Blogging
clock | March 3, 2009Kim Hannula of 'All of My Faults Are Stress-Related ' has just moved today from her old blog to her new blog here on Scienceblogs.com. Is this the fourth geoblogger here? I think so.
Anyway, go and say Hello!
clock | March 3, 2009Chris Patil and Vivian Siegel wrote the first part of their thoughts on this problem, in Drinking from the firehose of scientific publishing:
The fundamental question is this: can the wisdom of crowds be exploited to post-filter the literature?
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A lioness doesn't bother eating individual blades of grass - she lets the antelopes do that drudgery, and then she eats the antelopes. It is similarly tempting to assign the post-filtering task to hordes of enthusiastic volunteers - intrepid, pajama-clad souls, armed only with keyboards and search engines, who would wade…
clock | March 2, 2009Asks 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 enthusiastic web junkie put it. But a few months into using Twitter, I realised that there are very few scientists - and I mean natural scientists, on Twitter. For instance, at the time of writing this post, the Twitter account science had 2,247 followers , while some popular individuals have followers 10-fold that number.
Here are 211 scientific twitterers you may be familiar with - definitely a good…
clock | March 2, 2009But there is plenty of digital evidence it really happened!
Check out the #CISB hashtag on Twitter, the CISB'09 room on FriendFeed, and the blog posts:
Cromer Is SO Bracing '09 - Day One
Cromer Is SO Bracing '09 - Day Two
Cromer is SO Bracing - Friday Lunchtime update
Cromer Is SO Bracing - Pier Review
Cromer is SO Bracing - Saturday Afternoon
Cromer is SO Bracing - Sunday
Sorry to have missed this, but my ghost that "slept on that sofa" was there!
clock | March 2, 2009Pros 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 MicroBlogging
Conference technology planning
Discussion on FriendFeed
clock | March 2, 2009A voice from Latin America:
Many scientists use science blogs to post information on their work and receive comments from other scientists and from people outside the usual circle of readers. Some authors even suggest posting in blogs part of their works before publishing them, in order to exchange ideas and bring new perspectives. Scientists who use blogs consider them a complement to - not a replacement of - scientific journals, since they represent documents that do not substitute articles, but that establish a maturing stage of scientific work preparation, which is static and limited in…
aardvarchaeology | March 2, 2009The sixty-first Four Stone Hearth blog carnival is on-line at the Moore Group Blog. Catch the best recent blogging on archaeology and anthropology!
Submissions for the next carnival will be sent to me. The next open hosting slot is on 25 March. All bloggers with an interest in the subject are welcome to volunteer to me for hosting. No need to be an anthro pro.
sciencewoman | March 1, 2009 Liberal Arts Lady has ably hosted another fantastic edition of Scientiae. Head over there for some fantastic stories of role models and mentors, as well as some reminders that we have a ways to go before all aspiring scientists can find someone who looks like them.
I also wanted to draw your attention to an excellent post by Zuska. She says that "It's Difficult To Talk About Diversity When You Feel Ignorant And Are Afraid To Give Offense" but that it's really important to be an ally in practice and not just in (silent) principle.
clock | March 1, 2009In February I posted 166 times. This includes two BPR3-icon-worthy posts about science! The first was on Circadian Rhythm of Aggression in Crayfish with the longish addendum on citing blog posts in scientific literature. The second was An Awesome Whale Tale, and, related to this paper, I announced the new Palaeontology Collection in PLoS ONE in Fossils! Fossils! Fossils!. I also did an interview with Dr.Adam Ratner.
I have covered another session in ScienceOnline'09 - Saturday 3:15pm - Blog carnivals. Miss Baker and her students were on NPR and one of the students wrote a Malaria Song that…
clock | February 28, 2009Gunnar Engblom explains Facebook to newbies.
