Science 2.0

Amelia Carolina Sparavigna in the department of physics of  Politecnico di Torino says she has discovered geoglyphs, essentially earthwork graphic designs carved into the landscape, near Lake Titicaca is in the Andes Mountains on the border of Peru and Bolivia.And she did it using Google.You may not be able to see it so clearly but time and wear would certainly have made geoglyphs less obvious, though how and why anyone would have made them is also not obvious - unless they were insuring some deity or another could see something more interesting than farmers when they looked down.

Astronomers are certainly not strangers to manipulating public relations through mass media - they write reasonable papers and then encourage the press to go nuts with it.   Witness the recent arXiv paper by Vogt, Butler, et al on Gliese 581g, should it even exist, which reads

This article has basically nothing to do with baseball or Barry Zito's curveball so you can stop reading if that is your interest - or check out  The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Fastest A Pitcher Can Throw?The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Farthest Home Run (And Did Mickey Mantle Hit It)?Does A Curveball In Baseball Really Break?

"Anti-science" or "cautious" ... how you regard skeptics of positions that are ethically or scientifically subjective is often a matter of how you already believe.   If you are a Republican concerned about the ethical implications of human embryonic stem cell research, whole books can be written on how Republicans hate science.   But if you are in astronomy and have watched every program started during the Bush years get gutted since Democrats took control of Congress, you might think Democrats hate Congress(1) more.  In reality there are legitimate issues involved and it is up to policy makers to navigate them.

The discovery of Gliese 581g was cause for rampant hype almost everywhere but here, along with some rather ridiculous claims that there was a 100% chance of life there.The actual paper authors were more reserved, though astronomy is far bolder than biology in terms of its participants hyping findings and generally physics is pretty reserved (exception: LHC claims when it was being funded and built - now that the marketing is over, the call for perspective has set in) outside dark matter and dark energy, where anything goes.

NPR, National Public Radio, is in a tough spot - they are constantly accused of liberal bias (and, let's be honest, they have never done a story on how taxes hurt poor people or how much better the environment is than 40 years ago, so there is something to that perception (1)) and no one who gets taxpayer money likes being a political football and having people in government asking what they do with the money but that is the price of taking government money.

I am on a diet, to the delight of my impossibly chic wife, who has no problem at all eating cake and pasta in front of me while I consume bland chicken.I had assumed that my increasing weight was due to eating too much and no exercise but a new Université de Montréal study says it is my job doing it to me.  Whew.  I dodged a bullet there.Regardless, in two weeks I will be back where I want and if it is true that workplace related obesity is real, my job took four years to make me a weight I did not want so four weeks is not so bad to suffer.

I have to be honest, if a casual question arose like 'who would you believe on science topics, Michael Shermer or Lady Gaga?' I would side with Shermer.I know, I know, that is a vicious stereotype and I haven't read every single thing Lady Gaga has said regarding science, some of which might be correct, and then compared it to every speculation someone might have overheard Shermer say somewhere, which might have been incorrect - and because I have not been able to do that sort of comparison, some fringe pseudo-science apostates will claim it is entirely possible that Lady Gaga knows more about cell phones than Michael Shermer and therefore I am big ol' repressive science media if I do not give them equal time.   So here I go.

Living in California now, I follow my third 'home' team in my life.   Growing up in Vero Beach, FL I was (and remain) a Dodgers fan because they held spring training there for 60 years.   As an adult living in Pittsburgh I was (and remain) a Pirates fan because they were the new home team.  

We've had any number of discussions about the changing face of academic research given the fact that we keep being told America doesn't do enough science education but there aren't enough jobs in research to go around.With success in an ever-more competitive post-doctoral environment requiring more excellent science than ever to achieve the next step, it's not a surprise some will boost their standing by holding others back.

"So did you watch "Big Trouble In Little China?"  I asked Patrick.   He did, he replied, while coding away."So you saw what I mean.  Chinese people got a lot of Hells, which is bad, but at least they're apparently easy to find.   Western religion has just one, but good luck locating it.   In that movie they just go under some old guy's house and there it is and they get to fight Raiden(1) and stuff and save the world.   If I want to find Hell, I am stuck going into "Revelations" and that isn't much help at all."

In the wake of the Pepsigate scandal at Scienceblogs.com and the departure of some two dozen bloggers, a variety of companies decided to capitalize on the disarray and start their own blogging networks - PLoS started a blog network for outside contributors, as did Wired and soon Nature Publishing Group will tackle it one more time at Scientific American.