Biweekly links for 05/11/2009

  • Natalie MacMaster and Thomas Dolby: Blue is a River
    • A moving duet between Natalie MacMaster and Thomas Dolby. Blends MacMaster’s folksy fiddling, Scotts highland dancing, and Dolby’s electronica. The song is the story of the exile of displaced Scotts, forced to move to Newfoundland. There’s much more at Dolby’s blog – http://blog.thomasdolby.com/2007/05/a-duet-with-natalie-macmaster/
  • Useful Chemistry: Leaders and Pushers in Open Science projects
    • “People often think that successful leaders attract followers – people who are subservient. In my experience successful projects result from a collaboration of colleagues who share common values.”
  • Frank Rich: The American Press on Suicide Watch – NYTimes.com
    • Better than most of the knee-jerk writing on this (albeit that’s a very low bar to clear): “That’s why the debate among journalists about possible forms of payment (subscriptions, NPR-style donations, iTunes-style micropayments, foundation grants) is inside baseball. So is the acrimonious sniping between old media and new. The real question is for the public, not journalists: Does it want to pony up for news, whatever the media that prevail?”
  • Selfish Scientists Won’t Share New Findings | The Onion
  • The danger of drugs … and data | Ben Goldacre | Comment is free | The Guardian
    • “It turns out that Elsevier put out six such journals, sponsored by industry. The Elsevier chief executive, Michael Hansen, has now admitted that they were made to look like journals, and lacked proper disclosure. “This was an unacceptable practice and we regret that it took place,” he said.”
  • Elsevier’s Medica Communications imprint
    • This is worth looking into more, and I hope Elsevier responds.
  • On Blogging | Serendipity
    • “blogging is time consuming. Several people have told me this is why they don’t blog. But actually, this doesn’t seem to be an issue for me – each blog post represents a small chunk of research that I would do anyway – the only difference is that now I’m sharing my notes in the blog, rather than keeping them to myself. One of the hardest parts of doing research is that its very easy to let the “playing with ideas” part get endlessly encroached by things that have short term deadlines. The discipline of blogging daily means I then don’t let this happen. “
  • Doing science in the open: Physics World

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