Just go to Facebook and search for 'Birding' - people, groups, events.
clock | February 26, 2009Another editorial about science blogging today, this time in Nature Methods: Lines of communication:
The public likes science stories it can easily relate to, and we have to admit that most science, including that published in Nature Methods, is unlikely to get more than a snore from nonscientists. In contrast, science stories that have a human interest or other emotionally charged angle require the concerted efforts of both journalists and scientists to ensure that the public understands the story well enough to make an informed personal decision. A failure in this regard can lead to a…
clock | February 26, 2009In today's Nature you can read an editorial that says, right there in the title, It's good to blog:
Is blogging a part of science, journalism or public discourse? In fact it may be all of these -- an ambiguity that can sometimes leave scientists feeling uncertain about the rules of the game.
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The blogosphere differs from mass media and specialized media in many respects, but the same considerations apply in disseminating new scientific results there. Authors of papers in press have the right to correct misrepresentations and to point to results that will appear in a…
laelaps | February 25, 2009So there I was, vainly searching Amazon.com to see if a subscription to this blog is available on Kindle (it appears not), when I was hit between the eyes by something unexpected.
A few of you may recall that a few months ago I wrote a lukewarm review of Jerry Coyne's new book Why Evolution Is True. It is not a bad book, and it actually is a good primer if you do not know very much about evolution, but there were a number of errors in it that I felt could have easily been avoided with a little more research.
How is this relevant to my opening statement? In searching for "Laelaps" on Amazon.…
sciencewoman | February 24, 2009Hear ye, hear ye. The first-ever and best-ever edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival has been posted.Read all about it at DNLee's Urban Science Adventures! There's some really fabulous stuff there and I can't wait to read those that I missed when they were first posted.
While you're being inspired by all of the great DiS posts, channel some of that inspiration towards this month's Scientiae call for posts. Liberal Arts Lady has asked us: "Who inspires you or motivates you? Who would you call your role models, at any stage of your career?" Posts should be submitted to scientiaecarnival…
laelaps | February 24, 2009Am I a scientist? It seems like a simple question requiring little more than a "yes" or "no", yet I am at a loss as to how to answer it. Even though I have been called a scientist by people I respect I cannot bring myself to use the term to describe myself.
It is not that I am holding onto some vaunted ideal of what a scientist is or should be. It is not as if a PhD, a prestigious academic prize, or a paper in Science is required to lay claim to the title. Instead I think of a scientist as someone who actively participates in research (or has done so in the past) and shares the results of…
clock | February 24, 2009Some meetings are medium-sized, some are big, some are huge. But the best conferences are usually pretty small. Following this logic, the best conferences must be microconferences - just a few intrepid explorers gathering in some remote place on Earth....like Norfolk, for example, sharing fish and chips and shooting a movie about Darwin.
Oh, wow, there is just such a conference! Cromer Is So Bracing '09 (or Cromer International Science Blogging, if you want to be extra nice....or grandiose...). Oh, I so wish I could go there and share beer with my friends, including the venerable host Henry…
laelaps | February 18, 2009There are a number of things I have been meaning to blog about during the past week but for whatever reason they kept slipping my mind. Here's a brief collection of some neat stuff that I should have written about earlier;
Michael Barton, author of the Dispersal of Darwin, was interviewed for the the BBC's Pods and Blogs! I am certainly envious. You can listen in here.
A number of paleo-artists active in the blogohedron have started a new carnival, ART Evolved. The first edition will be posted at Prehistoric Insanity on March 1, and I certainly encourage you to check it out (if not submit…
clock | February 17, 2009The Open Science panel is this Thursday at 3-5pm.
If you miss that, or even if you don't, come and meet me and other local bloggers, scientists and onlookers on Friday at Old Town Bar on 45 East 18th Street at 8pm.
laelaps | February 17, 2009
There are times when it becomes abundantly apparent that I have been spending far too much time on the computer.
Yesterday afternoon I was preparing a "cheat sheet" for my statistics exam (don't fret; we were allowed one page of notes to bring to the test). I decided to write it up with a pencil rather than type it, and about 3/4 of the way through I thought "I'm thirsty, I think I will get a drink. I had better hit 'save' to preserve my work."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
