An Out-of-Character Role for Subtitles - Washington Post
November 16, 2008
An Out-of-Character Role for Subtitles - Washington Post An Out-of-Character Role for Subtitles
Boston Globe
Washington Post -
By Rachel Beckman Rejoice — subtitles have been freed! For decades, they have been plain white lines of text tethered to the bottom of the screen in foreign films.
Navigating the heart of a foreign land for 'Slumdog'
'Slumdog': A priority on reality
Obama urges help for homeowners, auto industry - Reuters Obama urges help for homeowners, auto industry
Boston Globe
Reuters -
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said struggling US automakers need a government rescue, but help should be conditioned upon changes in the industry, according to excerpts from a TV interview to air on Sunday.
Video: Obamas React To Victory
Administrators define the field
November 15, 2008
Administrators define the field
A panel of deans and directors from Kansas City educational institutions met at the School of Education Monday evening, affording students interested in college administration careers a chance to discuss the field’s challenges and opportunities.
The conversation was sponsored by UMKC’s Career Services Center and featured four panelists with extensive credentials in higher education administration including: UMKC’s Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Mary Lou Hines-Fritts, William Jewell College’s Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Residence Life, Ernie Stufflebean, Rockhurst University’s Assistant Dean of Students, Sean Grube, and Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley’s Dean of Administrative Services, Thomas Walker.
LiveScience: Era of Scientific Secrecy Near End
Era of Scientific Secrecy Near End / By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor / posted: 02 September 2008 11:30 am ET
Secrecy and competition to achieve breakthroughs have been part of scientific culture for centuries, but the latest Internet advances are forcing a tortured openness throughout the halls of science and raising questions about how research will be done in the future.
The openness at the technological and cultural heart of the Internet is fast becoming an irreplaceable tool for many scientists, especially biologists, chemists and physicists — allowing them to forgo the long wait to publish in a print journal and instead to blog about early findings and even post their data and lab notes online. The result: Science is moving way faster and more people are part of the dialogue.
[snip]
Open Science
The open science approach forces researchers to grapple with the question of whether they can still get sufficient credit for their ideas, said physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, co-organizer of a conference on the topic set to begin Sept. 8 at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada.
[BTW: I Will Be Attending This Unique Conference Science in the 21st Century: Science, Society, and Information Technology [http://tinyurl.com/6ll8fb] / Look For Conference-Related Postings on the _Scholarship 2.0_ Blog [http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/] within the next two weeks]
[snip]
Open science is a shorthand for technological tools, many of which are Web-based, that help scientists communicate about their findings. At its most radical, the ethos could be described as “no insider information.” Information available to researchers, as far as possible, is made available to absolutely everyone.
Beyond email, teleconferencing and search engines, there are many examples: blogs where scientists can correspond casually about their work long before it is published in a journal; social networks that are scientist friendly such as Laboratree and Ologeez; GoogleDocs and wikis which make it easy for people to collaborate via the Web on single documents; a site called Connotea that allows scientists to share bookmarks for research papers; sites like Arxiv, where physicists post their “pre-print” research papers before they are published in a print journal; OpenWetWare which allows scientists to post and share new innovations in lab techniques; the Journal of Visualized Experiments, an open-access site where you can see videos of how research teams do their work; GenBank, an online searchable database for DNA sequences; Science Commons, a non-profit project at MIT to make research more efficient via the Web, such as enabling easy online ordering of lab materials referenced in journal articles; virtual conferences; online open-access (and free) journals like Public Library of Science (PLoS); and open-source software that can often be downloaded free off Web sites.
[BTW: Several Of These Innovations Have Been Profiled In My SciTechNet(sm) Blog [http://scitechnet.blogspot.com/] and/or The Scholarship 2.0 Blog [http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/]
The upshot: Science is no longer under lock and key, trickling out as it used to at the discretion of laconic professors and tense PR offices. For some scientists, secrets no longer serve them. But not everyone agrees.
Networked Cyborgs
Just a few decades ago, as a scientist, here is how you did your work: You toiled in obscurity and relative solitude.
[snip]
However, today, more and more scientists, as well as researchers in the humanities, operate like transparent, networked cyborgs. Background research is mostly done online, not in the library. Some data and preliminary research might be posted online via a blog or open notebook. Early write-ups of the work might be announced to the public, or at least discussed online with peers. And these early write-ups might also be posted to an online publication that is not peer-reviewed in the strict sense.
[snip]
“In areas like my own subfields of theoretical physics,” said MIT physicist David Kaiser, “the only constraint [on how rapidly one generates research papers] is, ‘Did you have more coffee that day?’ We aren’t usually held up trying to get an instrument to work, or slogging through complicated data analysis.”Most people think faster is better, but there are other issues.
