Oh dear, the British health minister isn't a fan of The Lancet:
(ht Ben Goldacre, and his summary: "More than anything, I just quite enjoy the childishness of the edit...")
When wannabe authors attack!
HINT: It isn't pretty.
I spent the morning reading just one review of one book and the comment thread that it inspired. In short, this train wreck of a comment thread is a great example of the reasons that I refuse to review self-published books: the bad punctuation/grammar, the horrible sentence construction, the astonishing inability to correctly use the English language, and yes, the aggressive bullying by the so-called "writers" themselves. Predictably, this blog entry has gone viral: it's now mirrored on loads of facebook accounts, it's all over twitter, and the book's Amazon comment thread has linked to it, too. For wannabe authors, it's a wonderful blow-by-blow account of how to destroy your career before it even gets started.
Ich möchte nicht auf Deutsch sprechen
I've lived in Germany for more than one year but I am ashamed to admit that, for the first time in my life, I've not learned to speak the language in a satisfactory way. Worse than labeling me an "Ugly American" is the fact that I am actually quite talented at picking up languages and accents -- I never really had to work at learning languages.
Mainova suck
Some of you might have noticed that Grrl and I were offline for much of last week. This, urrm, wasn't panned. But the lights went out.
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Guest Blogging at Scientopia
Here at Scientopia we have a new plan to create lots of unwitting minions to help us take over the blogosphere. We now have a guest blog where every couple of weeks a new guest will be given the keys and be implanted with a control chipallowed to blog about what takes their fancy.
First up is Paolo Viscardi, who usually blogs at Zygoma. Paolo is a curator at the Horniman museum in London, which is a bit out of the way (Grrl and I visited there last summer), but is fascinating once you get there: a mixture of natural history, cultural anthropology and musical instruments. Paolo's main blogging activity is to put up a Friday Mystery object, usually from the museum (and usually a skull) for people to identify.
Paolo's first post is already up, so go along, say hello, and join in the conversation.
Some Important and Weighty Stuff in Statistics
(note: to create maximal puzzlement I have cross-posted this at my other blog)
Right, now let's talk about methods for stochastic numerical integration, in particular calculating importance weights. This is a technique that is probably underused, largely because...
Why are you staring at the screen like that?
OK, OK. I'm sorry for putting up such a technical post,but I was going to write this up for a colleague, and then thought that there might be 3 other people in this world that would also find it interesting.
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Salmon, scent and going home again
Dead salmon in spawning season, Oregon state (U.S. Pacific Northwest).
Image: Pete Forsyth, 9 November 2007.
This image is licensed under a creative commons license.
On a cool autumn afternoon, I stepped out of my friend's house and witnessed a phenomenon of nature I had never seen before. In a stream flowing through the back yard, I saw the bodies of spawning coho salmon, Oncorhynchus kisutch, gleaming blood-red in the bright sunlight. These fish battered themselves mercilessly against the stream bed, digging shallow nests in the gravel where they were depositing their eggs. Against enormous odds, they had survived the rigors of ocean life, and had returned to their birthplace to spawn.
I get misdirected email
As if my own fan club isn't obnoxious enough, now I am getting some of PZ's email, too. This email was sent to me (what do I look like, a fucking secretary?), so before I take out the trash, I am sharing the wealth. Maybe you'll find this amusing.
Predictions for 2011
Well, last year was fun, wasn't it? Papers were published and retracted, there were the usual collective moans about poor journalism, and science advanced a few steps.
The scientific blogosphere enjoyed a bit of an upheaval, which lead to this blog being started. GrrlScientist and I are still trying to work out what we should use it for (we both do cute cat photos and videos on our other blogs).
So, what's in store for this year? Here are a few predictions that will be flushed down the memory sometime in February:
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GrrlScientist and the Icy Path of DOOOM
As I write this, I'm waiting to hear from GrrlScientist or the hospital. Last night she slipped in the ice and snow on a very slick piece of pavement - she fell, I then slipped but stayed upright, and then a man behind us came to help, and slipped too. Now, people who have been following Grrl's travails over the last few years know that she's broken bones before, so she's experienced with these things. This time, she was fairly sure she had fractured her elbow, and also had a large bump on her head, but still insisted we made some buttered rum mix before calling an ambulance.
Icy Patch of DOOOM, as seen from above
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