• Welcome to the Blog Carnival Index
  Blog Carnival Index: 3838 editions of 313 carnivals as I link this. It feels like too many already, but with literally millions of blogs I guess there’s plenty of room for more carnivals. One more facet of the Intarweb Big Question: what to do with all this information?
• Bitch PhD: custom bras
  This link is for the spouse. The spouse!!! (Marked this blog post not the Julianna Rae site because several other options are mentioned in comments.)
• Caveat Lector » Random thought
  “Unlike many open-access advocates, I admit openly to being anti-for-profit-journal-publisher. I worked for a service bureau. I saw those folks at their stupidest and worst. I want no part of ’em. Don’t trust ’em. I’m glad when they do the right thing, because I’m glad when anybody does the right thing, but if what I do hurts ’em, there will be no crocodile tears from me on their account.”
• Hunter S. Thompson and the Myth of Objectivity – frassle
  Damn, jd doesn’t write much, but when he does it’s worth reading.
• Great-Grandmother gets “do not resuscitate” tattoo.
  This is great:
  

  Eighty-year-old Mary Wohlford has informed family members of her wishes should she ever become incapacitated. She also has signed a living will that hangs on the side of her refrigerator. But the retired nurse and great-grandmother now believes she has removed all potential for confusion. She had the words “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” tattooed on her chest. […] Said Wohlford: “I don’t believe in lawyers too much.”

  Now that’s a tough old lady — and she may not have solved the problem but she has certainly focused some attention on it. Kudos. (via)

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• HousingZone.com – A Zero Energy Home – 5/1/2006 – CA6332828
  Good news: “Ideal Homes built the first zero energy home in the country priced under $200,000. The modest one-story, three-bedroom, two bathroom home produces as much energy as it consumes in a year, achieving net zero energy consumption.” It’s 1650 sq ft, plus (?) a 2-car garage. I wonder what they could do with 1200 sq ft, no garage? (via rebecca blood)
• The Observer | Magazine | Give me a shelter
  Profile/interview: WorldChanging/AfH’s Cameron Sinclair.
• Creek Running North: Fuck your civility
  Fuckin’ amen. Chris Clarke: “I have decided I no longer trust anyone who insists on others being civil. The bumper sticker from ten years ago said “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” That needs updating. If you’re not outraged, then you’ve decided that the suffering that exists in the world is just fine with you, as long as you don’t feel it. And if you’ve decided that, you don’t deserve civility.”
• Model purge on anorexics makes weight vital statistic – World – Times Online
  Some sense at last. “LEADING figures in Israel’s fashion industry, alarmed by the number of young women suffering from bulimia or anorexia, are supporting a move to ensure models have “normal”, healthy figures.”
• BBC – Radio 3 – Discovering Music Archive
  Shame about the rm format.
• stardust holiday :: the NASA bedrest project (v5 stripey goodness)
  What else would you do during 3 months’ enforced bed rest, except blog? Via Matt.
• we*heart*prints
  “a compilation of beautiful, affordable art prints”
• Majikthise : Polanski, the Academy, and rape
  Great thread on art and ethics, taking off from the example of acknowledged great director and convicted child rapist Roman Polanski, and the question of whether we ought morally to refuse to watch his movies.
• Prozac’s target revealed
  Prozac treatment specifically stimulates the generation of “amplifying neural progenitors” — the second step in the neurogenesis pathway from stem cells to mature neurons.
• Alas, a blog: the Chris Bliss Diss
  Amp liked Garfield’s routine; I think it’s kinda boring. Mad props for skill, but boring to watch — and Garfield is kind of an ass.
• Robert J Lang: Origami
  Amazing origami. I particularly like the bronzes as a way of rendering the paper art permanent.
• photo-eye | Explore Art Photography
  More galleries from photo-eye.
• Don Hong-Oai: 2 portfolios at photo-eye
  These are extraordinary: toned silver gelatin prints made with multiple negatives in the style of classical Chinese painting.
• White Hat
  “dude, sorry to put this here but i felt the need to warn you that sharing the root of your C drive is a bit silly.”

