial complex handle this: Funding cut for UK climate research?Hadley's climate research was not alarmist enough? Read the c...
previously reviewedIt utterly shocks me every time I make a reference to plastic alligators, Macy's bags with poisonous snakes in them, a guy named Skink or my favorite Bass Lure .... the Double Wh...
One of my favorite blogs is PostSecret. I like reading all of the anonymous little secrets people mail in because, secretly, I'm just a little creepy that way. I thought I would disclose my own l...
All the day long whether rain or shine she's a part of the assembly line she's making history working for victory Rosie the Riveter! One of the most iconic images, spawned by this song: is that o...
For those of you who may have been wondering where I've been, these past few weeks have seen me grading final projects, writing a chapter on analyzing Next Gen DNA sequencing data for the Current P...
I have been rather violently ill these past few days due to, I assume, food poisoning. Today, I am shaking and weak but that horrific headache and my desire to cling to the porcelain throne are gon...
tags: book review, Falconer on the Edge, A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West, falconry, hawking, Rachel Dickinson Like most married people, Rachel Dickinson thought s...
Afarensis and PZ note that the Discovery Institute is trying to hide Youtube videos criticizing their pet dachshund, Casey Luskin. Luskin has apparently been hitting his own product, a danger in ...
In case you missed it, the Doyenne has an interesting observation up which tends to contradict my usual assumption (and warning) about pseud blogging. I hold it to be a self-evident truth that if s...
I don't even know how to write about this. I drives me toward silence, which is the wrong direction. Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection says it better than I ever could. She reaches out with...
Very NSFW. Not as bad as Eminem vs. Triumph. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Bookgasm is a great site that reviews a lot of fun reading in all kinds of genres. As the name indicates, they don't necessarily take themselves too seriously either.About a month ago they had a p...
Another cool, dewy morning today as I went out to pick gastropods. The wet grass brushing against my bare legs got at least some of that moisture from the slugs stretched along the blades.Tomorrow...
California, a Broke State, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders: Direct democracy has once again upended California -- enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constit...
why are The Jonas Brothers trying to become The Monkees of this decadeand how come I know this? Read the comments on this post...
A nice read for the weekend: Michael Nielsen on Doing science in the open in Physics World. Read the comments on this post...
I feel I'd be neglecting my duties to those few readers of mine who don't read enough other sources if I didn't at least mention Andy Revkin's piece in today's New York Times. An anonymous lawyer s...
Late yesterday we summarized a CDC media briefing about the developing investigation of cases of influenza in California and Texas with a previously unknown flu virus with genetic components from p...
The physicist Stephen Hawking has been hospitalized, a serious business for a 67 year old man with ALS. We should all hope for the best, but don't pray — we shall trust in modern medicine and scien...
A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis. - Ralph W. Sockman Read the comments on this post...
You've never heard "in real time" screamed with so much passion. Not just one, but two big-haired metal-band bio-rock videos after the fold. . . Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments o...
Let's say you've got one of these, and you're dusting off your computer:(img source)As you spray, you'll notice the can getting cold. You've probably noticed this in similar contexts: propane tank...
Well, this was a busy week for sure (and not just yesterday's telecom outage that affected PLoS all day!). There was cleaning, and shopping, and cooking, and gathering/borrowing extra tables, chair...
Yes, I know that pointing out Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy is not just shooting fish in a barrel, it's shooting fish in the frozen food section at Walmart. But Jon Stewart does a masterful job of poin...
I hate blogs that force you to jump through hoops to post comments, especially when those hoops don't work. So I could mail Gareth to complain about my inability to comment on "The inner mounting f...
Ever since Erin and Hig walked through the village near our summer cabin in British Columbia, I've been reading their blog about walking from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands. Once they made it to ...
…and suddenly people everywhere are sending you images from their snail and slug porn collections. You are all just plain weird. Read the comments on this post...
...it must be Spring in the Northern Hemisphere (7:44 am EDT) Read the comments on this post...
Can some one send me the following two articles?Hippopotamus and whale phylogeny Nature 458, E1-E4 (19 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07776 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/abs/natu...
The big risk in practicing science is that you may not like the answer it provides. The previous administration, when faced with results it didn't like, decided to censor the results. I don't see h...
The NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket was announced yesterday, which has kicked off the usual round of people "predicting" the outcomes based on totally silly criteria like the Academic Prog...
Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. - Rabindranath Tagore, 1861 - 1941 Read the comments on this post...
From SCONC:Tuesday, March 246:30-8:30 pmScience Cafe, Raleigh: Gene-Environment InteractionsEPA statistician and geneticist David Reif discusses the interplay between our genes and the environment....
The much-promoted science blogging anthology is now complete, and available in paper or electronic format from Lulu. If you're dying to have dead-tree copies of the best science blog posts of last ...
