One day I’ll get back to “proper” blogging, but in the mean time we can have a caption competition…

My arm is being twisted. ScienceBorgs are having their annual DonorsChoose Challenge, to help American children get an education. There are a pile of projects, mainly to help children in deprived areas, and give the schools a little extra help.

I’m supporting GrrlScientist, and you can too! Ra! Ra! Ra!

So, if you want to help American youth, go to her challenges and donate!

Not only will yo help US children learn about science, but you can also win prizes! And what do prizes mean?

Well, actually it’s over there, at Pleiotropy. There’s lots of good evolutionary stuff, so pop over and have a browse (I also like the way Bjørn has set out the carnival).

I didn’t know…

In the US today, it’s National Post-doc Day. In keeping with tradition position of post docs, I expect everybody to ignore this, and demand the writing of 3 more manuscripts.

Hm. it does sound bit like National Brotherhood Week, doesn’t it?

Yep, it’s here! The newest, shiniest, issue of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published by the Lab Rat. This is Scientia Pro Publica, the 12th edition

It includes on of my pieces, but don’t let that put you off. There’s more scientific goodness than that.

I wouldn’t comment on this, as it’s another country’s politics. But it’s just too good to pass by, and also has scientific relevance.

The US Congress has just passed legislation with the aim of defunding ACORN. This is an organisation that helps US voters register. As these voters tend to be supporters of the Democrats, the Republicans would like to stop them.

But the bill was written rather broadly, so that it would defund

Any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office, including a law relating to voter registration.

These organisations would not be able to receive any federal funding at all, or even any promotion by the federal government.

Well, someone looked into this, to see who would be affected. They have created a top 100 list of organisations which would be banned from any federal funds under the act. This includes several arms companies (oops, there goes the industrial-military complex), and computer firms.

But the following are also on the list:

• Johns Hopkins University Oh dear, no NIH money for you, now
• Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Or NSF funding
• University of Chicago it’s OK. Obama didn’t study there
• Government of Canada (CCC) snicker
• University of California all of it?

But, best of all, sitting at no. 18 in the list:

A few days ago Eric Michael Johnson (formerly of this parish) put up a post about laboratory evidence for the breakdown of the selfish gene, which he started like this:

My previous post on a potential problem for the selfish gene theory in explaining cooperative behavior resulted in a fair amount of heated discussion. However, there are quite a few misconceptions regarding the controversy surrounding the selfish gene, group selection, multilevel selection, generalized reciprocity, etc. that need to be clarified.

He then went on to perpetrate some of these same misconceptions.

Last week Nature had a feature on data sharing. Most of it revolved around the areas of science like bioinformatics that are producing piles of data very quickly. I work a lot with data that has been collected over long periods of time, which is rather different in character: a single datum might be the result of sampling hundreds of individuals over a year. Sharing that sort of data brings its own problems, even if the data have already been described in a publication. Because of the importance of this to me, I thought it was worth sharing my rambling thoughts on the matter. Hopefully someone can explain why I’m totally wrong – I have some severe biases in this area.

I have been neglecting my duties, so here’s a reminder. Grrlscientist has now proven her insanity by agreeing to marry me. And, just to make sure there is no doubt, she has actually married me. So, in return, I want to send her somewhere cold and uncivilised.

Some of you might have noticed the, um, slow-down in posting here. This is because of a few things that have gone on in the real world (don’t worry, The Beast is fine).