It's the blogiversary of Troy Britain's blog Playing Chess with Pigeons. Today it is one year old.
Indeed, researchers would do well to blog more than they do. The experience of journals such as Cell and PLoS ONE, which allow people to comment on papers online, suggests that researchers are very reluctant to engage in such forums. But the blogosphere tends to be less inhibited, and technical discussions there seem likely to increase.
Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers. A good blogging website consumes much of the spare time of the one or several fully committed scientists that write and moderate it. But it can make a difference to the quality and integrity of public discussion.
[Hat Tip: Chance and Necessity]
The lesson is that to make best use of the internet as an educational resource, its content has to be audited for reliability, and a system of classification introduced. Given that the internet is already the main resource for students, the need is urgent. I suggest that an international consortium of universities should set up panels to audit the worth of websites, endorsing those that are reliable. They should not censor, nor comment on matters of opinion - the price we pay for the internet's open democracy is the rubbish it contains. But they should authoritatively identify worthwhile sites, and warn of factual error when it occurs. Without such expert monitoring, the internet will increasingly be a problem rather than a boon, and limited in educational value.Can you imagine a panel of Professors from different universities agreeing on which websites are reliable and accurate?
ScienceOnline '09 is being held in the Research Triangle, North Carolina (USA) this weekend. For those of you who aren't familiar with the region, the "triangle" consist of Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. I've spent a lot of time there over the past 25 years but unfortunately I can't make it this weekend.
Blogger has finally fixed the problems with RSS feeds. As I mentioned earlier [Trouble with Blogger] this is a problem that the blogger team seem to have created back on December 19th. It was fixed on January 9th—21 days later.
John Pieret took the American Civil You answered 30 out of 33 correctly — 90.91 %I didn't know which amendment was which, and what the Bill of Rights specifically prohibited. I'm too embarrassed to reveal the third question I got wrong.
Average score for this quiz during January: 74.2%
Average score: 74.2%
You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.
27) Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because:I got it right by thinking like an American! (Ouch!) ;-)
A. the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends
B. markets rely upon coercion, whereas government relies upon voluntary compliance with the law
C. more tax revenue can be generated from free enterprise
D. property rights and contracts are best enforced by the market system
E. government planners are too cautious in spending taxpayers’ money
I'm pretty happy with Blogger, most of the time.1 However, every now and then the powers that be meddle with the code and screw up a feature that we've come to rely on. I don't understand why this happens—you'd think they would test all their changes before implementing them.Thanks for the heads up folks! We're looking into this right now and hope to have this sorted out shortly.As of today (Dec. 30) it still hasn't been fixed.
We'll make sure to update this thread when we have some news to pass along. Thanks for your patience,
Gatsby
The Blogger Team
1. After all, it's free. I shouldn't complain about such an excellent service at such a low price. (But I will anyway.)
P.S. Congrats to Denyse O’Leary, whose Post-Darwinist blog tied for third in the science and technology category from the Canadian Blog Awards.
Another year, another incarnation of the Canadian Blog Awards, and another request to please delete CC HQ from any and all categories in which we've been nominated for a fairly simple reason -- we're not interested in any popularity contest in which voters seriously have to choose between CC HQ and batshit crazy, racist, white supremacist, Nazi sympathizer loons like Kate McMillan and Kathy Shaidle for "best blog."I wish I could take the same stance but nobody nominated me for anything. Damn, I don't even get to withdraw my nomination.
It's Sandwalk's second birthday. It was two years ago today that I posted the first message on Sandwalk [Welcome to my Sandwalk].
Myers PZ (University of Minnesota, Morris, MN). Pharyngula [blog on the Internet]. New York: ScienceBlogs LLC. [2006 Jan] - [cited 2007 May 16]. Available from: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/.I'm not sure I agree with everything that's there. For example, I don't think it's useful to have the date when the blog started (2006, Jan). I don't think we need the affiliation of the author, or where the blog is published—unless it's part of a collective. I think it's important to cite a specific posting if that's what you're referring to.
Myers, P.Z. (2008) Pharyngula [Internet blog] - "Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?" (Oct. 29, 2008) [cited Oct. 30, 2008]. ScienceBlogs LLC, New York. Available from: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/wheres_charlton_heston_when_yo.phpHere are some examples of how to cite comments on blogs [Examples of Citations to Blogs]. In the first example the author is unknown. In the second example the comment author is identified by affiliation.
Teresa. Comment on: "Flo's pledge: deal or no deal?" 2007 May 12 [cited 2007 May 16]. In: Kim. Emergiblog: The Life & Times of an ER Nurse [Internet]. San Francisco: Emergiblog. c2005-2007 - . [about 1 screen]. Available from: http://www.emergiblog.com/2007/05/flos-pledge-deal-or-no-deal.html scroll down to comments.
Lanard J (Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organization, Manila, Philippines). Comment on: "This blog can save your life!" and "Health Communication: Science and Art." 2006 Oct 15 [cited 2007 May 17]. In: Bernhardt JM. Director's Blog [Internet]. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US), National Center for Health Marketing. [2006 Jul 13] - . [about 2 screens]. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/healthmarketing/blog_101106.htm scroll down to locate comment.
The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm is one of my favourite science papers. As someone who accepts natural selection as a powerful evolutionary mechanism, but who considers that there are other, equally, or perhaps more, powerful mechanism out there, such as genetic drift, this paper resonated a lot with me. To summarise the paper (if you haven’t read it, please do), not everything that happens in evolution occurs because it was selected for. Like spandrels, things can happen as a consequence of other events. To summarise the summary, sh*t happens.Welcome to the blogosphere, Chris. With an opening like that, we expect big things in the future.
Here I’d like to develop that theme using Anomalocarus.
1. I still remember how excited he and Saint Andrew (Andrew MacRae) were when the curators at the Royal Ontario Museum pulled out their famous fossil of Anomalocarus to look at. Chris and Andrew, being paleontologists, were the only ones allowed to touch it. Chris was also thrilled to see the trilobites with bite marks. Read his posting to see why.
For the fourth straight month, Framing Science ranks among the top 15 science-related blogs, as tracked by Wikio. The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. (Blogrolls are not taken into account and Wikio only counts links from the last 120 days.)I submitted a comment in which I noted that several famous science blogs such as Bad Astronomy, The Panda's Thumb, and RichardDawkins.net are not included in the Wikio rankings.
