Media
jtoney | January 6, 2012
Yes, I am well aware of skeptics of The Huffington Post, especially in coverage of science, medicine and technology. Skepticism is a healthy process in science. So let's look at the facts.
Below is a list of some of the first posts on the new Science section in The Huffington Post - and, in case you were not aware, writers at HuffPost are by invitation only.
I invite you to explore this site! While some may disagree with the writer's interpretations or conclusions, they would be hard pressed to challenge their credentials.
Bernie Bulkin: Can Science Save the Planet?
Former Chief Scientist…
pharyngula | January 6, 2012Or maybe it's just guilty of bad journalism. Look at this story they ran: it's about a creationist who claims that Arizona sandstones are proof of Noah's flood. It's a remarkable piece of crap. The creationist, Greg Morgan, is a nuclear safety engineer, not a geologist, and his argument consists entirely of pointing at some swirly sandstone formations and saying they look flowy, like they'd been formed in water. That's it. It got published in Answers in Genesis magazine, though!
They gave this nonsense 35 paragraphs. The surprising thing is that nowhere in it did they consult an actual…
jtoney | December 17, 2011
Photo source, @mjb's Flicr Photostream (Matthew Bradley)
Prologue:
I have a hypothesis: Newt Gingrich, a provocateur reaching for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, has stated that the "Palestinian people are an invented people" - well, Newt Gingrich, while not an invented person, is an invented Professor. Gingrich's longtime communications aide Rick Tyler described him as "probably the smartest political strategist in the country bar none."
That may well be true, but whether coming from loyalty or from a "conservative revenge fantasy" as described by Mr.…
jtoney | December 14, 2011
Who couldn't use $135 million? Try this, just for fun, if you're game:
A 2005 U.S. patent with the bland title: "Method for Selecting Lottery Numbers" describes a technique that just might be worth a try:
From the Orange County Register:
There were no tickets sold with all six numbers in Tuesday's drawing of the multi-state Mega Millions lottery and the estimated jackpot for Friday's drawing will grow to $135 million.
Three tickets sold in California had five numbers, but didn't have the Mega number and are each worth $148,228, a California Lottery official announced. California law…
pharyngula | December 10, 2011I have really been looking forward to seeing David Attenborough's latest, Frozen Planet, here in the US. I've seen brief snippets of the show on youtube, and like all of these big BBC nature productions, I'm sure it's stunning. And then I hear that the Discovery Channel has bought the rights! Hooray!
But wait, experience cautions us. Remember when American television replaced Attenborough's narration with Sigourney Weaver? And <shudder> Oprah Winfrey? ANd when the Oprah version dropped the references to evolution? What kind of insane butchery would they perpetrate this time around?
Well…
jtoney | December 9, 2011
VPAA Corner
Communication between academic administrators, faculty and students has never been easy. Should administrators embrace new media? Should they blog, tweet, post videos on YouTube? Or is it somehow undignified, too familiar?
Not only do I recommend it for Department Chairs, Deans, Provosts and University Presidents, I am beginning to view it as an imperative. To be effective educators, we must understand how our students learn, the sources of their information and how they communicate with each other. It is insufficient to try to keep up with the latest - if we really want to…
jtoney | November 29, 2011This article was co-authored with Dr. Morad Abou-Sabe', President of the Arab American League of Voters of New Jersey.
CNN's Ivan Watson talks to John King from Cairo about his exclusive interview with Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim. {February 9, 2011}
The Egyptian revolution of January 25th, 2011 created widespread euphoria of the kind only wide-eyed optimists enjoy. It was a moment in Egypt's history that should never be forgotten. It evolved naturally after six decades of oppressive military rule of Egyptians who had - almost - given up hope of any chance for change. Increasing…
sastyk | November 28, 2011So I've been offline a lot the last few weeks - as you know we had 10 kids in our house for a couple of days the week before Thanksgiving, and I was out of town until yesterday. While a few posts have gone up, I've spent absolutely no time on anything other than absolute necessities online.
So it was something of a shock to me to find in my comments thread a bunch of accusations that I'd been removing comments.due to my disagreement with them. This frankly pissed me off, since I absolutely do not censor or remove comments routinely - or generally at all. Despite a general tendency of…
hrynyshyn | November 22, 2011If this is the best they've got, it's kind of sad, really.
Looks like the link to the zip file of what was left over from the 2009 release has been removed, just a few hours after the world became aware that the FOIA gang is at it again. But most of what found its way onto the web so far, tiny snippets without even a clue as to the subject matter that prompted the excerpts, doesn't ever rise to the level of lame.
Of course, that won't stop the denial punks from engaging in a display of juvenile histrionics. But still, after the embarrassment of the BEST study conclusions, it is beginning to…
hrynyshyn | November 8, 2011Australia's Senate has approved a controversial law on pollution, after years of bitter political wrangling. The Clean Energy Act will force the country's 500 worst-polluting companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions from 1 July next year.
