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Category: General (Page 48 of 135)

At the Science Bloggers Conference

Murphey Hall is full. Folks are struggling to get on the net. The biggest problem is the UNC set up. Once on, the room is fairly well provisioned.

We’re even on schedule.

Food and set up are all fine — except that the Open Eye dropped the ball on delivering coffee. We (Brian) had to run get some from another nearby coffee shop.

Badger has a picture up already.

Did I mention that the swag bags are full of great science publications?
Bora gets things going. It was his idea to have a science blogging conference.

Then Anton announce Dr. Hunt Willard who created to first artificial human chromosome who is talking about science communications. He has amusing stories about his adventures trying to get his stories covered sanely by the press (MSM that is) and about writing OpEd pieces. (see AskBig).
Badger is IMing me with stories of digital accordions in the middle of all of this.

Props given to the Public Library of Science and various F/LOSS journals in discussion with Dr. Willard. Great discussion of scientists speaking to the public. Now a guy from Lancet asking about blogging and peer-review publishing — specifically about timing. Worries about the credibility of blogging and of scientists in the face of peer-review and citation. Will that change? Willard says no change. But he thinks that our current students who are used to real time will be the ones who bridge the two worlds. Can Lancet provide that bridge? Time frame? Willard says within three years. That soon.

[break]

Janet Stemwedel leads a discussion about how to be a blogging scientist.
[still helping folks set up their wireless. I will have learned a lot about WinDoz once this conference is over.]

Badger is amongst the many liveblogging the event. Other liveblogs and pictures at Technorati

[lunch and break outs — I exercise my garbage removal skills which are awesome if I do say so myself]

Adnaan Wasey of Online NewsHour is talking about Teaching and Science. Lea Winerman shows a section on Pig Farm Politics which has a NC angle.

How can a science blogger convert their stuff for use in teaching — what is a lesson plan? is asked by a science blogger.

Adnaan is pretending to be a wiki sorta. he is refering to a page on the wiki (linked above as teaching and science)

Is science about accuracy (as one guy here says; i think he means classical empiricism) or about the process of science through falsification or Popper’s critical rationalism or from Kuhn‘s more complex vision of “paradigm shifts.” Basically a discussion of the role of accuracy. Is accuracy the end or one of the tools that help science progress by falsification. We’re not even touching on critical science theory.

Science resources being tossed out like Science House at NCSU and Moodle and BlackBoard (which I don’t personally like) and Google Earth.

Dave Warnick recommends reading teachers’ blogs; Ouida Meyers recommends LearnNC and Dave’s tool ClassBlogmeister.

At drinks and later at dinner, we were joined by elected officials, US Representative Brad Miller (NC-13) and Chapel Hill Town Council Member Sally Greene. Miller has an interesting announcement which I have been ask not to blog just yet.

Great conference! Thanks to Anton, Bora and Brian for all their hard and good work.

Google to NC mountains

They’re already in Chapel Hill, but now it looks like Google will also be in the NC mountains near Lenoir (where they can really use the jobs). NC is paying tho with some serious incentives. AP reports here. (thanks Fred).

Rick Smith of WRAL has the most details I’ve seen here.

I may be part of a News and Observer story on the Google-NC site if Jonathan Cox takes anything from our conversation. I hope he uses the part where I say something like: “What Walmart, FedEx, Food Town and the like do with atoms, Google will be doing with electrons. That’s using spokes and hubs to localize service, avoid highway jams, anticipate needs and supply redundancy for their systems.”

Update: Here’s what Jonathan said I said in his article (News and Observer Business section) — and he was taking notes so he’s probably got it right

“The reason that Food Lion, Wal-Mart, Federal Express, all those places, work is they have an incredible delivery system based on hubs delivering atoms,” said Paul Jones, an associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and director of Ibiblio.org, a digital library. “This is the same kind of thing, just delivering electrons.”
Robert X. Cringely has his ideas about what Google is up to here (and in SC where Cringely lives).

Bora and Science Bloggers Conference on NPR

science bloggers conference logo

Serena alerts us to Bora‘s appearance on NPR’s Market Place this morning talking about tomorrow’s Science Bloggers Conference.

LISA NAPOLI: Forget those pricey science journals. Debut your cure for cancer in a blog. From the Marketplace Innovations Desk at North Carolina Public Radio, Janet Babin reports.

JANET BABIN: More than a hundred journalists, scientists and teachers are coming to the blog conference at the University of North Carolina.

The goal is to get more people to think of blogs as a tool to communicate about science.

Bora Zivkovic helped organize the event. He says science blogs accomplish a lot.

BORA ZIVKOVIC: Debunking pseudo-science, fighting against anti-science, and science popularization. Hoping that especially kids who are online all the time will bump into science blogs and see cool stuff and get excited about science.

Zivkovic was one of the first researchers to publish data using a blog — a trend he predicts will become more popular.

Conference attendees will learn how to start a blog and how to use one to collaborate on scientific exploration.