A bunch of links about open access/open science/collaboration:

• Peter Suber: 6 things every scholar should know about OA
• Peter Suber: What you can do to promote open access
• Effect of open access on citation impact: a bibliography of studies
  From the Open Citation Project. Via Stevan Harnad.
• Caveat Lector » Open Access
  Self-described “repository-rat” Dorothea Salo’s “open access” blog category. An eye-opener for someone like me, coming to OA from a researcher’s point of view.
• Caveat Lector » How are we doing?
  “…I’m probably the wrong person to ask whether open access will fly. Still–I think the world will change in our direction. Utopia, certainly not. An entirely open-access landscape, certainly not. A world where many more people have unfettered access to much more research and scholarship–yes. I think we’ll get there. Here’s why I think that.” Via Suber.
• E-LIS – Taking Stock of Open Access: Progress and Issues
  Abstract: Purpose — Aims to provide a broad overview of some of the issues emerging from the growth in Open Access publishing, with specific reference to the use of repositories and Open Access journals. Design/methodology/approach — A viewpoint paper largely based on specific experience with institutional repositories and the internationally run E-LIS archive. Findings — The Open Access Initiative is dramatically transforming the process of scholarly communication bringing great benefits to the academic world with an, as yet, uncertain outcome for commercial publishers. Practical implications — Outlines the benefits of the Open Access movement with reference to repositories and Open Access journals, to authors and readers alike, and gives some food for thought on potential barriers to the complete permeation of the Open Access model, such as copyright restrictions and version control issues. Some illustrative examples of country-specific initiatives and the international E-LIS venture are given. Originality/value — An attempt to introduce general theories and practical implications of the Open Access movement to those largely unfamiliar with the movement. Via Suber, of course.
• Mark Elliott on Stigmergic Collaboration — CooperationCommons
  “As stigmergy is a method of communication in which individuals communicate with one another by modifying their local environment, it is a logical extension to apply the term to many types (if not all) of Web-based communication, especially media such as the wiki. The concept of stigmergy therefore provides an intuitive and easy-to-grasp theory for helping understand how disparate, distributed, ad hoc contributions could lead to the emergence of the largest collaborative enterprises the world has seen.”
• Public Knowledge Project
  “The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative located at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University on the west coast of Canada. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through innovative online environments.”

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• Did DNA Come From Viruses?
  Do viruses predate cells, and was the first DNA viral?
• Adventures in Ethics and Science: Plagiarism and Podcasts.
  Call me a Luddite, but I hate podcasts. If I wanted my computer to make noise, I’d lick my finger and rub the monitor.
• Roddick Targets Nestlé after Corporate ‘Sell-Out’
  To put it in the idiom Roddick so consciously adopts: lying slag.
• 3QD: brains and computers.
  A very readable introduction to computer hardware architecture, its relationship to actual computing, and some ideas about brain function that arise from computer methodologies. This is the third of three parts, Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.
• Cool Tool: Forearm Forklift
  I want a set of these for next time we have to move that bloody cabinet.
• How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
  I really should give this a try.
• Hanzi Smatter 一知半解
  Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture.
• The Conservative Nanny State
  “In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes — decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.” Baker also runs the blog Beat The Press, and came up with interesting ideas about how best to divide govt spending between Big Pharma subsidies and NIH research support. The book is available as a free download; see chapter 5 for the reasoning.
• one red paperclip
  “My name is Kyle MacDonald and I am trying to trade one red paperclip for a house. I started with one red paperclip on July 12th, 2005 and I am making a series of trades for bigger or better things. My current item up for trade is one afternoon with Alice Cooper.” On Kyle’s site, you can trace the trade history from one red paperclip to an afternoon with the King of Shock Rock. Brilliant. (Via rebecca blood.)
• The Open Knowledge Foundation – The Open Knowledge Foundation – Home Page
  “A technological revolution has created immense opportunities for increased and more equitable access to knowledge, as well as for its collaborative development. But we are yet to realize much of this potential, and in order to do so two main challengges must be met. First, we must to develop the tools and the institutions to take advantage of these new possibilities for the creation and distribution of knowledge. Second, we must ensure that these opportunities are not eliminated by the ever increasing proprietization of knowledge as individuals and corporations seek to fence off knowledge for the sake of short term profit. The Open Knowledge Foundation exists to address these challenges by promoting the openness of knowledge in all its forms, in the belief that greater access to information will have far-reaching social and commercial benefits.”
• Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog » Blog Archive » The Four Principles of (Open) Knowledge Development
  “Open knowledge means porting much more of the open source stack than just the idea of open licensing. It is about porting many of the processes and tools that attach to the open development process — the process enabled by the use of an open approach to knowledge production and distribution.”
• The Argument For Computational Open Access | Science Commons
  “As the scholarly literature moves to digital form, what is actually needed to move beyond a system that just replicates all of our assumptions that this literature is only read, and read only by human beings, one article at a time? What is needed to permit the creation of digital libraries hosting these materials that moves beyond the “incunabular” view of the literature, to use Greg Crane’s very provocative recent characterization. What is needed to allow the application of computational technologies to extract new knowledge, correlations and hypotheses from collections of scholarly literature?”
• Paper Sculpture – a photoset on Flickr
  No scissors. No kidding.
• TheStar.com – The plight of the orphan space
  Orphan space rejuvenation, what a great idea. I’ve seen some neighborhoods in Portland do this sort of thing.

