5 Atrocious Science Cliches to Throw Down a Black Hole

I love this Wired article on science cliches.  This will really shed some light on the way you'll read science news in the future.

5 Atrocious Science Cliches to Throw Down a Black Hole

Posted at 10:36AM Jul 22, 2009 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

Why are you here?

Over the weekend I attended the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference.  It was a great program and I learned a lot about the current state of science blogging.  My biggest conclusion is: why are you here?  If you dig science bloggery, you need to hit ScienceBlogs, truly the world clearinghouse on science blogging, and home to numerous excellent writers, bloggers, and scientists.

One project I've been working on of late has been the PAMS reference wiki.  It's been sort of chugging along as I've been thinking about exactly how I wanted to use it, but my interest in the wiki was greatly renewed during the conference after a talk by Dr. Jean-Claude Bradley of the UsefulChem Project.  He's doing some really interesting work, with a commitment to open source science.  I really like the interactivity and ease of wikis, and recognize that wikipedia is the default first stop for information needs for a significant portion of internetters these days, no matter what the topic.  Which is to say, it's easy and relevant and most everyone likes it, so as a librarian I'm totally on board.    For professional research, the library is still (easily) the place to go, but eventually the two concepts are going to merge.  I'll be fascinating to see exactly how.

Science! will probably continue to be home to interesting anecdotes I come across, but I don't anticipate posting any more frequently than I do now, unless I am hit with some kind of repurposing brainstorm.  Mostly ScienceBlogs, The Annals of Improbable Research, and Modern Mechanix cover what my first thoughts were about this blog, and the PES News blog covers most of the new happenings in the library relevant to what I'm doing.

Posted at 12:08PM Jan 23, 2007 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

The Open Laboratory

The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006 is now available at http://www.lulu.com/content/631016



Looks interesting!

More information from the editor here:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/01/the_science_blogging_anthology.php

Posted at 11:53AM Jan 17, 2007 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

Santa's Relativity Cloud

It would be wrong not to point out breakthrough research being done on this campus.  See The Science of Santa.

And there?s really no need for Santa to enter the house via chimney, although Silverberg says he enjoys doing that every so often. Rather, the same relativity cloud that allows Santa to deliver presents in what seems like a wink of an eye is also used to ?morph? Santa into people?s homes.

Posted at 12:58PM Dec 12, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

Mythbusters

Science! heartily endorses Mythbusters, of which the New York Times says:

It may be the best science program on television, in no small part because it does not purport to be a science program at all. What ''Mythbusters'' is best known for, to paraphrase [co-host Jaime] Hyneman, is blowing stuff up. And banging stuff together. And setting stuff on fire. The two men do it for fun and ratings, of course. But in a subtle and goofily educational way, they commit mayhem for science's sake.

The core mission of the show is to test urban legends and folklorish tales of incredible feats to determine whether they could actually happen.  You know, with science.  For example, they devoted a recent episode to testing the mentos and diet coke phenomenon, changing variables, constructing power nozzles, and trying to set height records.  In another episode, they tried out a bunch of cat burglary movie cliches: assembling suction cup building-climbing apparatus, cutting through glass doors without setting off alarms, and trying to hack laser burglar alarms, just to name a few. 

It's rarely the most thorough investigation, but they have the budget, time, and engineering expertise that most of us lack.  So they can try stuff like building personal jet packs.  A lot of things naturally get blown up or broken--in the last episode I watched they tested (and confirmed) the effect of a compressed gas tank nozzle getting broken off.  In their controlled test they dropped a metal weight onto the valve, snapping it off, and launching the tank-turned-propelled-missile into a cinderblock wall, which it went cleanly through.

Anyway, it's on the Discovery Channel.  Best show on TV*.  Check it out sometime.

*Other than the Venture Brothers.  But that's about SUPERscience, not regular science.

Posted at 03:53PM Nov 29, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[2]

2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference

I'll be going to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, to be held at UNC in January.  If you're interested in science blogging and will be in the area, please consider attending.  From the site:  "This is a free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web."  Have a look at the site for more details. 

Should be interesting to meet some others in the area who have actual science blogs, instead of my random science news observations (on topics sometimes decades old). 

Posted at 02:26PM Oct 30, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[3]

Peer-reviewed journals: only for l33t researchers?

From a discussion of the traditional peer-review process in scientific journals.  The Public Library of Science is launching an open access journal called PLoS ONE with a new kind of peer-review model.  (Nature's doing someting similar.)  Instead of painstaking pre-publication review by qualified colleagues and researchers in the field (i.e., peers), they're trying this:

Articles published in the new journal will undergo peer review, but some of the standard criteria that older journals use to screen out articles--like "degree of advance" or "interest to a general reader"--won't be used by PLoS ONE reviewers; all papers of scientific merit will be posted to the public record...A more public review process will continue after publication, as readers will be able to rate, annotate, and comment on papers, and authors can respond to their comments. The original paper will remain as such, but comments, revisions, and updates will orbit nearby, an electronic Talmud on every article of significance.

It's an interesting Web 2.0 approach: just get it online, and let the masses sort it out.  Of course, it's not without its drawbacks:

It is easy to believe, in reading the plans for this new publication, that it truly represents "the first step" in a wonderful "revolution" (as the Public Library of Science puts it). But it is worth remembering that gates and gatekeepers serve the important function of keeping out barbarians; it would be regrettable if the world of science journals came to suffer the sort of "trolling" and "flaming" so common today in comments on blogs and Internet discussion boards. It would be unfortunate if the deliberate, measured character of scientific research and discourse were lost to a culture of speed, hype, and quick-hit comments.

