In my real-life social circles, I am known for being fashionably late. So it’s only fitting that I mention the recent SciBlog 2008 conference a scandalous three days after the event, even though the hangovers have faded, dozens of reports have been duly uploaded and the blogospheric buzz has moved on to Open Science, Non-virtual interactions and trouser-eating aliens.
Luvvies, divas and tears before bedtime Richard and Henry run across the beach bar towards each other in slow motion, while Matt chaperones
As Ben Goldacre mentioned in his keynote speech, the fame aspect of the conference was intriguing. One of the first things I noticed during morning coffee was that there was a lot of love in the room; you could hardly move for people swooping down and squealing things along the lines of Ooo, you’re X! (where X = hip, trendy well-known A-list blogger with a five-digit Technorati sperm count). A few obviously confused people even subjected yours truly to this treatment, no doubt mistaking me for some other D- or E-list celeb. To add to the general furore, the paps and journos were out in force, including microphone-waving podcasters and a very persistent newshound from the Times Higher who stayed til the bitter and drunken end trying to get someone, anyone to divulge something suitably salacious.
One of the things I have always liked about science is that we have relatively easy access to our celebs. While you might go your entire life without ever laying eyes on the likes of Paris Hilton, the movers, shakers and Nobel laureates in your discipline are within easy striking distance at the major symposia. If you approach one up at the podium or in the bar, you will usually not get the brush-off. If you’re bold and persistent, you can have a scientific discussion about your project with one of the finest minds in the field.
And if you’re really lucky, you might even pull one at the conference disco.
If you’re bold and persistent, you can have a scientific discussion about your project with one of the finest minds in the field.
Pffft. More importantlu, if you’re bold and persistent, you might get them to start blogging. 😉
Are there any Nobel laureates who actually blog? Of course Sydney Brenner sort of did, with his wonderful Loose Ends column in Current Biology. I’d like to see more of that.
That wasn’t a hug. Gee was trying to kill me with his bear-like arms. I only escaped because upon my death the truth about him and the dwarfs will be revealed.
My favourite Sydney Brennerism was, possibly in that very column, when Cell announced its “sister journal” programme of Molecular Cell, etc. S.B. wrote that he was looking forwards to “Soft Cell” and “Hard Cell”. Of course, had his column actually been a blog, he could have written “Soft
SellCell”, etc.That wasn’t a hug. Gee was trying to kill me with his bear-like arms.
It makes me nervous that you can see so much of the whites of his eyes.
if you’re really lucky, you might even pull one at the conference disco.
Yawn. Been there, done that…
I shall use that photo of further evidence that honor has been served
And if you’re really lucky, you might even pull one at the conference disco.
I never get invited to that kind of party, so if I have to make do with Dr R. G. of Sydney, I’ll have to hug him as hard as I can, because I know it’ll be ages before another opportunity comes along. And anyway, it was all Ian’s fault.
Jenny, you are absolutely right about famous scientists remaining very approachable. Talking to Oliver Smithies and Mario Capechi over a drink at the recent Genetics meeting in Berlin was very entertaining.
A few Nobel Prize winners are blogging, see the links in my blog post and in this recent FriendFeed.
Cath’s scathing comment about redundancy reminds me of one of the SciBlog sessions about tracking activity in the blogosphere. If some of the people at that session had their way, nobody would ever have the gall to post about something that someone else had already posted somewhere back in time and space – because it would all be tracked and I would have known better. In that utopian future, I would not have made an independent entry about dancing scientists, but instead would have added my thoughts as a comments to the trillions of others posted to Cath’s initial installment.
I think I was in the minority, in that session, in thinking that this might not be such a good idea. I may be unwittingly redundant, but I like the idea of being off-piste from one uber-conversation. Can you really have a ‘conversation’ with the world?
Can you really have a ‘conversation’ with the world?
you could, but you might not like what it’s saying…
And if you’re really lucky, you might even pull one at the conference disco.
Oh, so that’s what happened to you on Saturday night! 🙂
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be scathing. I was aiming for mock-nonchalance at kissing a science god…
I hid behind a pot plant. Not that he’d have wanted to kiss me I’m sure, but in retrospect better safe than sorry eh?!