Asks Nachiket Vartak:Twitter doesn't need an introduction. The microblogging service is widely popular, and most Twitter users swear by its wonderful utility. It is a "Social Commons", as one enthu...
Pros and cons of your audience at a conference following you live on microblogging services:How to Present While People are Twittering Project Management helped by MicroBloggingConference technolog...
When I'm writing a post for Cognitive Daily (or doing almost any kind of writing, for that matter), I try to keep outside distractions to an absolute minimum. I even have an application on my compu...
London (and much of the U.S.) is currently obsessed with Jade Goody, who is dying of stage 4 cervical cancer at the age of 27 in a very public way: On television. One thing I find amazing is that, ...
In the wake of the latest developments in the George Will scandal, I sent him this:Dear Mr. Hiatt, [Introductory Comments]...I believe what I've called the "Republican War on Science" continues, an...
Totally stolen from Decrepit Old Fool Read the comments on this post...
Call for Manuscripts: Special issue of Engineering Studies: Journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies on "Engineering and Social Justice"Editors, Engineering Studies: Gary Downe...
Perhaps you'll appreciate this little ditty for Roy Zimmerman and family. Read the comments on this post...
My oldest daughter's favorite sweatshirt is one from the Seattle Children's Theatre Drama School, with the motto, "What's your motivation?" I was reminded of motivation the other day, as I talked a...
The latest news from those militant atheists is that Michael Newdow, and many others, are suing to block the religious element of the presidential swearing-in ceremony. And guess who will be interv...
So, if you go on the teevee machine and tell people that investment banks should be allowed to pay out dividends, and you're simply an economics professor, we should probably take the claim at face...
Visitors to a tourist compound (hey, that's what the BBC article calls it) in Galilee have the option of purchasing fresh donkey shit encased in what looks like Lucite, with the casing featuring so...
This semester, I co-taught a course on the history and philosophy of engineering education for graduate students. One of the students' final projects was to create an alternative vision of enginee...
One of the conclusions that came out of the Lusi debate at AAPG was that poor choice of drilling location was at least as big a factor in the disaster than anything that was (or wasn't done) during...
A recent survey of Asian elephants in European zoos showed that their lifespan is much, much shorter than for elephants in the wild. Ed and Brian go into details of this survey.The survey does not...
Technorati Tags: ddftw, bozos, markcc-screwups So, as I said in the edit to my previous post about the wind-driven cart, I seriously blew it. The folks who pointed out the similarity of the cart t...
The weekly baby pictures have been getting a little monotonous, so Kate graciously agreed to help out with this week's shot. Here, SteelyKid is showing off her ability to "stand," like a big girl:(...
You know the Iggy & Stooges track "Penetration"? The one where Iggy sounds like he might be the penetratee rather than the penetrator? Now, I want you to imagine me singing that song, only with the...
A number of the Science Bloggers are away at the Society for Neuroscience meeting this week. This has substantially narrowed the opportunity for Dr. Isis to engage in a good ole blog scrap with one...
Here's some characteristically excellent photography by my friend Lars of Arkland. He's recently moved to Visby on Gotland, a big old limestone slab in the Baltic Sea, where he's the Hauptnetzmeis...
Dinochick says that one of our own is up for a blogging scholarship: Brian Switek of Laelaps. All you need to do to pick a winner is … vote in an online poll. Ironic, I know. Read the comments on t...
Here is the fifth interview in the series on Miss Baker's Biology blog - Stephen's interview with Brian Switek.Previously in this series:ScienceOnline09 - an interview with...me! ScienceOnline09 - ...
This little (19-second) gem is from Calculated Risk (the other video there, Greenspan and The Simpsons, is good too): That says it all. It is the short version. The longer armchair version is...
5 Presidential Elections Even Dumber Than This One (Somehow) | Cracked.com Hard as it may be to believe... (tags: politics history comedy US silly i...
tags: Autumn in the Palouse, landscape, nature, photography, Image of the DayAutumn in the Palouse.[Eastern Washington State, USA]Image: Joe Fuhrman, 2008 [larger view]. The Palouse is where I gr...
As part of my intermittent series of posts highlighting particular individual projects, here's a request for basic scientific equipment for a school in Manhattan: You will make it possible for my ...
I got this email during the wee hours and thought I'd share it with you (with my editorial rewrites); Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Wait till you hear about the commissioner in Cobb County, Georgia who hired a voodoo priestess to give her opponent cancer. Best of all, she wrote her bad checks to do it:Cobb County Commissioner A...
Remember my friend Moreena, and her kids Anni and Frankie?It's Moreena's birthday.And Anni is getting a new liver today. As she put it, Please please please keep her safe. Please please please sen...
tags: Times Square, 42nd street, Losing My Marbles, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Losing my Marbles (2003). Artist: Lisa Dinhofer.Losing my Marbles, image 3, detail 1. Glass mosa...