Flaming is certainly a concern: ever been to a conference where petty arguments *didn't* break out and go on way too long at some point?  And you don't have to spend much time on internet message boards and community sites to get a feel for what happens when you give the wrong people (a) a forum to express their opinions, no matter how banal, and (b) anonymity.  Imagine a world where dissertations are published online by freshly doctorated researchers, only to be met with comments like "OMG n00b!!!!1!!"

Posted at 10:57AM Sep 28, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[1]

Nine Lives Extravaganza

Miss your cat?  Get it back!

As near as I can tell, this is for serious, although it's clearly the most insane thing I've seen in a long time...prior to euthanization, you can pay $895 to have Genetic Savings & Clone Inc. take a biopsy sample and save it in their PetBank for $100 a year.  ($1395 for the premium service--extra samples taken and the option to have the procedure done on recently-deceased pets.)  Then, for a mere $32,000, they'll clone your cat, delivering you a new kitten with the exact genetic traits of your beloved feline pal.  (At present, this service isn't available for dogs.)

Wow.  I had no idea such a thing existed, at any price.  I won't get into the ethics of cloning (their site makes some effort to do so) but I can't help but feel like they're preying on people's grief.  And actually, just grieving people with a lot of extra money on their hands.  Not that I want to put any price on a pet, which is often entirely a member of your family.  But $32,000 could go a very long ways in the hands of the Humane Society or ASPCA.  Speaking of which, they have any number of kittens and cats that you can adopt today, rather than burning a fortune on a clone.  This is exceedingly wasteful extravagance.

Posted at 11:34AM Sep 15, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[5]

Science prevails

I'm something of a NOAA National Hurricane Center addict now that I live in hurricane country.  I mean, if you crave hurricane danger, it's hardly like living in Florida or even closer to the coast.  But I grew up in Montana, where hurricanes are strictly confined to television.

I like to read the forecast discussions in particular when a storm is developing.  Not that I follow a lot of the meteorological reasoning, but you can get some details about the storm's progress outside of just the forecasts and warnings.  One paragraph today struck me, in discussion about Tropical Storm Florence, which has failed to organize and develop the way that many of the models have predicted.  Yet the forecaster is still confident (emphasis mine):

NOTE: LAST TWO VISIBLE SATELLITE IMAGES PRIOR TO SENDING THIS
ADVISORY SUGGESTS THAT THE CLOUD PATTERN IS A LITTLE BETTER
ORGANIZED AND THE CENTER APPEARS TO BE TUCKED INTO THE CONVECTION.
IF THIS TREND TOWARD ORGANIZATION CONTINUES...SCIENCE WILL HAVE PREVAILED.

This is signed at the end by Forecaster Avila, whose brief wikipedia page highlights his other forecasting greatest hits.  I guess I'm just always surprised when there's any levity in these discussions.  The all-caps type (and often, the warnings of impending weather catastrophe) are otherwise so serious...

Posted at 02:19PM Sep 08, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

Powers of observation

A quick science test from Richard Muller's terrific book Nemesis (which I'll discuss more soon):

***

He pulled out the large, red-bound Snowbird Conference Proceedings.  In it was a map of the eighty-eight known impact craters on the Earth.  "You'll notice that most of them are in Europe and North America.  Can you guess why?" 

I thought of rotations of the Earth, but had no luck in figuring out why impacts would be more likely in the Northern Hemisphere.  Walt didn't let me waste time for long.  He said, "Because that is where the most geologists live."

***

Posted at 04:59PM Aug 02, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[1]

Look! Do you hear that?

Of all the ways to revive this blog, I'm going to do it with an internet quiz.

But wait!  It's a pretty fascinating one, and like many other entries in this journal, is a vague application of the "madder" sciences.

So there's this new trend in cell-phonery wherein teenagers are using ringtones that take advantage of their aging instructors' deteriorated hearing.  They use ultra-high-pitched sounds: they can hear the tones, their teachers can't.  (MSNBC article <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13274669/">here</a>.)

Of course this works the other way around, too.  In fact, this idea was originally applied to <em>disperse</em> teenagers, not give them a way to foil their elders.  <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2006/04/04/mosquito_sound_wave_feature.shtml">Here's an example of a theater in the UK</a> where the same sounds that adults are blissfully ignorant about can serve as "youth repellent" to keep unwanted teenagers away.

Use the link below to find out how old your ears are.  I'm nearly 30, but am pleased to report that my hearing still rivals a 20-year-old:

<table width='350' border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 align=center><tr><td bgcolor='#AABBAA' align=center style='font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;'><div id='head'>You are about 20 years old</div></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor='#EEFFEE' style='font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 12pt; border: 1px; border-color:AABBAA;'><div id='text'>The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones.<br /><br />The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is <a href='http://media.ultrasonic-ringtones.com/tones/16746.mp3'>16.7kHz</a></div></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor='#CCDDCC' style='font-family: Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 12pt;'><a href='http://www.ultrasonic-ringtones.com/'>Take the mosquito ringtones hearing test</a></td></tr></table>

Posted at 12:21PM Jul 21, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[3]

Simulate healthy Los Angelesian air right in your home!

Turns out those snazzy air purifiers (such as those that sell here for several hundred dollars apiece) actually generate harmful levels of ozone:

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html

Whoops!

Posted at 01:05PM May 10, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  | 

Science!

Me:  I'm the Physical and Mathematical Sciences reference librarian here at the DH Hill Library.

The Science! blog: I'll probably use this space for science reference, science fact, science fiction, and other things as they seem useful and/or interesting.

Also: There is a Physical and Engineering Sciences blog maintained at the library for the latest news and information: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/pes/

Finally: If you're reading this today, May 1, you should be outside.  It's gorgeous.

Posted at 01:03PM May 01, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[2]