Exile on Jones Street Exiled!

Old media reporters goes new media and hits the good ole boy wall as Kirk Ross found out when he left the Independent to write his insightful Exile On Jones Street blog.

At first all was just fine as the Indy was publishing articles from Exile as a weekly column. But after Ross became a front page blogger on BlueNC, he hit the wall.

The wall was/is the NC Capital Press Corps, an admittedly informal group with no written rules for membership. As a Indy reporter, Ross could probably be certified although he says he never tried. As a BlueNC frontpager, syndicated in at least two weeklies (Greensboro’s Yes! Weekly and Asheville’s Mountain Xpress), and blogger, he was suddenly considered a writer for an advocacy site. [I’m not quite right on this, Kirk has some clarification on this below in the comments].
Something seem wrong here? How about if I add that the head of the Press Corps is also a blogger? Mark Binker, a columnist for the Greensboro News and Record writes a good blog called Capital Beat. In fact, many members of the Press Corps blog and not all on their home paper’s site.
Kirk has the story from his side over on Exile. And readers at BlueNC are giving him suggestions and support.

Has Been – William Shatner

Yesterday, I wore a tan v-neck sweater with a black t under it. Jenny accused me of looking like William Shatner which is fine by me.

But I tried to explain how wonderful his CD Has Been is. When I told her he does a piece there with Henry Rollins she lost it completely. “I can’t get behind that” is wonderful yelling.

Then Kristina heard me listening to Shatner’s cover of “Common People” and couldn’t believe it. I love that one too.

The CD has Rollins, Joe Jackson, Brad Paisley, Aimee Mann and Lemon Jelly as guests on various songs. All arranged by Ben Folds.

A class act.

Duke Scholarly Publishing panel

If the snow doesn’t stop me, I hope to be at this talk over at Duke:

Scholarly Publishing in the Digital Age

Date: 01/18/2007

Time: 4:30 PM

Location: 240 John Hope Franklin Center, 2204 Erwin Road (Parking available after 4pm at Pickens Clinic lot across the street on Trent)

Contact: christina.chia@duke.edu

Summary: Roundtable discussion on scholarly publishing in the digital age featuring: Steve Cohn, Director, Duke University Press; Jennifer Jenkins, Director, Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School; Paolo Mangiafico, Digital Consultant, Duke University Libraries. Part of the Scholarly Publishing series co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute & Duke University Press.

Cornel West @ UNC

Cornell West

Cornel West was the Martin Luther King Memorial Speaker tonight at UNC. Memorial Hall was completely full and people were turned away — in advance as free tickets were required.

West was all I was lead to believe: smart, witty, theatric, engaging, challenging, occasionally contradictory. Part of West appeal, besides his animated and delightful speaking, is his constant attempt to balance what he calls the Socratic and the Prophetic. That is the logic of the Greeks and the passion and love of Jesus. All in the face of America’s history of racism.

West was happy to school newly announced presidential candidate Obama — and of course his listeners — on the difference between Hope and Optimism.

West had a little fun with folks who say “Obama is so well poised and articulate” as if, says West, that the folks saying that don’t expect black folks to be well poised and articulate. “Those folks are not meeting the right black people,” he says. “I expect all black people to be well poised and articulate.”

He gave a shout out to John Edwards for his work in raising the issues of poverty and class at a national level. But also had a little fun with JE — “Didn’t he used to be a part of this campus for a little bit? Wasn’t he here?”

B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center

Spent the better part of a good day with the folks from the B. B. King and Delta Interpretive Center of Indianola, Mississippi.

UNC was well represented by folks from the Library, Folklore, and from the School of Information and Library Science.

Bill Ferris brought us all together to talk about the Museum and its possibilities.

There were many good moments but one just before I had to leave that I’ll remember is a video of B. B. giving a little tour of his house. He spends a lot of time enjoying music and video on his computer and finding good information on the Internet.

Coming soon: Science Bloggers and Duke Tech Tuesdays

science bloggers conference logo

Saturday, this Saturday Jan 20, is the Science Bloggers Conference here in Murphey Hall. There is room for one more as of this writing. Sign up or end up on the Waiting List. The folks have already signed up look great and the collection of the Best of the Science Blogs which Bora edited will be there too.

Then on Tuesday, I’ll be speaking about contributor-run digital libraries at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Center’s TechTuesdays on Tuesday January 23. We’re delaying the start of the talk from the regular TechTuesday time — starting at noon:30. The announcement is below and on the ISIS TechTuesday site. I’ll be creating a wiki entry for the talk to which you may add stuff if you like and/or you can leave comments on what I should be saying to this post.