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• Uncommon Places
  From Dana Doyle’s review:
  

  In the late 1960’s William Eggleston subverted photographic tradition by embracing color film and irregular compositions reminiscent of snapshots. The prints I have seen by Eggleston (which include many of his iconic images now traveling in an exhibit titled “Los Alamos”), lose their resolution when you get within a few feet.2 The fuzziness of the print echoes the implication of amateur work already knowingly signified, at the time, by color film and the snapshot aesthetic. Shore’s prints, less than half the size of Eggleston’s, are meticulously crisp in comparison. In his Uncommon Places, Shore tweaks Eggleston’s subversion: he similarly embraces color film and vernacular subject matter, however he brings the full arsenal of traditional photographic craft to bear on what was popularly considered unworthy subject matter for the art photographer.

  There’s more than nostalgia to Shore’s photos; it’s not just that he’s taking photos that you (feel you) could have taken. Look at “Merced River”, for instance: is that not every afternoon anyone ever spent by any river? The very ordinariness of the scenes combines with the high-quality images and sneaky formal underpinnings of the compositions to create both immediacy and timelessness. Or something. This shit is hard to write about.

• | SPARC | SPARC Resources |
  Yet another “I have no excuse” link: SPARC has collected everything I need to start writing about open access.
• Airline Pilot Central – FedEx arrivals during Thunderstorms
  I like the way the little dots — they’re planes, but I was thinking of ants with a parasol in one hand and a package under the other arm — make their way around the storm, then scatter to all points when it finally hits the airport. It’s actually a very impressive demonstration of what air traffic controllers do. (Hi, John!)
• american atheist or agnostic | Ask MetaFilter
  This is something AskMeFi is really good at — lots of little windows into other people’s lives. In this case, do atheists/agnostics in the US feel discriminated against?
• Bitch Ph.D.: The Hooker Resurgence
  My ancestors were fishermen. Fishermen, damn you. But I do like “prostiboots” and especially “Fornigate”.
• Surname Profiler
  It appears that my surname arose in London sometime before 1880. Or, you know, maybe not. But this thing is kinda fun.
• Cole/Weisberg Correspondence on Hitchens
  Jacob Weisberg: “In my judgment, there is no ethical issue here.” Note to self: never trust anything published in Slate.
• How Opal Got Openly Despised / Take perverse joy in the downfall of that plagiarist teen author? Can you flip that upside down?
  Once again, Mark Morford is right; his is the best take I’ve seen on the Viswanathan incident, bar none: “Deserved or not, Viswanathan’s success and even her stunning failure are excellent motivators by which to pinch and flip around and strip naked your relationship to accomplishment. Is it all about envy and bitter Schadenfreude, or exultation and lessons learned? From where do you draw your sustenance?”
• Open Access News
  Nature has released the API for Connotea. Sooner or later, I’m gonna have to learn to program for the web.
• Being a mom could be a 6-figure job
  I usually think salary.com overinflates everything, but these don’t look much inflated to me. “Salary.com determined that a stay-at-home mother might be paid as much as $134,121 for her contributions as a housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, janitor and CEO, among other functions. (See full list at right.) The stay-at-home mothers surveyed said they logged a total of 92 hours a week performing those jobs. The market valuation for working mothers — who make up close to 70 percent of all mothers with kids under 18 — comes to $85,876, assuming a 50-hour week in the Mom role. That would be on top of whatever salary a working mother draws from her job outside the home, working 44 hours.”
• Isaac Laquedem: Endorsements I: Ted Wheeler and Lonnie Roberts
  Lonnie Roberts is a homophobic scumbag, and I wouldn’t write him in as a candidate to shovel shit.
• ARCHITECTURE AND THE MAIL
  Neat idea: “We will produce a series of 1000 unique postcards, each depicting a single unpublished image from a relatively unknown designer, and we will send them to a selected group of 1000 influential architects, urbanists, academics, curators, journalists, and critics, who will have the opportunity to respond. Our hope is that we will receive images from all over the world and our plan is to randomly disseminate these images back out into a global context, making unlikely connections, and creating unforeseen acquaintanceships. While this is admittedly a utopian proposal, our aim is to connect fresh ideas with those individuals who contribute to the development of independent careers in architecture. ”