See here. Found on GearCrave:GearCrave says:If you are anything like me, you do not find anything as annoying as being jolted awake by a high-pitch electronic sound in the morning. Today, we bring ...
Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 - - -Part 2 with Gregg Mitman, discussing his book Breathing Space, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here. Read the rest of this pos...
The mayor of Fort Mill, South Carolina forwarded one of those stupid chain emails that throws around absurd accusations — in this case, the Bible predicted that the anti-christ would be a Muslim in...
White House press secretary Dana Perino explains why the Bush/McCain team have yet to catch Osama bin Laden: So there are human limitations to any -- this is not the movies, we don't have superpowe...
I am sure this has happened to many. I find catching myself out at times in that strange land where an Explanation has taken the place of Truth. I stand there looking lovingly at the face of Clarit...
The National Science Foundation has issued an InfoBrief report on some interesting data on science and engineering expenditures by US research institutions for Fiscal Year 2007 [pdf is here]. One w...
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) Read the comments on this post...
Sorry, we have had a good year and a half, but lately I don't think you care anymore. You spend more time not counting my hits than you do counting them. Maybe it's me, maybe I've grown apart from ...
tags: West 66th street/Lincoln Center Subway Art, Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers.Artist: Nancy Spero, 19...
I did already. Female Science Professor (the Grand Dame of science/academic blogging) has just published a blook - a collection of her best blog posts.You can and should buy "Academeology" on Lul...
Angela was out documenting World Ocean Day in London last week and spotted a bit of the Deep in her neighborhood! Go check out her photos of other people celebrating the ocean in their own homes (a...
tags: Killdeer, Charadrius vociferus, birds, nature, Image of the DayKilldeer chick, Charadrius vociferus, at Anahuac Wildlife Refuge, Texas. Image: Joseph Kennedy, 27 June 2008 [larger view]. Nik...
The Beltway Atheists are planning a summer get-away in mid-August called Atheist Days. You want to go. Trust me. Get a gang of hot, sexy atheists together on a beach, and you can trust them to bare...
Thanks to Heather for the heads-up:Instructions for NIH-funded authors have been prominently placed on the PubMed home page.There is a link to a list of journals that will manage the submission pro...
Right winger Republican (RwR) Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado has quite a record:During her eight years in the Colorado Legislature, Musgrave, the mother of four and grandmother of five co sponsored a...
Gosh, you wait for one piece of insanity and then two come along at once. But this time its personal. So those interested in wiki's inards can wade through the gore at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
10,000 Birds Aardvarchaeology A Blog Around The Clock A Blog from Hell Abnormal Interests About Darwin A Cat Nap A Constrained Vision Aetiology Afarensis A Few Things Ill Considered All-Too-Common ...
According to information leaked this week from the White House, planning is underway to design the George W. Bush Presidential Library, despite the fact that Bush has reportedly never read a book i...
PsyBlog is soliciting your favorite psychobabble. Head over there to give your favorite instance of the complete misinterpretation of psychology in pop culture.My favorite is number one on their l...
Photographed in New York on June 14, 2008. Read the comments on this post...
In the last segment of 'Intro to ERVs', I explained part of my blags tagline by talking about gag, the gene that codes for all the retroviral structural proteins. This post is going to be about th...
Josh has a good overview of the wending through the legislature of a Creationist bill in Louisiana. The governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, who just turned 37, has made Creationist noises before...
Haven't had a time to check this paper out, but looks real interesting, Assessing the Evolutionary Impact of Amino Acid Mutations in the Human Genome: Although mutations are known to cause varying ...
Did you know that the World Science Festival starts today in New York City? I expect all you eastern city folk to go. Unfortunately, I'm in an airplane flying west today, on my way to Berzerkeley, ...
Via Reihan, Instapaper. Need to not get behind on my Tech Crunch feed.... Read the comments on this post...
Good god. On the Ridiculous Overreaction Scale this one is an 11. The right wing blogosphere has its panties all bunched up over an ad for Dunkin Donuts with Rachael Ray in it, where she's wearing ...
Eurovision 2008 this saturday night!And Iceland made the final...? First time ever? Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
We're pretty good at remembering objects in a complex scene. We can even remember those objects when we move to a different location. However, the research so far has found that memory for the orig...
... is a blogger on the paranormal and skeptical stuff. She has some nice posts on Women and superstition (parts one and two) and Skeptical Books for Children (parts one, two, three and four)....
After all, the big squid are washing up on Puget Sound beaches, so I, too, feel the call. I'm going to have to make the journey.It also helps that the Northwest Science Writers Association has invi...
This is why you should read local weeklies. From the Back Bay Sun: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
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