Henry is good at hugging. And apparently, Mrs Gee didn’t mind.
Actually, one of the hugs was given on behalf of Mrs Gee, who, for some reason, rather admires Dr Grant.
Jenny – re. redundancy. I think this stems from different way of looking conversations. If you consider the totality of the scientific blogosphere as a system, a machine, then it seems inefficient for the same things to be said in different places, or at different times. But of course it’s not a machine, it’s a human activity. There are plenty of reasons why this redundancy is a good thing.
Actually, if you think about the scientific literature there is redundancy there too – multiple review articles covering much the same ground, groups in different places working on very similar problems at the same time.
Total elimination of redundancy is neither feasible nor desirable, imho. Imagine if we had one SUPER science blog and all posts and comments were amalgamated there. You would have hundreds or thousands of comments to work through. While we’re at it perhaps we should just have one journal, just one newspaper, just one funding agency. And here’s the next five-year plan for wheat production.
Frank, when the rest of the world is uber-commenting, we can sit down and have a blissfully unaware, thoroughly redundant conversation in person. You bring the beer, I’ll bring the Cheetos.
p.s. I didn’t get a hug from Henry, and feel rather put out about it.
Do you think Li Kim will provide Martinis?
p.s. I didn’t get a hug from Henry, and feel rather put out about it.
A hug can be arranged, ducky. Come up and see me sometime.
Yes, Frank and Jenny, and as a result of the break-out session at SciBlog about tracking conversations, we know that there is no clever technological solution to achieve the “uber blog conversation” even if it were desirable, so we can all relax about our redundancy.
(However, I would still love it if there were a way to link conversations on the same topic automatically, eg all those threads over NN about how to be an editor and how peer-reviewing works…)
Struck me that (most) people missed the point somewhat in that breakout session. I thought we wanted to track multiply redundant conversations, not aggregate into one über one. Then, of course, it also got taken over by the semantic web nonsense and other stuff I didn’t understand…
One point I wanted to make in the breakout session is that the concept of tracking conversations is very relevant in education. Using a blog for teaching is great, but at some point there is so much repetition (especially if you do the same class every year) that a tool to track these conversations or a wiki is the much more practical approach.
I agree with Richard that some of the semantic web stuff is difficult to understand. But it has the potential to make our life easier. I just finished listening to a talk about DBpedia, and how it can be used to enhance the BBC News website by automatically generating links to Wikipedia articles.
Do you think Li Kim will provide Martinis?
Is this my cue?
Yikes, I thought I got out of the way for that one.
And to Li Kim, I do truly apologise for what is now doing the rounds via my blog as “the broom closet incident”.
Maxine, I do take your point. But I guess what I was trying to get at was that I am already getting irked comments (not Cath’s — I knew she was joking) along the lines of, You idiots, cease and desist in talking about this now because we’ve already done it/are doing it over here {link}. At the moment I can plead ignorance, but if it becomes possible to track everything, and I don’t, I will look lazy and old-fashioned.
I just finished listening to a talk about DBpedia, and how it can be used to enhance the BBC News website by automatically generating links to Wikipedia articles.
Not to sound dense, but it there anyone left on the planet who can’t hit the right Wikipedia entry with a single keyword search from Google already? I find excessive link-outs quite fatiguing: it seems we are forever directed away from the text we are reading, with the idea that something better lies elsewhere. It promotes short attention spans and detracts from logical arguments and the sheer enjoyment of reading a well-constructed bit of text.
Or are those on the way out too?
_It promotes short attention spans and detracts from logical arguments and the sheer enjoyment of reading a well-constructed bit of text.
Or are those on the way out too?_
Sadly, yes.
Jenny –
I do agree about links. I’ve always felt them to be a double-edged sword when writing on the web. I’d like a way to include a link but have it disabled until someone has finished reading what I’ve written.
As for cease and desist in talking about this now because we’ve already done it
You just have to explain to them that they have
covered the arguments only superficially
overlooked the most important point
completely misunderstood the issue
(tick as appropriate).
