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mspringer | January 12, 2009Whew! ScienceBlogs is back up. Mostly. There's been some kinks, but so far things are mostly working. No LaTeX yet, but I'm agitating for it vigorously. Especially for the comments. The ability to work with equations is something that no self-respecting science blog should be without. I'm hopeful that the process will be simplified soon, and that you can write your own equations as well.
While things are still getting squared away internally, let's tackle a simple question. What is science?
It's a question that has come up several times when the various ScienceBloggers chat in our…
cortex | January 12, 2009In yesterday's Washington Post, I reviewed The Art Instinct, a new book by Denis Dutton that uses evolutionary psychology to explain the odd human obsession with making art:
The list of cultural universals -- those features that recur in every human society, from remote rainforest tribes to modern America -- is surprisingly short. There's language, religion and a bunch of traits involving social structures, such as the reliance on leaders.
Denis Dutton, a New Zealand philosopher, would like to add one more item to this list: art. As he observes in his provocative new book, The Art Instinct,…
laelaps | January 11, 2009
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
sb admin | January 11, 2009This week's PalCast is still in production, so your patience is appreciated.
Previous episodes are here.
gregladen | January 11, 2009Been there:
visited 37 states (74%)Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project
Hat tip: Mike.
Obviously I have a few gaps to fill.
visited 25 states (11.1%)Create your own visited map of The World or try another Douwe Osinga project
gregladen | January 11, 2009
So the other day, my sister and brother in-law were visiting from California, and at one point got talking about these people who were dressing in "squirrel suits" and jumping off buildings and some of the cliffs out there.
So, I imagined what I would think most people imagined. Crazy people dressing up as giant squirrels (maybe some of them dressed up as chipmunks or rabbits or whatever) and climbing around and jumping off things. Like squirrels do.
But apparently they were talking about something else. Something that you have to be a bit squirrelly to do, but not exactly squirrel-…
grrlscientist | January 9, 2009tags: announcement, scienceblogs, Movable Type 4.0, MT4.0
This blog, along with all the other blogs hosted at ScienceBlogs, will be un-edit-able starting at 1300 today, and extending into the future for at least 36 hours (Saturday night). This means that, even though you can see and read blog entries, no one will be able to add any comments. Not only that, but my scheduled blog posts will not appear until the site is functioning again, nor can I add any new material. The reason is that the overlords are upgrading the entire site to Movable Type 4.0, which presumably means the site will…
mspringer | January 9, 2009As you've probably heard, ScienceBlogs is going to be silent for a day or two starting... 1pm today I think? I'm not sure, I don't pay attention very well at our board meetings. And by board meetings I mean whatever happens to get posted on the internal message board. But apparently we're upgrading the posting system (finally!) and that will help things run a lot more smoothly for us writers. I hear there's even an equation editor, which I hope is true. Right now I have to typeset in LaTeX, render to png, save, upload, and write the img tag. Some automation will be nice. Eventually I…
cortex | January 9, 2009Uwe Reinhardt, an economist at Princeton, has a thoughtful explanation of why macroeconomists were so blindsided by the economic downtown of 2008:
Fewer than a dozen prominent economists saw this economic train wreck coming -- and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, an economist famous for his academic research on the Great Depression, was notably not among them. Alas, for the real world, the few who did warn us about the train wreck got no more respect from the rest of their colleagues or from decision-makers in business and government than prophets usually do.
How could the…
cortex | January 9, 2009In November 2007, I had a longish article in Best Life Magazine on the psychology of chronic back pain. Apparently, the version of the article on the Best Life website no longer works, and I regularly get emails from people asking to read the actual text. So in order to establish a future reference and permanent link, I'm going to post all 5000 words below the fold:
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BACK PAIN
A growing cadre of doctors and scientists now believes that chronic back pain is a disease of the nervous system, not the spine. This breakthrough has opened the doors to new kinds of treatments that…
cwilcox | January 8, 2009Most of us women can tell if a guy is 'into us'. We pick up on a vasy array of non-verbal cues, not the mention the ever-obvious verbal ones. But I wouldn't say I can smell sexual interest- would you? Probably not. But, as it turns out, women's brains can distinguish the difference between sweat from a man who is aroused and one that isn't, according to fresh research published in the Journal of Neuroscience
Is he hot or horny?A woman's brain knows.