-- BBC
hrynyshyn | October 27, 2011Don't get me wrong. I love NPR. I listen to it for at least four hours a day. But lately I've found the network's embrace of "he said, she said" journalism a little too difficult to swallow. This morning's report on censorship of a scientific report commissioned by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality isn't perhaps the most egregious example, but it does concern climate change, so it's worth examining.
For those unfamiliar with this lazy and cowardly form of reporting, check out new media maven Jay Rosen's take. Basically, the problem is NPR is afraid to let its reporters come right…
hrynyshyn | October 25, 2011My review of Shawn Otto's new book, Fool Me Twice
Fighting the Assault on Science in America, is up over at the relatively new sustainability-oriented blog/resource site, Planet 3.0. Here's how I start:
Shawn Otto is a big name in the campaign to restore science to its rightful place as a major player in the public sphere. He spearheaded the first "Science Debate" effort in 2008 to get the presidential candidates to address scientific issues, and has been working, tirelessly but not entirely successfully, it would seem, since then to keep the home fires burning. The frustration that comes…
jtoney | August 14, 2011Dear readers,
Some of you may be wondering what's going on at Dean's Corner. I begin a new position at my University tomorrow, August 15, serving as the Acting Vice President of Academic Affairs. {You can read the announcement here.}
I am planning to retool the focus of this blog to reflect my broadened responsibilities as an academic administrator at a University, overseeing all of our academic programs. I will continue to post science stories that might interest you, on an ad hoc basis, to the extent that I can, including articles at my blog at The…
jtoney | July 30, 2011
"Daddy, do you know where this cheese came from?"
I absolutely love this video demonstrating that learning science can be - and should be - fun. Enjoy!
This series is a result of a collaboration between broadcast media (NBC) and scientists (National Science Foundation.)
From Eureka Alert:
National Science Foundation and NBC Learn launch 'Chemistry Now' video series
Videos celebrate International Year of Chemistry; available cost-free to students, teachers and fans of chemistry.
In celebration of the International Year of Chemistry, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NBC Learn, the…
pharyngula | July 28, 2011Oh, this is beautiful. Bill Nye (the Science Guy!) is being interviewed by a Fox News talking head who asks a surprisingly dumb question: Nye is talking about a volcano found on the moon, so he asks, "Does it go anywhere close to the climate change debate on earth?...we haven't been up there burning fossil fuels.". Bill Nye's eyebrows shoot up, he pauses very briefly, and you can see him recalibrating his brain so he can answer as he would to a perky little 5 year old. It's wonderfully amusing, and he does give a very good answer.
jtoney | July 26, 2011
Smiley 16-year-old Marianne Sandvik is still missing on the island. Source.
As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right.
Patrick Buchanan
The emerging faces and the stories of the victims from the massacre at Oslo highlight how this tragedy has robbed Norway, and the world, a part of its future. Blame is being assigned broadly and, sadly, is being used for political posturing.
When I read Pat Buchanan's essay "A fire bell…
jtoney | July 23, 2011Anders Behring Breivik is an admitted mass murderer of the victtims at Oslo, providing some answers. He referred to his own crimes as "atrocious" but "necessary." More than 92 people are dead because of his actions.
Most media coverage has focused on the terrorist, the mass murderer, the anti-Islamist and far right fundamentalist Christian. No one really knows why he did this. I want to shift the focus to the story of one of the survivors. It deserves to be heard.
Leah McElrath sent this translation of a survivor's blog via Twitter. She describes herself as a "Human rights activist,…
jtoney | July 22, 2011
Hours after the terrible deaths in Oslo, police arrested a 32 year old man, Anders Behring Breivik, suspected for the crimes, described as "Nationalist, Anti-Islamic, Anti-Multiculturalism, liked and plays World of Warcraft."
Below is a news release, translated from Norwegian using Google Translate: (selected excerpts)
(AP) Anders Behring Breivik (32) who has been arrested for the bomb in the city center, and mass killing, has lived in Oslo's West End in his life, before he announced relocation of Hedmark for a month.
VG has received confirmation from several independent sources that it…
jtoney | July 22, 2011
Source.
A newsworthy study about a genetic signature of centenarians published in Science has not stood up to scrutiny by the blogosphere and peer scientists and has now been formally retracted by the authors.
Until recently, such retractions - whether by Editors or by the authors themselves - have been quite rare. With the blogosphere and 24/7 news media becoming more and more prominent, I suspect that we may begin to see more examples. Ultimately, it is a healthy process and good for science.
Below is an excerpt, with my emphasis, from their Letter to Editor in Science:
...we discovered…
jtoney | July 20, 2011
Fourteen year old internet sensation Rebecca Black just released a follow up video "My Moment" after her debut of "Friday" that went viral with more than 167 million views. Attention at this scale landed her a spot on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a music video with Katy Perry, "Last Friday Night".
Such opportunities for seemingly instant fame can affect these teens, and pre-teens, in a profound way: IRL (In Real Life)...
Rebecca Black has had to endure the backlash of cyberbullying after her first video.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream…