clock | October 23, 2006NOTE: Bumped to top to draw attention to added links:
Provocative and excellent post by Sara Robinson: There's Something About The Men. Most definitely read the comments as well. Then come back here in half an hour and read an old post of mine that I have scheduled for republishing at 11am.
I know Sara likes Steven Ducat, so she may agree with my position, or perhaps not.
I am expecting responses by Amanda, Melissa, Lindsay, Jill and Echidne among others. This may become an interesting discussion over the next couple of days on feminist blogs and beyond.
Update: Shakespeare's Sister…
clock | October 23, 2006This is hillarious (Via). I wish I was as creative. I just make the telemarketers pronounce my full name correctly. Just calling me "Sir" does not cut it as I was never knighted by the Queen of England.
clock | October 23, 2006How birds know when and where to migrate (from April 03, 2006)
I've never ever expected to see the word "Zugunruhe" in New York Times! But here it is. It is one of my most favourite words of all times (right after "elusive"), and is even described pretty accurately:
Zugunruhe brooks no confusion. It has a Germanic certainty, and there can be no doubt what it means, once you know what it means. I confess that I only learned the word this week. If I understand the paper about it by Barbara Helm of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Andechs, Germany, and the late Eberhard Gwinner in…
clock | October 23, 2006The fifth edition of the International Carnival of Pozitivities will appear right here on this blog on November 10th, 2006.
This is what Ron Hudson, the founder of the carnival wrote:
One of the aims of the ICP is to present a true picture of what it is like to live with HIV/AIDS in today's political and social climate in a way that everyday people can understand the disease. We hope to reopen dialogue about the disease, to demystify it, to destigmatize it and to prevent its future spread through education. In the era of a US administration that funds programs based upon religious principles…
clock | October 23, 2006You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.
- Alvin Toffler
A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
- Charles F. Kettering, 1876 - 1958
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896 - 1940
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950
Some problems are so complex…
clock | October 23, 2006Encephalon #9 is up on Migrations. The next edition will be here on November 6th. Send your entries to: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com
clock | October 23, 2006
Geoff Davis is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | October 22, 2006All the sciencebloggers are taking a turn being interviewed on Page 3.14. Today, it's my turn so go and read more about me.
clock | October 22, 2006I've been waiting for this movie to come out since April. Now, it is not playing in the theater up the street. Perhaps I'll have to go elsewhere, driving, finding parking...but see it I will!
clock | October 22, 2006Magnetoreception is one of the most fascinating sensory modalities in living organisms. Most of the work has been done in homing pigeons, migrating birds and salmon. More recently, work has been done in mammals and fruitflies. But this sense is not limited only to the most complex organisms - it is found in a number of bacterial species:
Researchers Reveal Mystery Of Bacterial Magnetism:
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Purdue University have shed light on one of microbiology's most fascinating mysteries--why some bacteria are naturally magnetic. Their description of…
clock | October 22, 2006Still, it is strange to have a press release on a study before it even gets started:
Asia's Odd-ball Antelope Gets Collared:
A group of scientists led by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) working in Mongolia's windswept Gobi Desert recently fitted high-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) collars on eight saiga antelope in an effort to help protect one of Asia's most bizarre-looking -- and endangered -- large mammals.
clock | October 22, 2006...the way to conduct a scientific experiment - with no oversight and secretly endangering people who are uninformed they are subject in the project.
clock | October 22, 2006Anton Zuiker got a nice article (about blogging and the local blogging community) published in Raleigh News & Observer. The article is here and Anton's personal version can be found here. Smartly, the article contains the URL of Blogtogether, so perhaps people will see it and register for the Science Blogging Conference or show up at the next meetup.
Oh, while there, you can also see two additional pictures of me from ConvergeSouth that Anton took - one with Elizabeth Edwards and the other with Maryam Scoble.
Addendum: Since I did not get my hardcopy of N&O (yet, I will soon), I did…
clock | October 22, 2006
Beth Ritter-Guth is coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. Are you?
Technorati Tag: sciencebloggingconference
clock | October 21, 2006This week's Tar Heel Tavern is right next door - over on my SciBling's pad Terra Sigillata.
clock | October 21, 2006Am I going to link to everyhing Sara Robinson writes? I guess the answer is yes, as long as she keeps churning out posts like this one. It's short - read it twice:
The government cannot harass you or jail you for your associations, your political views, or your religious beliefs. (Or, at least, they couldn't, right up until last Monday.) It does NOT mean that the rest of us non-government types are required to hold our tongues and smile while people say things that are stupid, dangerous, or contrary to fact.
And it is interesting that Mr.WD wrote on the very same topic today:
Tolerance…
clock | October 21, 2006...does not automatically translate into Republican advantage:
Will the new GOP ad make you more or less likely to vote for Republicans?
Less likely67%
More likely33%
Total Votes: 82,879
clock | October 21, 2006Visual Imagery Technique Boosts Voting, Study Finds:
Registered voters who used a simple visual imagery technique the evening before the 2004 election were significantly more likely to vote the next day, a new study found. It was all a matter of the visual perspective people took when they imagined themselves voting.
It was all a matter of the visual perspective people took when they imagined themselves voting.
Researchers asked some Ohio college students to picture themselves voting the next day from a third-person perspective - as if they were observers viewing their own actions. Others…