ISIS TechTuesdays featuring Paul Jones
January 23, 2007, 12:30-1:45 PM
John Hope Franklin Center 240

Paul Jones, founder of sunsite.unc.edu and director of ibiblio.org, will present “Participatory Digital Libraries – Past and Futures; the ibiblio trends,” in which he will talk about experiences and futures of Contribtor-run Digital Libraries and Digital Repositories with some particular focus on the ibiblio tends. This will be somewhat of an update of his paper “Open (source)ing the doors for contributor-run digital libraries.[PDF]” Communications of the ACM. Volume 44 , Issue 5 (May 2001). Also at http://ibiblio.org/pjones/presskit/ACM-p45-jones.pdf or if you prefer the Japanese language version http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/presskit/p45-jones.jp.pdf.

Deborah McGuinness @ Duke Today

I’ll be in class during this talk, but I had a chance to have dinner and chat with Dr. Deborah McGuinness about her visit here and her talk (here from Cristin Paul’s announcement). If you get to go send me a link to your notes or add as comments here please:

What: Emerging Semantic Web Trends: Transparent and Trustworthy Applications and Semantically-Enabled Scientific Data Integration

Who: Deborah L. McGuinness, Ph.D., Acting Director, Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University
When: Tuesday, January 16 from 12:00 noon to 1:15 pm
Where: John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University (location and parking information)

Dr. Deborah L. McGuinness, international expert on Semantic Web technology, ontologies and knowledge representation,
and co-editor of the World-Wide Web Consortium’s Web Ontology Language (OWL) specification, will present this invited discussion seminar as part of the Duke Information Science & Information Studies (ISIS) “Tech Tuesdays” series.

Lunch will be provided.

The talk is of special interest to informaticians, computer scientists, and all interested in scientific data integration, metadata and the World Wide Web.
Colleagues from Duke, NCSU, NCCU, UNC and RTP organizations are all cordially invited! Please share this announcement.

Dr. McGuinness will be in the Triangle area on Monday and Tuesday (1/15-1/16). If you or your research group would like to meet with her to discuss projects or research ideas, she has time-slots available. Contact Dr. John Madden to arrange a time and location.

*Abstract*

As web applications proliferate, more users are faced with decisions when and why to trust application advice. In order to trust information, users need to understand how it was obtained and what assumptions it depended upon. Web-based applications may use question-answering methods that are heuristic or incomplete, and they may depend on data whose origin and date are unknown. Therefore, it becomes ever more important to return answers augmented with meta-information about how the conclusions were obtained.

In this talk, Deborah McGuinness will describe an approach that can improve trust in answers generated from web applications by making the answer process more transparent. The added information provides users (humans or
agents) with answers to questions of trust, reliability, recency, and applicability.

The talk will include descriptions of a few representative applications  using cognitive assistants and intelligence analyst tools. The talk will also briefly highlight work on semantically-enabled, integrated access to scientific data. Examples will be taken from Deborah’s work on the NSF-funded Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory and the NASA-funded Semantically-Enabled Scientific Data Integration projects.

Science Blogging Anthology is now available!

Science Blogger Conference co-organizer Bora Zivkovic writes to alert us to the Science Blogging Anthology that he’s edited:

The first of its kind, phenomenal, unbelievable collection of the best science blogging in history has just been published!?

Timed to coincide with the first Science Blogging Conference, this anthology of best 50 blog posts from science and medical blogs is now available for sale.? You can find all the information about the book, including the day-by-day blogging of the blog-typical democratic process of choosing 50 best posts of all time.

The book is available for purchase at Lulu.

Lyceum 0.34 is out

JJB announces the latest release of Lyceum over on the Lyceum blog.

Lyceum is:

  • Multi-user, multi-blog enhancement of the WordPress blogging engine.
  • Enterprise database architecture – Lyceum leverages the WordPress database architecture, extending multi-user blogging within a single instantiation of the WordPress schema.
  • N-scalable and easily distributed – Lyceum allows administrators to seamlessly distribute the application across multiple web servers, as resource demands grow.
  • Security-conscious design – Developed with a focus on security, at the application and execution layer. Leveraging the WordPress codebase, and structured to effectively deal with comment spam, administrators can feel secure with a transparent, well-designed product.
  • Ease of install and upgrade – Lyceum is designed to be easy to install and upgrade. With a minimal filesystem footprint, Lyceum remains manageable as the Blogosphere scales.
  • Perfect for the campus, enterprise – and small group – Lyceum retains the native functionality of WordPress, ensuring that groups small and large will enjoy use.

I like Brussel Sprouts

Or is that brussels sprout or … ?

While Sally was celebrating the legacy and continued work of Martin Luther King, Jr., I was doing taxi duty all over town for our teen.

The upside was that when we needed to grab a bite to eat we were very very close to one of this area’s best eateries, The Barbecue Joint. The Joint is the only place where I have ever gotten brussel sprouts intentionally. Their sprouts are the best. Cooked with a lot of garlic and lean bacon and sliced into thin rounds and still crunchy. And you get a lot! That and a bowl of Brunswick stew (keeping with the place named food) made with wild boar and chicken. Not sure if the chicken was wild or not.

Yummmm.

Notables noticed at the Joint: Poet Jeffery Beam and Old Ceremonialist Django Haskins and pal. Not sure if any of them were eating brussel sprouts

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