Eschaton 2012 reception

The science and skepticism conference Eschaton 2012 is underway in Ottawa, Ontario. Esteemed science blogger PZ Myers will be speaking and here he is with the author of Science Notes.

Confronting Pseudoscience

It was an exciting evening at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium.  Speakers included Ben Goldacre, author of “Bad Science” and confronter of HIV denialists; David Gorski, specialist cancer surgeon and witness to cancer quackery; Michael Shermer, investigator of  pseudoscience. McGill University’s dynamic crusader for getting science knowledge out to the public.

This year’s Trottier Symposium focuses on the difference between science and “pseudo” or “false” science. While real science accumulates facts and formulates testable theories to gain a unified understanding of the physical world, pseudoscience relies on anecdotes, ideology and cherry-picked data to support preconceived notions. Conventional science is a self-correcting, continuously evolving process based on critical thinking and plausible theories supported by peer-reviewed research whereas pseudoscience is often mired in dogma that is resistant to change. Pseudoscience masquerading as real science can lead to troublesome consequences, particularly when it comes to matters of health. Unfortunately, aided and abetted by the Internet, pseudoscience has been growing by leaps and bounds. Four outstanding, world-famous science communicators will discuss various aspects of pseudoscience and will provide guidance for separating sense from nonsense.

Sign-language translation

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The seven virtues of Bushido

The seven virtues of Bushido:

• Rectitude (義)
• Courage (勇)
• Benevolence (仁)
• Respect (礼)
• Honesty (誠)
• Honor (誉)
• Loyalty (忠)

I copied this from Hanzi Smatter.

WordPress for LinkedIn

The WordPress blog announced that you can now send updates from your blog to LinkedIn.

To add the WordPress App to your LinkedIn account, visit the LinkedIn Application Directory. Select the WordPress App, enter your blog’s URL, and choose to display either all of your blog posts or just those tagged with “LinkedIn.” Save, and you’re all set!

Now your network will be notified when you post something new to your WordPress.com or WordPress.org blog. Your WordPress avatar will automatically display alongside the top post (we, of course, suggest you use Gravatar for that).

Live Webcast August 19: ensuring continuity of operations

You can sign up here.

Overview: Disasters come in all shapes and sizes and you never really know exactly when or how they’re going to happen. Unfortunately, they are most likely going to happen at some point in time and how you respond may very well impact the day-to-day operations of your business. One thing’s for certain, whether it’s something as simple as a hardware malfunction or something as big as a natural disaster, there are very clear steps that you can take to protect your business from an IT catastrophe.

TechRepublic is proud to present Ensuring Continuity of Operations, an on-demand online event about the challenges and rewards of proper preparation, response and recovery. Listen to this on-demand Webcast to:

• Learn about the different types of threats to your infrastructure, applications and services as well as ways to best assess your vulnerability
• Discover the best practices and lessons learned for proper preparation, response and recovery
• Gain a better understanding of the unique considerations and strategies for call centers and data centers as well as remote and branch office locations

You may not know whether disaster will ever strike your operations but, let’s face it, leaving your fate to chance just isn’t an option. Ensuring Continuity of Operations is an essential opportunity for anyone who would rather place their fates “and their fortunes” in their own well-prepared hands as opposed to taking chances.

Questionable e-cards

Some eCards is ironic and topical. You’ve got to like a site with the motto, “When you care enough to hit Send.”

Apology

I wanna be a Wiki Gardener!

What’s a wiki gardener? It’s the techie editor’s dream job:

A WikiGardener is a person who goes around the wiki, correcting typos here, rearranging things to be more readable there. In general, good WikiGardeners are liked and respected, since they have the magical ability to take a jumble of pages and create good, readable text out of them. Anyone can be a WikiGardener: If you see a typo or a spelling mistake, feel free to correct it! If you feel up to it, rearrange a page, or split a long page to smaller pages, or if you think some page belongs to some WikiCategory, add a link to it. If you make a mistake, don’t worry about it, since everything you do can be restored. Also, remember to add a change note when doing your wikigardening.