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• The Priory Of Sion – CBS News
  “”I am not a naive innocent who was hoaxed by Monsieur Plantard and Cherisey. No, I am a very, very careful researcher,” says Lincoln. ” Bwahahahaha!
• Informed Comment
  Hoo boy, Juan Cole is pissed. I sent Slate this:
  

  Dear Slate, if you want to retain a shred of credibility, you must provide Prof Juan Cole with a forum in which he can reply directly to Christopher Hitchens’ ill-considered and underhanded attack on him (see here).
  I understand (from Prof Cole, among others) that Hitchens was once a fine journalist. However true that may be, and however laudable may be your loyalty to him, with this latest attack Hitchens has crossed a line that no reputable publication dare cross with him.

• Great Plant Picks
  “Great Plant Picks is an educational awards program committed to building a comprehensive palette of outstanding plants for Pacific Northwest gardens. Awards are based on the combined expertise of over forty horticulturists from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Great Plant Picks originates at the Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Washington, and provides a forum for sharing horticultural information with the wider gardening community.”
• The Common Cold – The Scientific Indian
  Selba has a code doo.
• Flags and Lollipops – Bioinformatics Blog: Commenting on papers
  BioMedCentral has a comments page for each paper, Nature has a blog, and now Cell has comments for selected papers as well. Eee!
• Digby’s right, we should just flat-out buy them. Cheaper by the dozen I bet.
  “Since I see little hope that the system is going to be reformed, it occurs to me that we liberals should just hire ourselves some lobbyists. Really. We spend many, many millions on political campaigns that get us zilch. Nada. We should just raise funds to buy congressmen yachts or send them to Australia on vacation or hire their wives at 5 grand a month to survey what congressmen like for dinner. These guys go cheap when you really think about it. They’ll do pretty much anything you want for a golfing trip. We’d actually save money just by buying them all French commodes. In exchange we get them to vote for national health care and legal gay marriage and a $15.00 minimum wage. “
• sudanreeves.org :: Sudan Research, Analysis, and Advocacy
  Darfur. Horrible.
• So what can I do?: Make trade fair.
  From Karama Neal’s excellent blog, a list of fair trade clearinghouses that enable the consumer to make informed ethical choices.
• SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Guardian | Hard to swallow
  Researchers at the University of Chicago have calculated the relative carbon intensity of a standard vegan diet in comparison to a US-style carnivorous diet, all the way through from production to processing to distribution to cooking and consumption. An average burger man (that is, not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to trade in your conventional gas-guzzler for a state of the art Prius hybrid, your CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year.
• Women’s Bioethics Blog
  I figure we should include science/bioethics blogs in any list of “science blogs”.
• ResourceShelf
  Society and Religion–Resource Round-Up
• Plushy Bugs!
  We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes—only a million times actual size! Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, Stomach Ache, Cough, Ear Ache, Bad Breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete’s Foot, Ulcer, Martian Life, Beer & Bread, Black Death, Ebola, Flesh Eating, Sleeping Sickness, Dust Mite, Bed Bug, and Bookworm (and in our Professional line: H.I.V. and Hepatitis).

