Why I Tweet and Blog: Captured by Beryl Lieff Benderly

You know, many people ask me - why do I talk to science reporters so often.  They ask this and then claim that science reporters are just all kinds of evil because they always get quotes and facts and concepts wrong.  Well, that has really not been my experience.  Sure, I have my examples of problems.  But overall, I have been impressed and pleased more often than not.  And here is a great example. I was interviewed a while back by Beryl Lieff Benderly about my somewhat obsessive experimentation with social media for communicating science.  And then, of course, I forgot about it.  So I was exceptionally pleased when I saw the story come out today: To tweet or not to tweet? | Science Careers.  Beryl did a remarkably good job in capturing the essence of my thoughts about Tweeting, Blogging, social media, and science communication.

If you want to know what I think about how to not get overwhelmed with Twitter, how to not spend too much time on social media, and what I think abotu aboutb social media, you don't need to wait for me to try to write my thoughts on the topic down.  Read what Beryl wrote.

An ever more famous science blogger

Just a little one here. Pam Ronald, a professor and blogger here at Davis is featured on the home page of CNN.COM in a story about "Fighting Hunger with Flood-Tolerant Rice." You can read about it at CNN or learn more about what Pam has been doing with rice from her blog or her book "Tomorrow's Table" that she wrote with her husband.

Microbiology blog video ...

Just got this from Jenna Morgan. I guess I did miss something in Toronto in 2007 ...

Blogs getting a bit more respect at UC Davis

Well, to go along with the FreindFeed discussions I have been having recently here is a tidbit of interest. Blogs keep getting a bit more respect at UC Davis. First, there was Egghead, a blog about research at Davis sponsored by University Communications the College of Biological Sciences and edited by Andy Fell of the UC Davis News Service. And now there is "UC Davis Blogs" a web site with details about blogs by UC Davis people also maintained by University Communications. And here is their current list:

Behind the Lens by Karin Higgins

Arts and humanities

• The Huffington Post — Bob Ostertag:
• Ecology Without Nature: by Timothy Morton,
  
• The Pull of Gravity: by Julie Wyman

Business and law

• Anupam Chander:
  
• Harga-Blog: by Andrew Hargadon,
  
• ImmigrationProf Blog: A blog edited by Kevin Johnson,
  

Science and agriculture

• Tomorrow's Table: by Pam Ronald,
  
• The Tree of Life: by Jonathan Eisen
• ANR News Blog:A agricultural news commentary from the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
• Bug Squad: by Kathy Keatley Garvey,
  

Social science

• Beyond Homophobia: by Gregory Herek,
• The Edge of the American West: A team blog including UC Davis history professors Ari Kelman and Eric Rauchway
• Eric Rauchway’s blog: by Eric Rauchway

They have left out a few including one of my favorites: "Mario's Entangled Bank" by Mario Pineda-Krch but the listing by UC Davis is a good thing.

ASM Bloggers Breakfast and Lost Notes

Oops.  I wrote some additional notes to post for the ASM Meeting but seem to have deleted or misplaced the file.  One of the things I wanted to write about was how glad I was to have dropped by Moselio (aka Elio) Schaecter's breakfast discussion of blogging and microbiology.  Fortunately Moselio has posted about this on his wonderful "Small Things Considered" Blog.  I note it was also good to finally meet Tara Smith, who also has a great blog "Aetiology" and to meet/remeet some of the others.  I was also inspired by some of the people there to start rebuilding my "OpenWetWare" lab page.   Though I arrived late, the breakfast for me was the most inspiring thing about the whole meeting ...

Deep microbes get all the love

Well, you know microbes must really be cool because Olivia Judson is blogging about them. You see, Olivia is also known as Dr. Tatiana. Judson's book "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation" created and still creates a stir and helped make Olivia one of the go to people for discussions of the biology of sex and weird sex practices in the natural world. Now she has a blog (with what appear to be entries once a week) on the New York Times web site called "The Wild Side."

In the blogs of hers that I have read (note to New York Times --- your system of allowing access to the blog archive really sucks) I recall there being many references to microbes, even when the focus was not on microbes per se. And this week the whole darn blog is about them small little organisms. In this weeks blog, she writes about microbes living in the deep biosphere (some of my favorites) (see Meet the Intraterrestrials).

So - check out her blog. And encourage her to keep writing about microbes. We know they are cool but she can help convince all those others who are not yet microbe fans of this fact too.

Welcoming Pamela Ronald to the Blogosphere

Just a quick post here .... I recommend everyone check out the newbie Blogger on the Block, Pamela Ronald. In addition to having an office, at least temporarily, near mine, she is an author of a new book called Tomorrow's Table discussing multiple marriages of organic agriculture and genetic engineering, an international known plant biologist (see her lab web site)., and a great person to bounce all sorts of ideas off of. As I have been going around the world (in reality and virtually) recruiting active scientists to do more blogging I am very happy to see her start a blog. So I encourage everyone who reads my blog to check out her blog.

Calling Michael Ashburner - please start a blog

I just got done with reading Won for All by Michael Ashburner which came out a few years ago. This book discussed the sequencing of the Drosophila genome by Celera and is a fascinating read. The best part is the snarky, obsessive, and funny commentary by Ashburner on the players and the games they played in the course of this project. I know the book came out a while ago, but if there ever was a science author perfectly built for blogging it has to be Ashburner. So I am calling all science blog fans to try and find a way to get him to start a blog. Also - he is a big supporter of open access publishing ... as can be seen in the videos below:






See also some other Reviews of the book:

• John Sulston in PLoS Biology
• Matt Ridley in Nature
• Craig Venter in Science
  

Joining the DNA Network

So I got an email the other day from from Hsien-Hsien Lei who blogs at Eye on DNA asking if I would like to join "The DNA Network" a collection of blog feeds on Feedburner. So I did. There. And I feel better for it.

And here is the list of all the blogs on the DNA Network

1. My Biotech Life
2. Cancer Genetics
3. Discovering Biology in a Digital World
4. DNA Direct Talk
5. Epidemix
6. Epigenetics News
7. evolgen
8. Eye on DNA
9. Genomicron
10. henry >> genetics
11. Mary Meets Dolly
12. Microarray and bioinformatics
13. Omics! Omics!
14. Sciencebase Science Blog
15. ScienceRoll
16. The Daily Transcript
17. The Gene Sherpa
18. The Genetic Genealogist
19. The Personal Genome
20. The Tree of Life
21. VentureBeat Life Sciences

Good list of Science Blogs

Check out the list of science blogs at Blog Together. It has many I had never heard of or seen. It has a bit of a bent towards blogs from North Carolina but otherwise it is one of the more comprehensive lists I have seen.