Conference Blogging
jlynch | March 15, 2008John Wilkins and I have been at the Edges and Boundaries of Biological Objects workshop here in Salt Lake City for the past few days. John live-blogged some of the talks, so you may want to check his posts out. Lots of interesting stuff was discussed about populations (here and here), the fossil record (here), ecosystems (here and here), system dynamics and boundaries (here and here), DNA bar-coding (here and here), species, rank-free classification, and homology. All in all some really thought-provoking ideas that will take me a good while to digest.
Discussions are likely to continue at the…
jlynch | July 27, 2007It's just after noon here in Exeter and I'm getting ready to head off to lunch. Yesterday's session on multi-level selection was very interesting with Rick Michod (U of Arizona) giving a particularly though provoking paper on the transition to multicellularity. Today's sessions are relatively outside my interests, but I expect to catch an afternoon session on paleobiology before the General Business meeting (that most beloved of society events). Hopefully the rain will stay away!
jlynch | July 25, 2007Well I made it safely to England and the ISHPSSB meeting. Yesterday evening was spent in the pleasant company of Precious Little Snowflake and others. Good fun and good beer was had by all. Today the conference proper starts and I'll be in two sessions on Evolutionary Developmental biology ("evodevo") and perhaps one on either iconoclastic biologists or multilevel selection. Tomorrow looks good with sessions on selection and homology. My own session (on teaching methods) isn't until Saturday afternoon, so I have plenty of wind-up time.
More anon ... if the damp and greyness doesn't depress…
jlynch | February 17, 2007This afternoon there was a symposium on "Science Literacy and Pseudoscience" that I had intended to attend but eventually missed. According to this AP story, it was revealed there that
"People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens."
So, science literacy is clearly increasing (from 10 to 28% according to one measure) but at the same time pseudoscientific beliefs are also increasing. It strikes me that…
jlynch | February 17, 2007The problem with the AAAS meeting is that so much is going on that it can be difficult to actually decide what to do. And much of what is good involves stuff happening outside of the sessions. I have run into (and dined with) people from Alliance for Science, the Clergy Letter Project, Evolution
Sunday and Darwin Day. I've hung out with Tara and brunched this morning with Janet, her husband, and the adorable Stemwedel Sprogs (charter members of the Order of the Science Scouts Special Children's Auxiliary). This evening is looking like dinner with some of the crazies from NCSE,
followed with…
jlynch | February 16, 2007Things are very busy here at the AAAS Annual Meeting, so much so that I haven't had a chance to sit at a computer and write anything. Hopefully, if I get some time together tomorrow, I'll blog on a session on grassroots activism and science education. For now, I'll just note the following:
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and nine science teachers who have been on the front lines of the battle to prevent introduction of "intelligent design" into science classrooms as an alternative to evolution, are recipients of the 2006 AAAS Award for…
jlynch | February 14, 2007This morning I'm heading off to the Science Fest To Beat All Science Fests - a.k.a. the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco. There I hope to at least hook up with Tara, Janet and Chris Mooney and do some blogging along the way (time permitting).
Assuming all goes well, I may try and post later on today.
jlynch | January 7, 2007
Apologies for being MIA over the past day - the hotel's wifi was acting up and I basically decided to go a day without connectivity. I'm now happily at home after thoroughly enjoying my SICB experience - science, beer, and discussion makes for a good four days. I'll hopefully get some more SICB-inspired posts up over the next few days.
Special thanks have to go to Jim and Kat Lippard for putting up with us last night. We had a wonderful evening of discussion and I got to meet Brent Rasmussen whom I hadn't even realized was living nearby. The above photo is of (left to right) Jim, Brent,…
jlynch | January 5, 2007We had out meetup this evening and it was fun. A special shout-out has to go to Bruce Thompson for driving 90 minutes to get here (and thus 90 minutes back) and regaling us with stories of flying fast and low over the ground.
PZ or GrrlScientist may have photos later ...
jlynch | January 5, 2007One of the thinks that surprised me when I first started attending history of science conferences was how many (virtually all) presenters just stand up and read a paper. No visuals. Nothing. Sort of boring. I used to therefore think that in general, scientists were better communicators (at least to their peers). Boy am I wrong.
After this morning, I think I've realized that some scientists should never, ever, ever, be allowed to make any sort of presentation, slides or no. They talk to the slides, they mutter, they put too much information on a slide, they try to say everything in 25 minutes…
jlynch | January 5, 2007After an early night, I awoke to an unusually dark and cloudy (and cold .. .only 50 degrees) Phoenix. I blame the out-of-towners for ruining our perfectly good weather!
