June 1st, 2008 ecoli
I’m sure I’m not the only who has noticed:
Google has changed it’s favicon, the icon that appears on the left hand side of the URL in most web browsers . They’ve moved away from their traditional upper case, classic “G”, to a lowercase “g.” Are they going for a sleeker look? Does this mark some bigger change in google?
We can only speculate, but I think they made the switch because Google is no longer just a company name, but a word that has become synonymous with the (now with a properly lowercase “i”) internet. “To google” has entered the ranks of English dictionaries, at least some online ones, as meaning:
to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine
Google isn’t just a company anymore. It ‘belongs’ to the people, the internet-using public.
More on the story at the Google Blogoscope.
Posted in link out, musings, news | 8 Comments »
June 1st, 2008 ecoli
This site is a bit frightening (and I’m not just talking about page layout taken from 1998). The site logs all the incidents of sexual abuse that the police catch on Myspace. There are literally hundreds of cases listed on the site.
If anyone was skeptical that there is a “Myspace problem” before, this site will definitely remove all doubt. It highlights the need for parents to become more aware of what your children are doing on the computer, and for parents to stay ahead of their children in terms of computer literacy.
There are hundreds of parents out there who seem to simply not care what their children get up to on the internet, and that’s simply unacceptable.
Thanks for Kim Komando for telling her listeners about the site on her radio show this morning.
Posted in education, link out, news | No Comments »
May 25th, 2008 ecoli
Skulls in the Stars challenge is ongoing. Yours truly entered his before the weekend. You can see a list of all the entries so far here.
Some highlights from the competition:
Attention all bloggers. The deadline for submission is May 30th, so there’s still time left to become part of this historic occasion.
Posted in link out, news | No Comments »
April 29th, 2008 ecoli
you gotta love this one. (thanks BBC)
Posted in link out, news, politics | No Comments »
April 24th, 2008 ecoli
The things rich people will do… No offense to cricket enthusiasts, but I can hardly imagine this being a solid investment.
Posted in link out, musings, news | 2 Comments »
April 23rd, 2008 ecoli
Microblogology shares a study by the Evanston Northwestern’s MRSA screening program that demonstrates that the most effective ways to control infectious diseases can also be the cheapest, and least ’scientific.’ To study epidemiology is to be smart about pathogens. Where are they coming from, how do they infect, what physical barriers can we set up to stop the spread of pathogens from patient to patient?
The study found that 8.5% of their patients carried MRSA into the hospital (carried, not necessarily infected with). By isolating these patients and taking special precautions, in terms of hygienic practices, the hospital was able to cut down hospital-acquired infections 70%.
This is a more cheaper way to control MRSA than drug development, and it doesn’t give the bacteria a chance to development new antibiotic resistance in the first place. Simple cleanliness and hygiene can probably to attributed to the lessening of the roles of infectious pathogens to the human death rate perhaps even more than antibiotics or vaccines. We seem to have forgotten this along the way; that chemicals and not efficient planning is the more effective method of preventing infections.
Posted in link out, medicine, microbiology, news | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2008 ecoli
Apparently, today is earth day.
Go grab an earth wallpaper for your desktop.
Posted in link out, news | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2008 ecoli
Even though I didn’t get a chance to update my blog over the weekend (family is visiting for passover) somehow my page views increased to over 11 thousand from around 2 thousand. I think this is quite a feat for a couple days. I think this was mainly due this post: Why Objects are Blurry Underwater, which has been getting some love from StumbleUpon. So thanks to the stumbleupon community for taking an interest. Hopefully I’ll have more decent posts ahead of me that will draw even more traffic in the future.
So, hello to all stumblers. Be sure to check out my parent site: www.scienceforums.net for all your science forums needs.
And now the weather: cloudy with a small chance of a microbiology post sometime within the next 24 hours.
Update: now over 15500 page views… thanks stumblers!
Posted in musings, news | No Comments »
April 16th, 2008 ecoli
From Adventures in Science and Ethics
Ultimately, what bugs me about this story is that it seems to boil down to a piece about a teenager who has done something unusual and become a minor celebrity because if it. Yet, there’s no critical examination of the something unusual that she’s done — in particular, of whether she’s done it in a way that holds up to scientific scrutiny — of what sorts of deeper motivations might be behind it, and of what the impacts of this project might be for the rest of us. To the extent that the “something unusual” this particular teenager is doing is presenting herself on the internet as a reliable source of scientific information, it feels to me like the critical analysis missing from this story is very important indeed.
From Respectful Insolence:
Sadly, the one thing that Kirsten could have used is a public smackdown on NPR from a climate science who really knows his or her stuff, someone who could demonstrate in excruciating detail just how thin her knowledge base really is… By doing the piece, though, NPR put itself in a no-win situation. If it criticized Kirsten’s denialist arguments, NPR would have looked as though it was making fun of a teenaged girl who’s clearly smart but not well trained in science or critical thinking. If it didn’t, well, the results are easy to see: A puff piece that portrays the plucky outsider taking on the scientists and apparently beating them at their own game.
Posted in link out, news | No Comments »
April 14th, 2008 ecoli
This has been making the rounds on the blogs.
Ben Stein’s expelled movie is in hot water for using secondary party content without permission. Read science after sunclipse’s witty response.
Posted in creationism, link out, news | No Comments »
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