Scientists from Rice University used fMRI scans to take a look at women's brains while they processed four different smells. The first was…
gregladen | January 8, 2009Have you noticed that Rachel Maddow, the newly en-scheduled MSNBC Cable News Show host, has a lot of interesting and rather endearing mannerisms of speech and presentation? Of course you have. But have you also noticed that Rachel also has a large and growing influence on the manersisms of others on both radio and TV? She is a trend setter in this regard.
There is a woman who has a radio talk show on Air America (as does Maddow) who has stolen all of Maddow's mannerisms. If you tune her in, you'll think it is Rachel Maddow. Lately I've begun to notice TV anchors and presenters emulating…
sb admin | January 8, 2009by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now confronts the worldwide scientific community involving two Iranian doctors. Declan Butler, Nature senior correspondent, has described the situation in a post at one of the Nature blogs:
Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial
Posted on behalf of Declan Butler
Iran has summarily tried two of the…
grrlscientist | January 8, 2009Here's the latest carnivalia for you to enjoy;
I and the Bird, issue 91. This blog carnival focuses on wild birds and bird watching.
Carnival of the Vanities, 8 January 2009 edition. This blog carnival focuses on the best writing in the blogosphere for the previous week (or so), regardless of topic.
grrlscientist | January 8, 2009tags: announcement, scienceblogs, Movable Type 4.0, MT4.0
This blog, along with all the other blogs hosted at ScienceBlogs, will be un-edit-able starting at 1300 tomorrow, and extending into the future for at least 36 hours (Saturday night). This means that, even though you can see and read blog entries, no one will not be able to add any comments. I am sure the spammers and religious wingnuts will be terribly disappointed. Not only that, but my scheduled blog posts will not appear until the site is functioning again, nor can I add any new material. The reason is that the overlords are…
mspringer | January 8, 2009This one's a little of the beaten path for this site, since it's not physics or even anything I normally follow as a hobby. But along with science and many other things I'm a bit of a firearms enthusiast, and since guns are closely connected with hunting it probably wasn't unlikely that I'd come across this Livescience piece about the genetic implications of hunting.
The thesis is so simple as to be almost self-evident. Hunters tent to hunt for the largest and most impressive animals, especially when hunting seasons are short and bag limits are small.
This unnatural selection, a practice…
cortex | January 8, 2009You'd never know it from my recent article on the urban brain (and the cognitive benefits of nature) but I love walking in cities. In fact, a leisurely stroll in a metropolis is one of my favorite things to do. Sure, it might tire my prefrontal cortex a bit - there's just so much to see - but it's the pleasurable sort of tired, like the feeling you get after an hour in an art museum.
That said, I despise driving in cities. Whenever I'm forced to navigate rush hour traffic, I always return home in a dour mood. I feel stressed and vaguely tense, as if I've just survived some harrowing encounter…
cortex | January 8, 2009In the latest Seed, Steven Shapin has a great essay on the state of modern science. We take the current setup, in which science is a professional activity, shaped by peer-review journals and the priorities of funding institutions, for granted. But it was not always so. Once upon a time, scientists were curious amateurs:
Well into the 19th century, and even into the 20th, doing science was typically more of an avocation than a job. In the 17th century, the great chemist Robert Boyle not only financed his science out of his own deep pockets but also shared a common view that doing science as a…
gregladen | January 7, 2009Hey, my outgoing mail server is borked, so the only way I can communicate with the outside world is via my blog. So here are some critically important messages for several individuals.
Rick McPhearson: Yes, thank you so much for taking the initiative. I'll do whatever you want, as always. Just don't let PZ hurt me.
Erin: OK, we're doing it on Friday, I'm looking forward to this, it will be great. Good luck to Tim. Two questions: What do I tell my readers, and are we going to re-visit the bar on the right side?
Robert: I love a good script, go for it, man!
Skepchick: What? What? You…