This morning it's a toss-up between Key Transitions in Evolution and Evolutionary Morphology. The former wins. Highlight of the day will probably be the mid-day Town Meeting on Evolution - Kevin Padian, Patricia Princehouse, and Stephen Harvey (of Pepper Hamilton LLC) will be discussing the Kitzmiller decision.
More later, no doubt.
jlynch | January 4, 2007So overall I think the workshop on blogging went well. Turnout was, apparently, as expected and we answered questions for just under two hours. All in all, a good experience. Tomorrow we have the meetup in the evening and, eh yeah, some science.
jlynch | January 4, 2007SICB (pronounced 'sick-bee') is certainly a smorgasbord of science and it is somewhat difficult to decide which sessions and/or talks to attend. I had originally intended spending the day with the Linking Genes with Morphology in Vertebrates symposium, but a combination of factors had me instead hopping from talk to talk. For those interested, PZ has summarized the morning portion of the symposium.
(I did manage to attend the first afternoon talk of the symposium - by Cohn on the evolution of cartilage and un-paired fins in vertebrates ... good stuff).
I spent the day so far with topics as…
jlynch | January 3, 2007Apparently people were picking on me for not turning up on time. A slacker, they called me. Bah, humbug - I was only spending time with my family.
That aside, I spent the evening with Grrl and PZ catching up, drinking beer, talking blogging, evodevo, loris, evolution and other stuff.
Science sessions start tomorrow - more then.
jlynch | January 2, 2007As PZ announced earlier today (as did GrrlScientist), we've firmed up our meetup plans for the SICB conference.
Friday 6th around 6pm, we'll be meeting at Seamus McCaffreys fairly close to the conference hotel. Contrary to PZ's suggestion, I wont be forcing anyone to drink Guinness (the drink is only barely drinkable here in the US) and therefore wont be buying the beer :) PZ's got tenure ... he's probably got more cash than me anyways! We should be easy to spot at the bar - GrrlScientist looks like a lori, I'll have a posse (some luck!),
and PZ will be dressed as his Satanic Majesty (no,…
jlynch | December 29, 2006I've noted before that the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) will be meeting in Phoenix next week and also that PZ, Grrl Scientist, and I will be participating in a media workshop on blogging. We've decided that this might also be a nice opportunity for Scienceblogs readers to get together,
so here's what we're proposing:
Friday January 5th @ 6:00pm. Meetup at a wateringhole near the conference (Hyatt Regency). Wander over to PZ's announcement, holler if you can attend, and suggest a place.
Saturday January 6th @ 5:30pm. Phoenix-area skeptic Jim Lippard has kindly…
jlynch | December 10, 2006As PZ notes, some of us ScienceBloggers will be at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual meeting which occurs this time around in Phoenix. PZ, GrrlScientist and I will be the talking heads at the Media Worskshop on Thursday January 4th:
Media Workshop: Hey, Wanna Read My Blog?
Blogs are online "diaries" that are growing in popularity. Popular political and social commentary blogs are making the news, but is there more out there than chatty gossip and collections of links? How about some science? Can this trendy technology be useful for scientists? Come to the Media…
jlynch | November 6, 2006Still catching up here - class preparation for tomorrow and some other material to deal with. I will, however, note that Janet has posted one of the less incriminating photos of the SciBlings at the conference. See us in our meatspace glory here.
jlynch | November 3, 2006Well, it's just past midnight here in Vancouver and Day One of HSS is winding down. Janet, John, David and I spent a pleasant evening at a French restaurant enjoying good food and discussion of everything from the state of pre-college education, programming languages, and why philosophy of biology may not appeal to biologists. In other words, we geeked out. All good stuff, trust me.
Oh, and it started raining again! No surprises.
Tomorrowing morning I'm up early for the ISHPSSB Education Committee who are meeting about sessions for the upcoming Exeter meeting (July '07). So I'd better get to…
jlynch | November 3, 2006The meeting is a joint one between the History of Science Society (HSS), Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and is this probably the largest collection of science studies people in the continent. Anyone who is anyone is here. Interestingly, I haven't been able to locate any of the "philosophers" from the Discovery Institute (which after all isn't that far from Vancouver) ... gee, I wonder why. The closest I've come to brushing with such intellectual greatness is to note that Steve Fuller (of Kitzmiller fame) gave a talk (for the 4S)…