Around the Web: Ada Lovelace Day, Wikipedia & Women in Science

My library is hosting a Ada Lovelace Day event tomorrow (ok, a little late…). Continuing in a tradition of having Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, we’re hosting our own Wikipedia Women in Science Edit-a-thon! I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading over the last couple of years about Wikipedia culture and especially how it relates to the under-representation...

Oct 2015

Friday Fun: Using my librarian superpowers for good rather than evil

As you can all imagine, I’m quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they’ve promised to fix. I’ll definitely be watching that and keeping track here on the blog somehow somewhere. That...

Oct 2015

Reading Diary: Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler and Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler by Philip Ball and Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown are two of the best history of science books I’ve read in a very long time. And even though they’re both about World War II, some seventy years in the past, they’ve both also very topical because they are...

Oct 2015

The Science Integrity Project and the Statement of Principles for Sound Decision Making in Canada

Though not explicitly tied to our current federal election campaign, the début this week of the Science Integrity Project and the publishing of their Statement of Principles for Sound Decision Making in Canada just as the campaign heats up is surely not coincidental. In any case, election or not, this is a wonderful initiative and I support it wholeheartedly....

Oct 2015

Reading Diary: Steve Jobs: Insanely great by Jessie Hartland

It’s tempting to go a couple of different ways here. A book that has “Insanely Great” in the title? What could possibly go wrong? On the other hand…. A kids book about what a jerk Steve Jobs was. What could possibly go wrong? Steve Jobs: Insanely Great by Jessie Hartland. An illustrated biography of Steve Jobs aimed at a younger audience which gives...

Sep 2015

Lane Anderson Awards: Finalists for the best Canadian science books written in 2014

One of the real highlights for me every year is the late-summer announcement of the Lane Anderson Awards short list. From their website here: Today, we are excited to announce the finalists for the best Canadian science books written in 2014. Our jury panels evaluated submissions in two categories – adult and young readers. They arrived at their shortlist...

Sep 2015

Canadian Federal Election: If there were a science debate, what would I ask?

Katie Gibbs and Alana Westwood of Evidence for Democracy wrote a terrific piece in The Toronto Star a little while ago, We need a national debate on science: A question about science policy has never been asked at a federal leaders’ debate. Now more than ever that has to change. Given the clear importance of science in our lives, why has a question...

Aug 2015

Reading Diary: Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure by Cédric Villani

Cédric Villani’s Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure has risen to the top of my Best Science Book of 2015 list. It’ll be tough for another book to kick it off that summit before the end of the year, that’s for sure. The name Cédric Villani probably sounds a bit familiar to most who follow the science world reasonably closely. That’s because...

Aug 2015

The Canadian War on Science: Science, the Environment and Public Health in the 2015 Canadian Federal Election

It has begun. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called an election for October 19, 2015, kicking off a marathon 11 week election campaign. The longest campaign since the 1870s, believe it or not. My patient readers may have noticed that over the last few years I’ve posted quite a bit about how science has fared under the current government....

Aug 2015

Reading Diary: Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy by Gabriella Coleman and This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things by Whitney Phillips

Gabriella Coleman’s Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous is largely a laudatory history of the Anonymous hacker activist movement with some anthropological and political analysis. Whitney Phillips’ This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture on the other hand,...

Jul 2015