I have too many interesting articles to read and too little time to write… here a few articles I can recommend, and a milestone. Of sorts.
Holt milestone (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)It’s officially sex week over at the Loom. Given Carl Zimmer is one of several science writers who also blog that last year brought us far more than we really needed to know about duck penises, so this is worrying. He starts out with fungal sex; reading between the lines viruses may turn up somewhere along the way. (You’ll have to ask him if he is going to include Aves.)
Science writer Deborah Blum, who blogs at Speakeasy Science, has a piece in Slate, The Raw Milk Deal, about the health issues of drinking raw milk. New Zealanders, being the big milk drinkers we are, might want to compare an American science writer’s perspective.
Ben Goldacre has put up a podcast of the British government’s response to homeopathy, a topic I’ve frequently written about in the past. It’s long (30 mins), so try this when you have time.
Dave Munger writes about plagiarism, science writing and blogging, including what happened to Brian Switek’s article. I fairly regularly get posts copied by the robot plagiarists that he mentions in passing. (These copy posts in their entirety onto websites set up to show off advertising.) I’ve also had an advocacy group copy an article wholesale, which I was less impressed with. (I let them know that I didn’t approve in my comments but got no reply.
Corpusty milestone (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)
There’s $US500 up for a science/medicine poem. The $500 seems to be coming straight out of Dr. Charles’ pocket. Entries close August 31st; there are 14 entries already. Go for it!
Molecular biology is getting it’s own blog carnival. Fellow bloggers, here and elsewhere, should consider contributing.
Yet another school board in the USA considers if they should teach creationism. Will it never end? Surely the USA needs to insist that high school teachers have university qualifications and that only qualified people (read: scientists, well-qualified senior teachers) can determine science curricula? Also as usual, the comments section far exceeds the original articles many times over… plenty of entertainment for those that like that sort of thing.
That milestone? I’m rapidly approaching 50,000… spam comments. Sigh.
In fact, by the time you are reading this I’ll probably have passed it.
Let’s see, 1472 approved comments. That means for every genuine comment I get about 34 spam comments. If that ~78% of all email is spam is a useful guide, I suppose that’s not too bad.
The first molecular carnival is now out. Judging by the visit statistics at Research Blogging, it’s getting checked out by plenty of people! It’s a very research-orientated list of articles, with some good stuff.
0 Responses to “Mid-week links and a milestone”
The first molecular carnival is now out. Judging by the visit statistics at Research Blogging, it’s getting checked out by plenty of people! It’s a very research-orientated list of articles, with some good stuff.