Over at evolgen, RPM is wondering about the disciplinary distribution of bloggers: I have an intuition, backed up by absolutely no evidence, that my particular area of interest (evolutionary genetics) has more faculty blogging about stuff related to their research than other fields. This is most likely the result of my interest in those blogs,… Continue reading Theory of Blogging Faculty
Category: Science
Literary Poll: Nanotechnology in Fiction?
A reader writes in with a literary query: I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined.… Continue reading Literary Poll: Nanotechnology in Fiction?
Questions of Ethics
Janet Stemwedel is blogging, as is her wont, about questions of ethical behavior in science. She had a post Monday giving advice on how to counter unethical behavior, which all seems pretty good to me. Unfortunately, the people who read and comment on blogs about academic culture tend to start at “corrosively cynical,” and get… Continue reading Questions of Ethics
Dorky Poll: Three Beeeeellion Dollars
Regular commenter Johan Larson writes with a suggested blog topic: The Human Genome Project (yes, you have to pronounce those capitals) cost about $3 billion. If $3 billion were yours to spend on scientific research, how would you spend the money? That’s a great question, and a great topic for a Dorky Poll. I’ll narrow… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Three Beeeeellion Dollars
Dreaming of Electric Sheep
Via slashdot, I learn that a couple of colleagues of mine have achieved nerd fame with an art project in which a robot acts out dreams. “Is there video?” you ask. Silly reader! Of course there’s video!
Quantum Teleportation (for Dogs)
I gave a talk at Boskone in the prime Sunday 10 am slot, on quantum teleportation. I read the opening dialogue from Chapter 8 of the book, and then did a half-hour (or so) explanation of the real physics behind quantum teleportation. If you weren’t one of the thirty-ish people who watched at least part… Continue reading Quantum Teleportation (for Dogs)
Science Debate Update
Chris and Sheril have been working tirelessly to make a Presidential Science Debate happen, and there’s been real progress: ScienceDebate2008 is now co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academies, and the Council on Competitiveness. We were looking at venues, and finally settled on an offer from the Philadelphia-based Franklin… Continue reading Science Debate Update
Evolution of the Best
I’m sitting at the computer, reading blogs, when the dog comes up to me. “Hey, can I ask a question?” she says. “Sure, go ahead.” “What’s the deal with evolution?” “Evolution, huh? Well, I’m not a biologist, you understand, but the basic idea is that every creature we see today originated from simple creatures of… Continue reading Evolution of the Best
Dorky Poll: Scientific Fears
The questions posed in yesterday’s posts about hopes for 2008 were half of what we were asked by the Powers That Be. The other half: What scientific development do you fear you’ll be blogging or reading about in 2008? As with yesterday’s posts, the original question was more general, but I restricted my answer (below… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Scientific Fears
Dorky Poll: Scientific Hopes
A little while ago, the Corporate Masters asked us to answer a couple of questions for possible inclusion in the first ’08 issue of Seed. I originally posted this back in November, but got asked to take it down because the issue was hush-hush. The street date for the magazine in question was this week,… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Scientific Hopes