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• jwz – pwn3d
  jwz: “It’s a fuckin’ gag. It’s not a bad one. But couching it in terms like “this work” just makes me want to punch him in the junk.”
• Rubber Cat!
  Mutation in sphynx line creates true hairless cat breed. These things are seriously freaky looking, and would make great aliens on a TV show or movie.
• Salon.com Technology | The corporate toll on the Internet
  On net neutrality; recommended by rafe.
• Majikthise : Got plans for May Day?
  Lindsay asks the question I’ve been wondering about: why so little coverage in the sinister blogosphere of the May Day protests? Some really good discussion in the comments; bottom line seems to be “immigration law is hard“.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money: Why Not Then?
  In which I ask LFM to stop using “pussy” for “coward”.
• Hugo Schwyzer: Words, words, words.
  This is the post to link when asking someone to stop using “pussy” for “coward”.
• Follow Me Here… : The Granny Peace Brigade
  “Eighteen ‘grannies’ who were swept up by the New York City police, handcuffed, loaded into police vans and jailed for four and a half hours were acquitted yesterday of charges that they blocked the entrance to the military recruitment center in Times Square when they tried to enlist. […] The women call their group the Granny Peace Brigade and said they wanted to join the armed forces and thus offer their lives for those of younger soldiers in Iraq.” Eliot is right, acts of nonviolent civil disobedience should be widely celebrated. Such acts require great courage and selflessness, and are the only way to give to the word “patriotism” meaning that does not stink of prejudice.
• GENERIC RATIONALE AND MODEL FOR UNIVERSITY OPEN ACCESS SELF-ARCHIVING MANDATE – Open Access Archivangelism
  Now I have no further excuse: I must start agitating for mandated IR deposits where I work. Prof Harnad has done all the heavy lifting for me: evidence, argument, methodology, all of it.
• Open Access News: how to get faculty to use institutional repositories
  “One of the biggest challenges for academic librarians is getting faculty to deposit their articles into the university’s institutional repository (IR), assuming there is one, of course.” I hate the “appeal to their ego” idea, there’s too much damn ego in science already, but I really should be trying to get Shriner’s research to set up an IR.
• blog.bioethics.net — clinical trials in India
  “[it is nonsense to] focus so much attention on the tiny trial of Parexel in Britain, which injured six people, while two million Indian patients, almost all of whom are poor, almost none of whom have any real health care at all, and none of whom will be empowered to sue anybody, are enrolled (by 2010, according to estimates quoted in the BBC story) in clinical trials”
• TICU
  “The Tactical Ice Cream Unit (TICU) rolls through the city in an act of intervention that replaces cold stares with frosty treats and nourishing knowledge. Combining a number of successful activist strategies (Food-Not-Bombs, Copwatch, Indymedia, infoshops, etc) into one mega-mobile, the TICU is the Voltron-like alter-ego of the cops’ mobile command center. Although the TICU appears to be a mild-mannered vending vehicle, it harbors a host of high-tech surveillance devices including a 12-camera video surveillance system, acoustic amplifiers, GPS, satellite internet, a media transmission studio capable of disseminating live audio/video, and of course, ice cream. With every free ice cream handed out, the sweet-toothed citizenry also receives printed information developed by local progressive groups.” Via WorldChanging.
• Two Open Access Books on Open Access – Open Access Archivangelism
• treppenwitz: Fred Basci
  Stories are how we tell ourselves who we are. Go read this one. Thanks to Naze for linking it.
• Peoples Archive
  Peoples Archive is dedicated to collecting for posterity the stories of the great thinkers, creators, and achievers of our time. The people whose stories you see on this site are leaders of their field, whose work has influenced and changed our world.
• Hey look, I got a translation credit.
  Someone mistyped, or didn’t read my copyanything notice. There’s a line missing.
• dataisnature.com
  Art + science = pretty!
• Sunlight Foundation
  As in, the best disinfectant. Looks good.

Conversations: I talk too much:

• OBACHAN’S SCRIBBLES: I’M TIRED…
• Terra Sigillata: Medical wikipedia – Peter Frishauf responds
• rc3.org: Giving presentations
  Ah, presentations. How I hate them. Mostly because I do not prepare adequately, so wind up doing a half-assed job. Yes, I am a moron. There are some good suggestions in comments.
• Adventures in Ethics and Science: Uninvited nest update.
  In which the fate of the baby birds is revealed. I’m the commenter JS mentions.
• Science and Politics: Connotea, anyone?
• Dr. Ian’s Gibson’s Paradoxical Historic Role in the Transition to Open Access – Open Access Archivangelism
• Adventures in Ethics and Science: A call for advice: nest relocation?
  In which I prevail upon JS to give the baby birds a Free Ride.
• The Daily Transcript: What’s your h-index?
  An interesting, but I think not very good, alternative to raw citation data as a means of comparing the impact of a researcher’s body of work on the field.
• Adventures in Ethics and Science: A poetry-writing chemist for National Poetry Month
  Wish I’d thought of this theme ahead of time. Maybe next year.
• Uncertain Principles: Uncertain Pop Quiz
  
  It’s… disheartening to see how (heh!) uncertain everyone (including me) is about measurement precision and accuracy. Here, test yourself:

  Imagine that you are doing a physics lab to measure the velocity of a small projectile. After making a bunch of measurements to four significant figures, and doing a bunch of arithmetic, you get a value of 4.371928645 m/s. After yet more gruelling math, you find the uncertainty associated with this number to be 0.0316479825 m/s. How do you report this result?

  A) 4.371928645 +/- 0.0316479825 m/s

  B) 4.372 +/- 0.03165 m/s

  C) 4.372 +/- 0.032 m/s

  D) 4.37 +/- 0.03 m/s

  E) Some other answer that I will explain in comments.