Maybe I didn’t pick a good example. The idea with DBpedia and similar semantic tools would be to have the different databases from Wikipedia to PubMed talk to each other in a non-ambigous way. The creation of the PubMed ID and DOI would be one example where this turned out to be extremely helpful. Remember when there was no direkt link between Pubmed and the Journal publisher website? You would look up a paper in PubMed, find the Journal homepage and again search for the paper there.
Martin, I’m not denying it sounds like a sensible idea, and of course I’d rather click on the publisher’s link than look it up myself. But in the context of blogs, which are meant to be creative works, it all seems a bit regimented and distracting.
A-list blogger with a five-digit Technorati sperm count
Talking of procreation, it looks like that might be what Gee and Grant are doing in the picture above?
Duncan, Duncan, Duncan.
This is a family salon.
And you know what Gee and Grant have to say to you, Hull? We’re both here, and we know where you live.
[Ahem] Just so you know, Richard wrote that when I left my desk – just for a minute – to
listen to my tapes of kittens being impaled on red hot skewersget a coffee.And now follows the long-promised, much-vaunted Gee-Grant face-off, which was scandously deleted from the SciBlog unconference sessions. It will take the form of a game of Cheddar Gorge in which we shall type alternate words, me (Gee) first. Ahem (clears throat)
Marmosets invariably capitalize on their strange and unusually pungent yet weirdly and rhetorically and [listen, bud, you forced me into it] eldritch yet orthogonal and moist but [look, who’s doing all the work here?] camelopardaline and [you’re the one who’s at work, after all] [crikey, someone might notice] terebratulous
trouserful of strangely and unwittingly grotesque yet lucent croc-shaped Pommie of [of? You can’t write ‘of’ there. Oh, to hell with it] Mornington tube [not taking the bait] stranglers comma notwithstanding any further extracurricular yet unconscionable phthitic and remuneratively evolutionarily-derived green lumps of umbrella-shaped furculae [I think that must be a full .] [no it isn’t] that usually finish breakfast. [Samantha, please present the award to Grant. O’Hara, just pour the mud on his head won’t you? There’s a good chap}.
I have a hard enough time remembering what I’ve written, let alone what anyone else might have blogged about recently. Richard has called me on this before after I left more or less identical comments on two of his posts.
Don’t worry, Cath: the rest of us mortals have the normal complement of apoptotic neurons.
Don’t forget that as a Brit I also definitely have mad cow disease. According to the Canadian blood services, anyway…
Sorry Cath, but that deserves one of these:-
If you require clarification for this comment, check my NN profile and/or PatientsLikeMe profile.
—
Other than that, we’re cool.
But as for now, it must surely be a massive Gee-Grant sleep-a-thon at Chez Gee.
—
Now, there’s a trad. smutty English/Blitish joke associated with tomorrow morning’s comedy sketch which I won’t be dragged into.
In it’s place, will the Gee/Grant nest be awoken in the morning by:-
a) “The Police” (yes, the band, not the boys in blue)
b) Mrs P Gee sizzling a hearty & tasty breakfast for the entire Gee household, pets/humans of all shapes, forms, sizes and Richard P. Grant
c) daylight
d) the delightful and soothing sounds emanating from BBC’s North Norfolk Radio with Simon Jupp
Wow, I seem to have managed to annoy quite a few people today. Sorry, Graham. It’s just frustrating when my attempts to donate much-needed blood are thwarted in this way. Funnily enough though I am allowed to donate bone marrow and am in the process of joining the donor registry.
Cath, it annoys me, too – but of course all in the name of safety precautions, eh? I lived in England just the wrong year – 1990-1991, and was a regular blood donor until then, and the banks have missed out on – off the top of my head – about 45 liters of my blood since.
Once when I was in Thailand, and visiting colleagues at a hospital in Chiang Mai, I thought, aha! maybe they won’t be so picky. In fact, they didn’t screen me for potentially contracting BSE so much as tell me off because I had had a beer (one!) the previous evening with dinner. This was a good 18 hours later, mind you. So even then, I wasn’t able to donate.
