Category Archives: media

Wikipedia in simplified English: Double plus good?

Posted on by

I have just learned about the simplified English version of Wikipedia from xkcd. It is Wikipedia, written for beginning English readers. That means the writers use simple words and short sentences. This makes them sound like Ernest Hemmingway. Simple English Wikipedia does not have an entry for Ernest Hemmingway. A search for “Ernest Hemmingway” on Simple English Wikipedia finds only a reference to Fall Out Boy and an article about Aleister Crowley.

There is one word I always look up when I want to try a new reference source.

Evolution
In the study of life and living things, evolution is the term used to describe the way a type of living thing changes over a long period of time. “Evolution” is a scientific theory (an explanation) that is used by scientists to explain why different creatures and plants are the way that they are, and act the way that they do.

That is pretty good.

A horse has a single hoof on each foot, a cow has two, a bird has its whole arm changed into a wing, and a human has a hand. But if we look at fossils – made when very old dead things got squashed between clay or sand, which hardened into rocks, we can see all these animals were once one type of animal: Fishes.

That is not as good. I am not sure why this is.

I lied. There are two words I always look up to try new reference sources. Can you guess the other one?

Mennonites
The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptists named after Menno Simons (1496–1561). His teachings were a relatively minor influence on the group,though. They are of the historic peace churches. Mennonites are committed to nonviolence, nonviolent resistance/reconciliation, and pacifism.

That is double plus not as good. I am afraid that if I write like this much longer, I will forget how to write long sentences.

Isn’t dating Darwinian enough already?

Posted on by

Sent to me by Roxy Allen, who seems to be out to wave public misperceptions about evolution in my face (on Darwin Day, she pointed me to that depressing, depressing poll result): Darwin Dating is your go-to for eugenic relationship-building, or so it claims.

Sick of dating websites filled with ugly, unattractive, desperate fatsos? We are.

Darwin Dating was created exclusively for beautiful, desirable people. Our strict rules and natural selection process ensures all our members have winning looks. Will you make the cut?

Obvious issues: (1) members are actually self-selected, as long as they send in a reasonably good photo; (2) since when are photos on Internet dating sites honest indicators? (3) do you really want to go looking for a mate amongst attractive/dishonest people who self-selected for a pretend-exclusive fringe dating site? Bio-nerd issue: attractiveness may have little relation to true Darwinian fitness (i.e., ability to successfully raise lots of offspring).

Evolution 2009: Evolution will be blogged

Posted on by

Evolution 2009ResearchBlogging.orgAn advantage of being in charge of the website for Evolution 2009, the joint annual convention of the American Society of Naturalists, Society of Systematic Biologists, and Society for the Study of Evolution: when I suggest that we ought to do something to involve science bloggers in the conference, I get to set it up. Or maybe that’s actually a disadvantage.

In any event, we’re experimenting with a blogswarm for this year’s conference – if you’re attending the conference and think you’d like to ‘blog about it, or just want to help spread the word, head over to the just-posted blogging page, download a badge to put on your site (see my sidebar, and the inset on this post, for examples), and drop me an e-mail so I can add your URL to the list of participating science blogs. I’m also interested in suggestions, both conceptual and technical, for how to improve the resources at that page, which currently consist of a small selection of logo badges, and the list of participants – I’d particularly like to try aggregating relevant posts from participating blogs into a single RSS feed.

With blogging becoming more common as a way to educate the public and converse with other scientists, I hope this will improve Evolution’s profile outside academic biology and facilitate conversation among attendees before, during, and after the conference. Also, as a colleague (who shall remain nameless) pointed out, this should make it easier to organize the kegger.

Reference

S.A. Batts, N.J. Anthis, T.C. Smith (2008). Advancing science through conversations: Bridging the gap between blogs and the academy. PLoS Biology, 6 (9) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060240

Science, blogged

Posted on by

Another example of how blogging can be great for science, both as public education and as communication among scientists: The Open Source Paleontologist Andrew Farke first walks his readers through his nifty new study of skull injuries in Triceratops, which suggests that their horns were used for combat (as opposed to mere display), then follows up with a post detailing the open-source technologies behind the paper.

This is better, to my mind, than whatever coverage the New York Times science section can give Farke’s result. Farke links directly to the PLoS-published paper – mainstream science coverage tells me the journal, at best, and leaves me to ferret out the paper myself. (It’s not that much work, but I’m lazy.) I can read the author’s own explanation of the result, and post comments to ask for clarification, which better approximates the experience at a conference. And, as a bonus, I learn about some ways I can improve my own, very non-paleontological, work: Zotero, for instance, looks well worth a try.

(Facebook) friendship worth 24 cents, says Burger King

Posted on by

Burger King has released a Facebook application that lets users trade in 10 virtual friendships for a Whopper (street value $2.40). Kottke does the math, and concludes that the total value of relationships recorded by the social network is $1.8 billion. You might think that this means digital media and consumer capitalism devalue human connection. And you’d probably be right.

Parting shots

Posted on by

President Bush ducks thrown shoes at a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. On the positive side, it looks like Iraq is developing a vigorous press corps. Will this be our final impression of The Current President? Could be – I can’t remember him getting this much coverage at any other point post-election.

Closing remarks

Posted on by

Yeah, I finally watched Barack Obama’s half-hour message, online. It’s an excellent wrap-up to a too-long campaign and it hit all the right notes for me, anyway. Some of it is production values, of course, but there were genuinely affecting passages, especially when Obama tied his own story to the particular issues he addressed, as with education or health care. Folks have compared him to John F. Kennedy quite a bit, but I think actually the better parallel is with Abraham Lincoln – a man who essentially came from nowhere by dint of study, ambition, and genuine vision. He’ll have a lot to live up to if he wins – but I’ll be proud to punch my ballot for Barack Obama.

Postscript: What if, instead of public financing, we just gave every candidate a half-hour block of TV time to use as he or she would in the week before Election Day? This long form emphasizes, if anything, the sheer volume of substantive policy proposals that make up Obama’s platform – and might point up a candidate who didn’t have anything substantive to say.

Welcome to the blogosphere

Posted on by

Resistance is futile: Michael “MJ” Sharp, with whom I spent many a sleepless night editing the EMU campus newspaper WeatherVane, has started a blog. MJ’s currently in Germany, where he’s worked with a project that counsels U.S. soldiers seeking conscientious objector status, and he’s done quite a bit of traveling besides, including to Iraq. Which naturally leads one to wonder, why isn’t he running for Vice President?