• Uncertain Pop Quiz Results
  In which all is revealed. I’m sticking with my answer; the Departmental rule is fine, but I like my (imo) less-arbitrary rule better.

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• Conversations: I’ve been yapping up a storm over at Dr Free-Ride’s place:
  
  Adventures in Ethics and Science: Authorship, guests, and irony.
  Adventures in Ethics and Science: Poetry (a poem for National Poetry Month)
  Adventures in Ethics and Science: “The Real Science Ethics Issues”
• Hullabaloo: How Would A Patriot Act?
  Digby has had a good idea: let’s send a copy of Glenn Greenwald’s new book to every single congresscritter. If not the Repubs, then at least all the Dems. They need it.
• The 2006 Photobloggies
  Marked mainly so I don’t forget to go check out the nominees. I’ll nominate Chromasia, though, and maybe a couple of the others from my blogroll if there are suitable categories.
• Wholesome Goodness.: Elsewhere
  Blogroll by logo. Would be fun to do one of these.
• Unphotographable: a text account of pictures missed
  This is a picture I did not take…
• YouTube – Bambi Meets Godzilla
  The first version I saw was a full-colour professional-quality rip-off, but this is the original. Still funny.
• Most common English words | Ask MetaFilter
  Someone else had the idea of getting a head start on a new language by focusing on common words/simplified vocab. I pointed ’em to Basic English.
• Bitch PhD: For once, I disagree with Prof B.
  Fashion magazines suck. Irredeemably.
• Now this is really disappointing
  From an interview with the Dalai Lama: “Although he is known for his tolerant, humane views, he is a surprisingly harsh critic of homosexuality. If you are a Buddhist, he says, it is wrong. “Full stop. No way round it. “A gay couple came to see me, seeking my support and blessing. I had to explain our teachings. Another lady introduced another woman as her wife – astonishing. It is the same with a husband and wife using certain sexual practices. Using the other two holes is wrong.”” Hey, DL? Fuck you.
• Science and Politics: Linky Love
  Bora provides a good roundup of science blogs.
• Uncertain Principles: Thank You for Grief-Pimping
  That fucking 9/11 film.

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• qwer.us
  Free online to-do list management.
• Kite Aerial Photography by Scott Haefner | Panoramas How-to
  Awesome: 360-degree panoramas! “Only two images are needed to create these panoramas. I take one looking straight down from the kite using a simple rig, and a second looking straight up from the ground. Both images are shot with a circular fisheye lens that has a 180 degree view (Nikon FC-E9). You can think of it as if each image contains a “hemisphere” of information” Via.
• Future of Computing: Web focus : Nature
  Nature web focus Special: “In the last two decades advances in computing technology, from processing speed to network capacity and the internet, have revolutionized the way scientists work. From sequencing genomes to monitoring the Earth’s climate, many recent scientific advances would not have been possible without a parallel increase in computing power – and with revolutionary technologies such as the quantum computer edging towards reality, what will the relationship between computing and science bring us over the next 15 years?”
• Browse Blogs – postgenomic.com
  Together with Bora’s roundup, a compendium of science related blogs. Also, eatonweb. Q: canonical list on a wiki somewhere?
• O’Reilly Radar > Supernova 2005: Attention
  “Continuous partial attention. Dan Gould: “I quit every social network I was on so I could have dinner with people.” The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus. In this new area, experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive. Trusted filters, trusted protectors, trusted concierge, human or technical, removing distractions and managing boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections, that make us feel secure, are the opportunity for the next generation.” There really is a Next Big Thing in these ideas, I’m convinced. Via Selva.
• Home Page of Dr. Eitan Bachmat
  “I am the world’s worst storage systems researcher. This is not surprising given the fact that I don’t know anything about operating systems and file systems in particular. Instead of doing experiments I perform thought experiments. I can’t program. I like working with models from the 60’s even though they are regarded by nearly the entire community as being completely useless. I myself admit that they are completely inaccurate. I am also probably the only researcher who insists on considering serial workloads in which only a single I/O is sent at a given time, preferably with ample time between them. I also like to consider performance related problems which I know in advance to have no application. I have come to be a systems researcher because I was a terrible mathematician. To summarize my relations with mathematics, I love mathematics, it does not love me back. Given this situation I had to leave this relationship at some point. As revenge, I am exploiting mathematics in my new role as a systems researcher. This has not added to my popularity in the systems world.” Something tells me Dr Bachmat is actually pretty good at what he does. Via.
• Adventures in Ethics and Science: Hierarchies of misconduct.
  Scientific misconduct = FFP: Fabrication (making shit up), Falsification (not a la Popper, but altering data) and Plagiarism. Is the latter a lesser offence? I say no.
• Rhosgobel: the Iraq Index
  Radagast points to the Iraq Index as a source of data on that beleaguered country. I don’t know anything about the Brookings Inst.
• Aetiology: Bikinis make macho men stupid
  Macho men are stupid long before any bikinis enter the equation.
• Terra Sigillata: Formerly proprietary natural products research database released in web version
  This is excellent news: Professor Norman R. Farnsworth of the University of Illinois at Chicago will release his group’s NAPRALERT database this week to open access.

