Rescued from the spam-file (kind of).

Posted on February 2, 2009February 2, 2009 by admin

Left by a self-proclaimed “fitness specialist” and “trainer of personal trainers” (along with all manner of contact information) as a comment on this post:

Isn’t it amazing that someone like Darwin is celebrated for his thoughts. Evolution is bunk! I am not a creationist either. But to evolve an animal had to make a conscious decision. An example: a fish had to decide that land was the next place it was going to make its home. How many fish had to make that decision and how many realized they would have to die before their gills evolved into lungs? Yet there are people who actually believe in evolution. Somebody is not thinking things through.

Way to combat the stereotype that personal trainers aren’t that bright!
Also: dude, break down and buy some ads. Spreading your digits in the comments section of a blog just reeks of desperation.

Celebrating the Year of Science.

Posted on February 2, 2009February 2, 2009 by admin

I’ve been derelict in my duty to inform you that 2009 has been declared the Year of Science, which is, of course, just an excuse to celebrate science-y goodness every day. Each month has a theme and a variety of options for exploring that theme.

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Finding my academic writing groove.

Posted on February 2, 2009February 2, 2009 by admin

Some of you may be aware that, at least in certain corners of the blogosphere, November is celebrated as International acaDemic Writing Month. Indeed, in November 2007 I jumped onboard the InaDWriMo bandwagon.
This past November I did not, largely because my November usually turns out to be a ridiculous month for serious writing. There’s Thanksgiving and the attendant food-related preparation activities, plus the run up to the December holidays. Also, this year my kids were still playing soccer into December (which is what you get for being too successful in your weekly games), so I was tangled up in that. And the days getting shorter and colder did not help one bit.

The holidays are behind us now, and there’s still academic writing to be done. At ScienceWoman’s urging (what is it with her?), I’m going to invite others who may have sat out the November frenzy of academic writing to join me in using February and March to try to establish some sort of regular writing groove.

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Robert Burns’ birthday food blogging.

Posted on January 31, 2009February 8, 2015 by admin

Robert Burns‘s birthday, which was January 25, is an important day for Scottish celebration and food.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Give it a chance.
So, back at ScienceOnline’09, I was talking with AcmeGirl about marking the 25th with some lovely Scottish food. She was talking about haggis. In the Free-Ride house, seeing as how we don’t do meat, we don’t do canonical haggis either. (In 1997, in Scotland, I had a fabulous vegetarian haggis, but I doubt I could reproduce it in my own kitchen, at least on the first try.) So I was thinking maybe tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips).
But on the eve of January 25th, things were kind of wet and cold in our neck of the woods. And, our garden had just yielded …

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Mark your calendars for the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Posted on January 30, 2009January 30, 2009 by admin

The 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, will be taking place February 13-16, 2009. This is a lovely (and long-running) bit of citizen science that aims to compile a continent-wide snapshot of bird populations during a few days in February before the spring migrations have started.
Participation is easy:

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Friday Sprog Blogging: what’s shaking?

Posted on January 30, 2009January 30, 2009 by admin

Dr. Free-Ride: What have you been learning about in science this school year?
Younger offspring: Lots of stuff.
Dr. Free-Ride: Like what?
Younger offspring: We learned about rocks and minerals. Rocks are made out of minerals, and some rocks have more than one kind of mineral in them.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, what’s a mineral?
Younger offspring: Umm … I think quartz is a mineral. They can cut it in the shape of jewels. And also marble. But I think granite has more than one mineral in it. And we talked about how different rocks are formed.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh?
Younger offspring: There are some rocks that form from the lava when volcanos erupt. We got to look at some pumice and see all the bubbles that were in the lava when it got hard to make the rock.
Dr. Free-Ride: I know another kind of rock mad by volcanos.
Younger offspring: What?
Dr. Free-Ride: It’s called obsidian. It’s really smooth and glassy, so I’m guessing that the lava that hardens to make obsidian has hardly any air bubbles at all.
Younger offspring: Yeah.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, do you know anything about earthquakes?

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Office of Research Integrity takes ‘final action’ in Luk Van Parijs case.

Posted on January 29, 2009January 29, 2009 by admin

You may recall the case of Luk Van Parijs, the promising young associate professor of biology at MIT who was fired in October of 2005 for fabrication and falsification of data. (I wrote about the case here and here.)

Making stuff up in one’s communications with other scientists, whether in manuscripts submitted for publication, grant applications, scientific presentation, or even personal communications, is a very bad thing. It undermines the knowledge-building project in which the community of science is engaged. As an institution serious about its role in this knowledge-building enterprise, MIT did well to identify Van Parijs as a bad actor, to take him out of play, and to correct the scientific record impacted by Van Parijs’s lies.

MIT wasn’t the only institution with a horse in this race, though. Given that many of Van Parijs’s misrepresentations occurred in work supported by federal grants, or in application for federal grant money, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, launched a thorough investigation of the case. As reported in the Federal Register, ORI has now taken final action in the Van Parijs case:

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Good intentions, bad effects: the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

Posted on January 28, 2009January 28, 2009 by admin

Remember the scares around December 2007 about lead in children’s toys manufactured in China? Back then, people cried out for better testing to ensure that products intended for children were actually safe for children. Partly in response to this outcry, a new law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, was passed. The intent of the law is to protect kids from harm from lead (and other substances) in children’s products. However, the effect of the law may be something else altogether.
I’ve been meaning to post on this for awhile, but I’ve finally been spurred into action by my friend Heddi at the Educational Resource Center of Santa Cruz. Here’s how Heddi explained the situation in an email to me:

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Friday Sprog Blogging: making faces.

Posted on January 23, 2009January 23, 2009 by admin

As I turned on the lights this morning, the younger Free-Ride offspring graced me with some faces.
Younger offspring: This one (eyes squinted and teeth wide in a gappy second grader smile) and this one (eyes bugged out and mouth in an O of horror) creep people out. My mad look (eyebrows lowered and eyes rolled upward in a glare) doesn’t creep people out.
Dr. Free-Ride: Maybe that’s because people see it so often.

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