Is It A Good Thing?
There is “no question” that all efforts to make science more open are positive for the progress of science, says open science proponent and chemist Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University in Philadelphia, who posts his lab notebook online and started a blog in 2005 called UsefulChemistry where he and his colleagues regularly discuss chemistry problems as well as Web 2.0 tools and the technical and philosophical issues they raise.His online notebook and blog definitely make it easier to communicate with colleagues, he said. Such sharing also makes it easier for others to “replicate” scientists’ work — try it themselves and convince themselves that you are right. And this replication issue is one of the principles behind scientific research. Anyone who has written down a recipe for a friend knows that we all tend to spell things out more clearly when sharing them than we would if we were just taking notes for ourselves in our own shorthand.
Open science also has the potential to prevent discrimination in access to information. Arxiv, the site for posting pre-print physics papers, was started in 1991 by Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg, then at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to help provide equal access to prepublication information to graduate students, postdocs and researchers in developing countries.
[BTW: Paul Ginsparg will be one of several Major Players attending/presenting at The Conference [http://science21stcentury.org/abstracts.html]]
[snip]
And open science benefits the public, Bradley said. He tries to keep his posts fairly accessible (although this is not the case for all open notebooks and open science blogs).
[snip]
“It’s not clear to me that professional scientists or people in academic institutions have a monopoly on good ideas,” he said. “There are very smart people outside of academia, for example hobbyists or people in industry who could contribute, and having more contributors can only help. The same applies to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches.”
[snip]
Drawbacks of Open Science
One of the biggest fears of nearly all researchers is that someone else hears what you’re doing and beats you to publication. That means you wasted a lot of time (and most researchers work extremely long hours, so loss of productivity is especially painful and can also harm one’s chances for getting a job or promotion or funding for the next research project). Once you publicly reveal your thoughts, data or experimental results, some say, you lose control over ownership of that information. This topic is covered by an area of law called intellectual property, as well as patent law, and there can be significant money to be fought over when it comes to patents.
Hossenfelder, the conference organizer, says she knows of several examples in which scientists have had an idea for something, talked about it openly and then somebody else has published the fleshed-out idea first without giving any credit beyond an acknowledgment to the original idea-holder. Acknowledgments don’t advance careers.
However there are solutions to this, she said. For instance, the prominent scientific journal Nature encourages authors to include brief summaries of which author contributed what to a project. Some say that online posts provide a time-stamped record of when an experiment was documented. Those stamps can easily be arbitrarily altered after the fact, but it might also be possible to “lock” posts at a certain date after which they could not be changed without some sign-off permission to break the lock, Hossenfelder said. [snip]
Fear of Losing Peer Review
Another drawback of open science can be that results go public before they should. In science, experimental results are frequently proven wrong by subsequent work. Yet even peer review cannot ensure against this, nor can it prevent outright fraud, as proven by a 2005 case involving a South Korean scientist who claimed to have achieved the first cloning of a human embryo. A later examination of his work showed he had fabricated his results.
[snip]
“The social system of science has become so complicated, unregulated and dispersed in terms of geography and disciplines, so peer review has been elevated to a principle that unifies a fragmented field,” Biagioli said.
[snip]
And today, Arxiv, one of the most frequently cited examples of open science, has no peer review for individual papers, but it has begun to add in some constraints on allowable authors. The site used to allow anyone with email addresses associated with academic institutions to post their papers. Now, authors of research papers who post in Arxiv are vetted before they can post for the first time. In some ways, things are tightening up when it comes to openness in physics, Kaiser said. In any case, the function of print journals, in physics at least, is changing.
“Ease of sharing everything prior to peer review is flourishing, and in my opinion very few physicists are reading journals for information these days,” Kaiser said. “Journals have largely lost their information function.”
[snip]
For The Good Of Truth, Humanity, Economies?
Another argument in favor of open science is sort of a big picture issue for humanity, scientific truth and economies, Neylon said.
“Making things more open leads to more innovation and more economic activity, and so the technology that underlies the Web makes it possible to share in a way that was never really possible before, while at same time it also means that kinds of models and results generated are much more rich,” he said.
This is the open source approach to software development, as opposed to commercial closed source approaches, Neylon said. The internals are protected by developers and lawyers, but the platform is available for the public to build on in very creative ways.
“Science was always about mashing up, taking one result and applying it to your [work] in a different way,” Neylon said. “The question is ‘Can we make that as effective as samples data and analysis as it does for a map and set of addresses for a coffee shop?’ That is the vision.”
[http://www.livescience.com/culture/080902-open-science.html]
Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder For The HeadsUp !