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• Independent Lens . CHAVEZ RAVINE . The History of Chavez Ravine | PBS
  Until 1949, a poor, semi-rural community of Mexican/Americans existed just a few miles from downtown LA. Then, of course, it was torn down to make way for a sports stadium. I think I’d like to get the book that kept Chavez Ravine from being forgotten.
• GoVeg.com // Features // North America’s Most Vegetarian-Friendly Cities! // Portland, Oregon
  No surprise here. Pity they boost the appalling Veganopolis in the writeup though.
• The Martha Stewart of Japan :: Rebecca Blood
  I think the spousal unit owns Harumi’s book.
• Crooked Timber » » Summer Reading for Political Philosophy Students?
  Harry asks CT readers to suggest “papers from the past 30 years that you think everyone who wants to write a dissertation in the area of political philosophy reasonably broadly conceived should have read”.
• Interview: David Attenborough – Sunday Times – Times Online
  “The man is a wonder, a treasure. But, to be honest, he had me at Emmylou Harris.”
• Roadsworth Triumphant
  Update: Roadsworth got a $250 fine and 40 hours’ community service — artwork of his devising in The Plateau area of Montreal. Kudos to the city officials, and to Roadsworth’s supporters (esp. Chris Hand). Here’s how the Montreal Mirror covered the verdict, here’s a gallery of Roadsworth’s art, and here’s everything tagged “roadsworth” at Flickr (Yahoo, hiss, spit).
• The Semiotics of Media
  Introduction to semiotics and media studies.
• This Is Not Sex: A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose
  This is a superb photoessay on images of women and the male gaze. A must-read. Via. “When an accomplished, successful woman poses in this way, then, she is not at all signaling to others that she is actually subordinate. On the contrary, on the surface she is showing that she, too, can be successful in this arena, the arena where the goal is to attract and control the power of the gaze by striking a subordinate pose. And were this an occasional event, if we regularly saw images of women that were of a different sort, the effect might be innocuous.”
• AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Coke Is Death
  I’m pretty sure Coke doesn’t make the two sodas I like (Barg’s Root Beer, Squirt).
• Useful Chem Experiments 1
  This is wonderful: an online lab notebook for an entire lab. More like this!
• Useful Chemistry: sample search phrases
  Neat idea, using websearch to find problems in science that people are talking about online.
• WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Worldchanging Pledge/ Campaign Update
  An attempt to get together an impromptu pledge group in the comment thread.
• Fat Doctor
  That is, a doctor who is fat.
• I Hate Cilantro – an anti cilantro community
  “Welcome! You are visiting the web site of a growing community of cilantro haters. We are, however, rational people. In fact, we are the most rational people on earth. No normally functioning human being would ever in a lifetime consider cilantro edible.” I am greedier for Mexican food than a hobbit for mushrooms, so I’ve come to like cilantro. The spousal unit still avoids it though.
• Bora asks: Publishing hypotheses and data on a blog – is it going to happen on science blogs?
  See also.
• Save $200 in 2 minutes and have the worlds best writing pen
  Turn a $3 Pilot G2 into a superior writing instrument with Mont Blanc superspendypen refills. Think I’ll try this.