Graham – the Gee/Grant face-off happened at the Nature orifice in London, not at chez Gee. Just so you know.
From here it looks as thought the ref is blind.
Or he’s confusing his yellow cards with his thumbs up.
Cath, your comment was perfectly acceptable.
They used to reject me for giving blood because I was too skinny. You’ve all reminded me that I probably don’t have this problem any more and should get my act together!
Finland, depressingly, has the same zero tolerance attitudes to Brits and blood donation. It also, depressingly, has the same blood shortage that my delicious O negative could help so easily with.
@Cath, re: Graham: I’m with Cath mate too. I can’t donate blood or plasma (or anything else!) in the US because I’m a BSE risk for living in Britain between 86-91 (I think). I’m AB- too, so I wish I could…
How did we get from trouser-eating aliens to AB- blood types?
Ian, I got an A+ on my blood test. AB- is really something!
Jenny, I wish I had the too skinny to give blood problem! Donating a pint or two is a good way to lose some weight quickly. And to get drunk on a single beer later on.
Heather, I misread the first part of your comment as “Cath annoys me too”…
I have a friend here who has a lifetime ban on donating blood – all because he was born in Zambia. He hasn’t been to Africa for 30 years, but he will never be allowed to give blood in Canada, no matter how many times he tests negative for HIV or anything else.
The rules are also homophobic. They ban gay men from giving blood, but hetero couples who, ahem, anyway, blush
gosh details via email on request, this is supposed to be family friendly…
The ban on gay men giving blood is much discussed in gay fora and causes some upset, but at the end of the day it is based on statistics. It does lead to some ridiculous situations, but they seem to feel they have to be very cautious.
In the UK there’s quite a long list of people who can’t give blood .
I’m on that list.
Jenny, I wish I had the too skinny to give blood problem!
No you don’t, Cath. That skinny is really unhealthy.
I can give blood now, finally, since I stopped getting piercings on a regular basis (sad about this, mind you). I sort of understand the restriction on people who have received piercings/tattoos in the last 6 months, but have to wonder if part of that rule is against the “suspicious” lifestyle as opposed to actual medical risk.
I’m so riddled with ink and holes and rings and stuff that there’d be no point in me even trying, even if I wasn’t a Mad
cowBritHa! I notice that list mentions travel to Canada as a risk (West Nile Virus). I wonder if this is a reciprocal insult kinda thing.
Richard, you’re probably right – at 5 ft 7, 7 st 12 is definitely too skinny. Somewhere between that and my actual weight might be nice though…
The rule in the US actually doesn’t just apply to Brits – it’s having lived anywhere in EUROPE between 86 and 91 (or whatever that was, can’t remember either). I’m German and tried a couple of times while I lived there, since the rules DO say ‘don’t exclude yourself, talk to someone’.. didn’t really help…
P.S. Frank: even if the exclusion of gay people is ‘backed up with statistics’, it’s extremely upsetting!!
@Cath: start running, it’s the only thing that works – and stop obsessing!
Ugh, running. Forever tainted in my mind by its use as a punishment at my school. There’s nothing like running around a cold muddy Yorkshire field while a sadistic teacher sits on a chair in the middle with a cup of tea and a blanket to put you off for life! Not to mention that it hurts my knees and makes me feel like throwing up. I think I’ll stick to the gym 🙂
Celebrity geeks shouldn’t have to run. They should have staff to do it for them.
🙂
But then the celebrities miss out on all the fun. Running is very liberating, you know! And it even helps your brain cells (in fact, I am convinced it’s the only reason my brain is working properly sometimes). Anyway, Cath: time to get over that tea-drinking teacher!
My brain cells receive a nice twice-daily boost from my 6 km bicycle commute. I swear I have my best ideas on my bike.
Our local TV station is running a competition called Win Your Life Back, with a year’s worth of butler, maid, chef, chauffeur, masseuse and free grocery delivery service. If I win (and you can bet I’ll be entering), I’ll send my butler out jogging.
I’m actually quite an avid runner, Steffi. It was just an attempt to steer the conversation back on topic. But then, what the heck: what thread ever is on topic here?
