Censorship On fear and risk 31 Jan 2010 I haven’t had a rant/sermon in a while. My parents’ generation went through the second world war, fighting tyrants and ideologies that sought to control our everyday lives; for which reason they are sometimes called “the best generation”. Their parents’ generation fought world war one and went through the Depression…. Continue Reading
Media Unscientific Australia 18 Sep 2009 The other night I was watching TV when on came a piece about Chris Mooney’s and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s book Unscientific America. I haven’t said anything about it because Chris promised me he’d send me a copy, and I haven’t yet received it (miscommunication at the publisher). Chris acquitted himself very… Continue Reading
Media The Overton Window 28 Jun 2009 In comments in the Accommodationism thread, read HP mentioned The Overton Window. Here’s Bill Maher with a perfect example: [brightcove vid=27017295001&exp3=6555681001&surl=http://c.brightcove.com/services&pubid=769341148&w=300&h=225] Continue Reading
Media Plagiarism, citations, and fact checking 26 May 200922 Jun 2018 Some interesting things in the web lately. One is a new system that purports to find cases of plagiarism. Science reports on the new Dèjá Vu database [news summary here; both behind the Science paywall; check this and this if you don’t have access], which checks content of science papers… Continue Reading
Education Science Communication and the Business Model 22 Mar 2009 There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer’s twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a… Continue Reading