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• University of Evansville: Richard Wilbur Award
  I’d like to have all of these eventually, at least if the standard is even close to Stalling’s Archaic Smile.
• Science and Politics: what’s that PhD good for?
  Not much, according to many biomed researchers. See also recent threads at YoungFemaleScientist. Why is it that people who solve problems for a living are, apparently, not bringing their tools and expertise to bear on their own life/career problems?
• Warnock’s Dilemma – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Reason #1 is, of course, why no one ever comments on my blog.
• Zoho – Affordable software for individuals, small & medium business
  Free online apps: word processor, spreadsheet, personal planner, chat and html editor. Via.
• PLOrk: Princeton Laptop Orchestra
  “The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc…). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can we create? how can we physically control these sounds? how do we compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do we organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?”
• One Bag (all about packing, luggage, and travelling light)
  I’m pretty good at this already, but it never hurts to have more ideas.
• feh-muh-nist: But, you’re not fat!
  “There’s a short circuit in the brain that says someone we love cannot be fat which we hate, so we conclude that the person we love must not actually be fat. When someone says that they do not see a fat person as fat, they mean to be kind and complimentary. They mean something like, “I see you as like me” or “I don’t see you the way I see other fat people.” The problem with this is that aligns fat with something undesirable, offensive, and bad. “Other” fat people are sloppy, lazy, and bent on self-destruction, but not you! You, the fat friend, are different. You, despite your size, keep a tidy house, dress neatly, exercise, eat well, and are, in all other respects, like them.”
• Open Access News: What OA will make possible
  The indispensable Peter Suber and the annoying but valuable Stevan Harnad. Note to self: read this.
• Minimum Security: Bill Napoli is a douchebag
  I don’t usually approve of privacy invasions, even of the privacy of assholes, but in the case of Bill “raped and sodomized as bad as you can make it, plus she had to be a virgin to start with” Napoli, I’ll make an exception.
• AlterNet: WireTap: Tipping in America
  This article seems about right to me — I’d like to know what people working in service jobs think of it. Also, the average tip is ~19%? Is that among those who tip, or averaged across all diners? I suspect the former, but don’t have data.
• Informed Comment: Americana in Arabic
  Juan Cole: “Long-time readers know that as a result of the September 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent events, I decided a couple of years ago that something had to be done about the woeful lack of understanding between the United States and the Muslim world. There will always be differences, but there need not be differences based on ignorance or fantasy. The Arab world alone has a population of 300 million and a combined economy of some 1 trillion dollars a year.

  My response has been to found, with some colleagues, the Global Americana Institute, which aims, initially, at getting central works of American thought and history into Arabic. I think we also have to try to endow a chair at an Arabic-speaking university, but more on that later. It has taken a long time to get all the state and Federal permissions, but we are finally done. The Global Americana Institute is a fully recognized 501(c)3 charity, and donations are tax deductible. I am coming to the public with a plea to support us. We will, of course, also be approaching foundations and other funders, but I am hoping that this project is something that can garner grassroots support.”

• – – – the essence of rabbit – – –
  Bunny Mandala: 1500 bunnies from 500 artists. Via.
• Pink Tentacle
  Luminous squid! Pretty!
• Early Christian Writings: Introduction
  “The purpose of this web site is to set out all of the Christian writings that are believed to have been written in the first and second centuries, as well as a few selected from the early third. I have also included non-Christian documents that may have special bearing on the study of early Christianity in order to make this web site a comprehensive sourcebook. I have provided links to English translations for all of these documents. When available, the work has also been provided in the original language, usually Greek. I have also provided information and scholarly opinion regarding the background, authorship, dating, and provenance of these documents.”
• LiveScience.com – Poll: Everybody Else is Fat
  In a survey of 2,250 adults by the Pew Research Center, 90 percent of respondents say “most other Americans” are overweight. But only 39 percent see themselves as overweight, and only 70 percent said the people they know are overweight.
• Inhabitat
  Sweeeeeet: “a house that engineer, Paul Pedini, built with the design expertise of John Hong from Single Speed Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At a final cost of $150 per square foot, most of the materials for the house were free, minus the expenses to ship the materials (formerly I-93 off-ramps from the heart of the transportation artery through Boston,unofficially known as the “Big Dig”) to Lexington, MA”
• Uncertain Principles: Every Day I Write (in) the (Lab) Book
  Chad posts an excerpt from his lab notes. I’m always interested to see how other people keep theirs.
• Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Stuart Jeffries talks to leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon
  “This has been MacKinnon’s feminist approach to porn for a quarter of a century: the victims of porn need to be empowered by law to seek remedies for harm they suffered, existing male-framed laws being inadequate to the challenge.” MacKinnon’s ideas, as presented briefly in this review, make a lot of sense to me. Note to self: read the book.
• Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » Societal?
  I also dislike the word, but other commenters make a decent case for a definition that’s usefully non-redundant with “social”.
• Lichen
  Mostly ambient/minimalist electronica. Like a melodic PanSonic, sorta.
• |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|_|
  “arrangements of binary data into stimulating audio and visual formats… All pretty minimal, anonymous and anti-authorial by design”Snippets of electronica, braincandy, mmm. Via Rob; see also lichen.

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