[http://friendfeed.com/rooms/science21]
Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance
November 12, 2008
Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance
Ethics In Science And Enviromental Politics / THEME SECTION / The Use And Misuse Of Bibliometric Indices In Evaluating Scholarly Performance
Editors: Howard I. Browman, Konstantinos I. Stergiou
Quantifying the relative performance of individual scholars, groups of scholars, departments, institutions, provinces/states/regions and countries has become an integral part of decision-making over research policy, funding allocations, awarding of grants, faculty hirings, and claims for promotion and tenure. Bibliometric indices (based mainly upon citation counts), such as the h-index and the journal impact factor, are heavily relied upon in such assessments. There is a growing consensus, and a deep concern, that these indices — more-and-more often used as a replacement for the informed judgement of peers — are misunderstood and are, therefore, often misinterpreted and misused. The articles in this ESEP Theme Section present a range of perspectives on these issues. Alternative approaches, tools and metrics that will hopefully lead to a more balanced role for these instruments are presented.
TITLE PAGE [Preface] ; Full text in pdf format
Browman HI, Stergiou KI / INTRODUCTION: Factors and indices are one thing, deciding who is scholarly, why they are scholarly, and the relative value of their scholarship is something else entirely ESEP 8:1-3 ; Full text in pdf format
Campbell P / Escape from the impact factor ESEP 8:5-7 ; Full text in pdf format
Lawrence PA / Lost in publication: how measurement harms science ESEP 8:9-11 ; Full text in pdf format
Todd PA, Ladle RJ / Hidden dangers of a ‘citation culture’ ESEP 8:13-16 ; Full text in pdf format
Taylor M, Perakakis P, Trachana V / The siege of science ESEP 8:17-40 ; Full text in pdf format
Cheung WWL/ The economics of post-doc publishing ESEP 8:41-44 ; Full text in pdf format
Tsikliras AC/ Chasing after the high impact ESEP 8:45-47 ; Full text in pdf format
Zitt M, Bassecoulard E/ Challenges for scientometric indicators: data demining, knowledge flows measurements and diversity issues ESEP 8:49-60 ; Full text in pdf format
Harzing AWK, van der Wal R / Google Scholar as a new source for citation analysis ESEP 8:61-73 ; Full text in pdf format
Pauly D, Stergiou KI / Re-interpretation of ‘influence weight’ as a citation-based Index of New Knowledge (INK) ESEP 8:75-78 ; Full text in pdf format
Giske J / Benefitting from bibliometry ESEP 8:79-81 ; Full text in pdf format
Butler L/ Using a balanced approach to bibliometrics: quantitative performance measures in the Australian Research Quality Framework ESEP 8:83-92 ; Full text in pdf format Erratum
Bornmann L, Mutz R, Neuhaus C, Daniel HD / Citation counts for research evaluation: standards of good practice for analyzing bibliometric data and presenting and interpreting results ESEP 8:93-102 ; Full text in pdf format
Harnad S / Validating research performance metrics against peer rankings ESEP 8:103-107 ; Full text in pdf format
Table of Contents
[http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/esep/v8/n1/]
Taiwan's ex-leader detained in graft probe - AFP
November 11, 2008
Taiwan's ex-leader detained in graft probe - AFP Taiwan's ex-leader detained in graft probe
BBC News
AFP -
TAIPEI (AFP) - Taiwan's former president Chen Shui-bian, accused of graft during his time in office, was detained Wednesday after a court approved a bid by prosecutors to take him into custody, officials said.
Chen held in Taiwan corruption inquiry
Taiwan court orders Chen arrest
Obama Aides Play Down Tensions With Bush - Voice of America Obama Aides Play Down Tensions With Bush
Voice of America
Voice of America -
By VOA News Aides to US President-elect Barack Obama are distancing themselves from reports that President George Bush pressed him to support a free trade deal with Colombia, in exchange for help with aid to the struggling automobile industry.
Video: US automakers appeal for help
Bishops pledge to fight Obama on abortion - USA Today Bishops pledge to fight Obama on abortion
Twin Falls Times-News
USA Today -
By Steve Ruark, AP By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY BALTIMORE - The nation's Catholic bishops are expected to issue a statement Wednesday pledging cooperation with president-elect Barack Obama on numerous social issues but vowing all-out opposition to …
Catholic bishops will fight Obama on abortion
Catholic bishops plan to forcefully confront Obama
Of heartbeats and headphones - Macworld
November 11, 2008
Of heartbeats and headphones - Macworld Of heartbeats and headphones
dBTechno
Macworld -
by Dan Moren, Macworld.com The threat posed to your pacemaker by your iPod may have been downplayed by no less than the Food and Drug Administration, but that doesn’t mean that you can go listen to your music willy-nilly.
