January 2005
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Hubble redux (not)
Following up on my a previous posts about the future of the Hubble Space Telescope and on manned and unmanned space exploration: By now the web has discovered that the Bush administration has decided to remove funding for Hubble Space Telescope servicing (robotic and human) from the next budget. Of course, the purity of the…
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Discrimination or difference? Harvard Chief’s foot remains in mouth
From The New York Times: The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, who offended some women… [and men!] …at an academic conference last week by suggesting that innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, stood by his comments yesterday but said he regretted if they were…
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Green Oxford turning sludgy grey?
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According to the BBC, Oxford University (where I’ve heretofore been proud to be a long-term part-time visitor in Astrophysics), presently the fourth largest consumer of green electricity in the UK is considering moving back to fossil fuels. More specifically, it’s hired `”energy-purchasing consultants” Epal’ (whom I can’t find anywhere on the web, strangely) to investigate…
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Evolution: still fact
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional: “An anonymous reader writes ‘MSNBC reports that a judge in Atlanta, GA has ruled that a sticker placed on all textbooks in Cobb County stating that ‘Evolution is a theory, not a fact,’ is unconstitutional, and ordered that all stickers be removed.’” (Via Slashdot.) Meanwhile, here in the UK, not…
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Ennui in the UK
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There’s a lot to criticize about the US campaign system, and the politics that it supports, but there’s no denying that both Democrats and Republicans knew that something big was at stake in the 2004 elections. Here in the UK, the Tories — thankfully no longer the “natural party of government” — are showing what…
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Science Publishing III: Attribution
Finally, my colleague Sean Carroll writes about David Politzer’s Nobel-prize speech, and giving credit where it’s due.
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Science Publishing II: RSS & XML
&uot For the technically-minded, here’s an article (via Lockergnome) on The Role of RSS in Science Publishing: Syndication and Annotation on the Web, by Hammond, Hannay, and Lund of the Nature Publishing Group: RSS is one of a new breed of technologies that is contributing to the ever-expanding dominance of the Web as the pre-eminent,…
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Science Publishing I: Science Commons
Some of the biggest issues in science today have to do with the prosaic questions of publishing: How do we disseminate scientific work and the underlying scientific data so that the maximum number of scientists (and members of the public) have access to it? How do we ensure that proper credit is given for work?…
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