The point that I was trying to make and clearly, I didn’t make it well enough (apologies offered) is that families and their relatives touched by CJD (and I’ve met hundreds of them) pretty much across the board, find the media driven expression ‘MCD’ unsavory in nature, especially, when discussing the human equivalent of BSE.
—
I’ve deleted the next intended para as we’re missing the point of Jenny’s thread.
—
If you’re bold and persistent, you can have a scientific discussion about your project with one of the finest minds in the field.
Absolutely, Jenny. I’ve done so many a time in the field of Glycobiology and have tapped on the wisdom of the top dogs.
Graham, I understood your point after I checked out your link. Despite lifelong exposure to British and Canadian societal norms, I only apolgise when I mean it 😉
I find lots of things unsavory in Nature, Graham. Taking political correctness too far is one of them.
Is that lower case n or upper case N (italic), Richard?
aw spit.
@ Cath, Thank you for being you
@ Richard, Totally
but have to wonder if part of that rule is against the “suspicious” lifestyle as opposed to actual medical risk.
I was wondering about working in biomedical research labs, with blood products or with human pathogens. Shouldn’t that be on the list? The other thing about the list that should eliminate pretty much everyone is “having been exposed to an infectious disease”.
Anyone ridden the Tube lately?
Point of order. Do Brits ‘ride’ the Tube?
I do. But I’m not a Brit!
I think I always “took” the tube in Glasgow. A necessity if you want to “avoid” the bus, which generally smells worse. I “take” the metro in Helsinki. Finns also take it “Mä otan metro”. I think you can only ride the tube wearing a BoJo Stetson and chaps made of Oysters.
I do. But I’m not a Brit!
Not yet. Mwah hah hah.
And spurs fashioned out of Gilson blue tips.
yee-haw!
Got to be careful where the ‘only’ goes in that sentence.
Texans ride. Brits effluviate.
Ohioans defenestrate.
‘Ohioans defenestrate.’
That has to be in the running for some sort of prize.
I accept all major currencies…even weird Australian dross.
Sigh… from the linguistic high of “defenestrate” to the abyssal low of
Australiandross. How the mighty have fallen.‘Dross’ is a lovely literary substitute for ‘shite’. I run a high-class operation here.
‘High-class’ and ‘Australian’ are not two concepts that sit well together.
Actually, come to think of it, neither are ‘major currencies’ and ‘Australian’.
‘Australian’ and ‘dross’, on the other hand—hang on, I think there’s a swagman, snagged as a wombat’s tonker, swinging a half-boiled jumbuck at my door. Be right back.
I always find that jumbucks (jumbucki?) are more tender if boiled completely.
Try telling that to the locals, dearie.
My mother always warned me to keep well clear of snagged swagmen.
Don’t come the raw prawn, mate, or somebody’ll spit the dummy. And that’s fair dunkum.
Oops, “dinkum” or course. ‘Strine and my typing don’t mix well.
Austin, I’ll give you extra credit if you can write a limerick using all of those words.
No sooner said than done… sadly I couldn’t work “dinkum” or “jumbucks” in, but as a bonus I have included a bit more Aussie vernacular, and a Sydney-specific biological reference for Richard Grant.
Our mate Rich spat the dummy at dawn
When he found some funnelwebs in his lawn
Rich said: That’s just not on
I want youse spiders gone
And don’t bloody come the raw prawn
PS I’m sure you will now be able to see why my employers regard me as hopelessly easily distracted.
Hahahahahaha!
Effing brilliant, many thanks.
Mind The Gap will offer a virtual prize to whomever can work both ‘jumbucks’ and ‘dinkum’ into the same limerick.
There was a breeder of jumbucks
Attacked by a flock of some ducks
He said “it’s fair dinkum,
With new thongs I’ll sink ’em
And roger ’em silly, dumb schmucks.”
three languages as well, very impressive.
Bugger. Forgot to preview. Sure you can all work it out.
bq. Mind The Gap will offer a virtual prize to whomever can work both ‘jumbucks’ and ‘dinkum’ into the same limerick.
I’m still waiting.