Earbuds May be Hazardous to Your Heart
Don't Mix Headphones With Pacemakers And Defibrillators
Taiwan's former president arrested over graft probe - AFP Taiwan's former president arrested over graft probe
Voice of America
AFP -
TAIPEI (AFP) - Taiwan's former president Chen Shui-bian was arrested on Tuesday as prosecutors sought to detain him in connection with a long-running corruption probe, officials said.
Former Taiwan President Detained in Graft Case
Taiwan's Chen led from questioning in handcuffs
Secret Order Lets US Raid Al Qaeda - New York Times
November 11, 2008
Secret Order Lets US Raid Al Qaeda - New York Times Secret Order Lets US Raid Al Qaeda
BBC News
New York Times -
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON - The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, …
Rumsfeld ordered US special forces to target terrorists across the …
US forces staged more than a dozen foreign raids against al-Qaida
Obama, Bush Meet at the White House - Voice of America Obama, Bush Meet at the White House
Times Online
Voice of America -
By Paula Wolfson US President George Bush and President-elect Barack Obama held their first formal meeting at the White House on Monday.
Video: Obamas Visit The White House
Poker-faced Eastgate captures World Series - USA Today Poker-faced Eastgate captures World Series
The Associated Press
USA Today -
By Gary Mihoces, USA TODAY LAS VEGAS - Peter Eastgate, a 22-year-old from Denmark who wears his ball cap backwards, earned $9.1 million Tuesday when he became the youngest player to win the main event at the World Series of Poker.
22-year-old Dane wins World Series of Poker, Russian second in Las …
Final 2 fight for $9.15M at World Series of Poker
Bush's NYC appearance creating traffic nightmare - Newsday Bush's NYC appearance creating traffic nightmare
Wall Street Journal
Newsday -
BY JOHN VALENTI | john.valenti@newsday.com It figures to be a trying, frustrating gridlock alert day for drivers with President George W. Bush in town to formally rededicate the Intrepid Air, Sea & Space Museum and the annual Veteran's Day Parade …
Bush to Honor Veterans, Rededicate Intrepid Carrier Museum
The First Draft
Rockies Set to Deal Holliday to the A’s - New York Times
November 10, 2008
Rockies Set to Deal Holliday to the A’s - New York Times Rockies Set to Deal Holliday to the A’s
The Associated Press
New York Times -
By TYLER KEPNER It takes a lot for Tom Holliday, who has spent a lifetime in baseball, to become excited at a game. But in July, when his son Matt hit a home run at Yankee Stadium in the All-Star Game, Tom got up from his seat and rejoiced.
Report: Rockies ship Holliday to Oakland
KRIEGER: System to blame for loss of Holliday
Circuit City Files for Chapter 11 Protection - Washington Post Circuit City Files for Chapter 11 Protection
CBS News
Washington Post -
Circuit City lost $320 million in the last fiscal year, its second straight year of losses. It announced last week that it would close 155 stores.
Circuit City seeks bankruptcy protection
UPDATE 1-Circuit City gets court approval of $1.1 bln financing
Legality of Same-Sex Marriage Ban Challenged - Washington Post Legality of Same-Sex Marriage Ban Challenged
Boston Globe
Washington Post -
Gay rights advocates march in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles to show their support for overturning Proposition 8. (By David Mcnew — Getty Images) Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments …
Prop. 8 proponents want their day before state's high court 
Comment by Evan Wolfson Executive Director, Freedom to Marry
Testing My SEO Skills “Captivating Capiz”
November 9, 2008
Testing My SEO Skills “Captivating Capiz”
Looking for
Testing My SEO Skills “Captivating Capiz”
November 9, 2008
Testing My SEO Skills “Captivating Capiz”
Looking for
Simple, Timeless eBay Marketing Techniques
November 8, 2008
Simple, Timeless eBay Marketing Techniques
Whether you’re writing for eBay listings or writing SEO copy for your Web site or writing SEM copy for a Google AdWords landing page, there are always some very simple, timeless things you need to do. Here they are in stripped down, bare bones bullets:
* Write strong headlines
* Describe benefits before features
* Use specific subheads
* Write about the reader (not about yourself or your company)
This is simple marketing copywriting 101, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves what the basic techniques are.
Strong headlines contain delicious offers, benefits and intrigue. Benefits sell the dream before the hardware that produces the dream (and the relationship between the two). Specific subheads are key because many readers scan the page and follow subhead stories before diving into specific sections of your body text. Finally, when you use the word “you” and talk directly to and about the reader, you make better connections and sell more effectively. Nobody wants to hear about the genius behind the product. They want to know how it’s going to help them specifically.
