I have not been well. Indeed, I had a few days where I was not fully convinced of my own humanity. (Also, I was having febrile “dreams” in HTML.)
I think I’m on the mend. However, I seem to be unable to crank out an actual blog entry. Rather, I’m coughing up language in 17 syllable chunks. The course of my illness after the jump. Just in case I’m still contagious, don’t lick your keyboard.
Author Archives: admin
Friday Sprog Blogging: dinosaurs!
Kids love dinosaurs. It’s one of those eternal truths. The elder Free-Ride offspring offers a list of nine cool things about dinosaurs and their ilk, while the younger Free-Ride offspring muses about the “meanness” of T. Rex. Plus, the best dinosaur handbook ever.
A new Carnival of Education is open for business.
Carnival of Education #62 is now up at The Magic School Bus.
Go check it out. You might learn something.
Do we need lawyers to resolve scientific disagreements?
In most cases, scientific disagreements are resolved in the labs, at conferences, or in exchanges in journals. Sometimes the disagreements are drawn out, sometimes feelings are hurt, but it hardly ever comes to a defamation suit.
Someone forgot to send John Lott the memo.
All the form, none of the content!
After the fall of humanity, when the hyperintelligent cockroaches are trying to reconstruct the ancient human practice of “commenting on a blog”, this is the entry they will end up putting in the textbooks.
I disagree vehemently with the entry itself, but the comments come as close to the Platonic form of constituents of a comment thread as you will ever get in imperfect, materially instantiated cyberspace.
(Hat tip: Crooked Timber)
Clearest judgment you’ll get here.
I finally saw The Constant Gardener this weekend.
If your aim is to conduct your drug trials ethically, do not conduct them like the drug trials portrayed in the movie. I could entertain questions on specific details, but the scenario is so black and white that I don’t imagine you’d have any.
Linus Pauling reconsidered.
Stochastic, the Seed Blog has an interesting post this morning about Linus Pauling’s “golden years” as a scientist. It’s a good read, to which I only have a few thoughts to add.
Girl meets grill.
Finally we had a weekend day (and evening) with no rain. So, my better half got me a new bag of mesquite charcoal, I took the wire brush to the Weber, and I officially greeted Spring by grilling our dinner.
Of course, while you’re tending the grill, your mind sometimes wanders, and you end up pondering (possibly geeky) questions. Such as:
Help me be less boring (banner-wise)!
Dear readers, if you frequent the other fine blogs here at ScienceBlogs, you will have noticed that a number of them have neat-looking banners. For example, look at Afarensis, or Evolgen, or Gene Expression, or Uncertain Principles, or Cognitive Daily. Check out the rotating cast of critters in the banner at Pharyngula, or the base ticker at Daily Transcript.
And, look at the banner that won the Make-Ed-a-Banner contest at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Now look at my banner. Really boring, isn’t it? Maybe you can save me.
How important is effective teaching to science professors anyway?
Lately, I’ve been blogging a bit about science teaching. Most of my focus has been on teaching at the secondary level, but it turns out that there are issues to be tackled with science teaching at all levels, including the college level. You’d think, then, that when a scientist who has proven himself in the research arena (and even picked up a Nobel Prize) wants to direct his formidable talents toward improving undergraduate science instruction, he’d be in a good position to get things done.
Sadly, you’d be mistaken.