I always try to watch debates by erasing all of my prior information, just like a "virgin" voter, seeing the candidates for the first time.  And with such a mindset, I have to say I was proud to be a Democrat last night!  There were three formidable people up on the stage, obviously intelligent, thoughtful, capable and passionate.  

It was easy to like Hillary while she was talking, and Barack when he was talking, and John when he was talking.  They also seemed completely equal - there was no sense of the media-driven "two-person" race on that stage last night - it was unquestionably a three-person race although Obama had 12 minutes more of face-time than Edwards (with Clinton in-between).

Back in July, the House of Representatives passed a bill that requires all the NIH-funded research to be made freely available to the public within at most 12 months subsequent to publication.

The equivalent bill has passed the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this summer and will be up for vote in the Senate very soon!  In advance of this important vote, The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a Call for action:

The first Science Blogging Conference was a great success.  The second one will, hopefully, be even better.  You can make it so if you attend!  How, where, when, what?  Under the fold....

When technological or social changes start altering the business landscape in a particular industry, people involved in that business tend to respond in three general ways:

I have just posted the exclusive science interview with Sen. John Edwards on my blog.  

All the questions are related to science (and yes, it was not easy to cut down the number of questions and the length of each question - there is so much to ask) and they should be of interest to the readers of this blog: science education, global warming, energy, food production, space exploration and pandemic preparedness are some of the topics covered in the interview.

These two articles in Colorado Springs Independent and Denver Post are just the latest in an ongoing saga about the move by the U.S.Army to expand its Fort Carson base to include an additional million acres of land full of historical and prehistorical monuments, from wall paintings to dinosaur fossils.

My SciBlings (a nickname for bloggers on Seed Magazine's scienceblogs.com) Chris Mooney (the author of "The Republican War on Science") and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science"

This is not a simple topic, but I will try to organize my thoughts in some way....

Friday is a Science Day on DailyKos, so this may be right day to make this announcement.  

There are hundreds of scientists here, as well as thousands who enjoy the Science Friday posts and diaries (even when they are not politically charged, e.g., on global warming or Intelligent Design).

In the first edition of the The Science Blogging Anthology, DK was represented by this post by DarkSyde. But Darksyde is far from being the only one writing about science on DailyKos.  I personally love the weekly marine science diaries by Mark H.

Several Kossians also attended the first Science Blogging Conference in January. Anyway, under the fold is information about the plans for the second conference and the second edition of the Anthology.  Go back through the 'science' tag and nominate the best posts and diaries for inclusion in the next years' book.

Last year, I collected the links to notable posts about Darwin Day and posted them here.  That was fun, so I decided to do it again.  

I checked the Technorati and Google Blogsearch and took my picks that you can see if you click here.  I will update that post several times today and move the post to the top of the page in the evening.  If you want your Diary or a post on your own blog to appear there, please e-mail me at: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com.

Ah, why do I have to be so busy on a news-filled day (no, not Anna Nicole Smith)?  I barely saw the computer today. I'd get home, have about 5 minutes before I have to go out again and so on.  NPR did not mention Edwards until 4pm or so (that I heard in the car), so when I first got home I only had time to open e-mail, scan about 50 new messages, home in to the one that had the news, open it, get the links and quickly post without more than a quick skim of the statements by Edwards and others, let alone any time to add commentary (except for what the title implied I felt at the time).  And then there were comments I did not have time to respond to.  And all the other blogospheric responses I was missing...Ah, well.  The family is asleep so I'll try to catch up now....under the fold:

The first of its kind, phenomenal, unbelievable collection of the best science blogging in history has just been published!

Timed to coincide with the first Science Blogging Conference, this anthology of best 50 blog posts from science and medical blogs is now available for sale.  You can find all the information about the book, including the blog-typical democratic process of choosing 50 best posts of all time, at this URL.

You can check out all 218 finalists here and the Final 50 here.

The anthology was published by Lulu.com.You can buy the book here.  The collection contains the following blog posts:

A whole day's summary of the event, the before and the after...

Blog carnivals are one of the best and most important ways to introduce new bloggers and form communities around a common interest.  Conservatives have a number of them, and there are by now hundreds of carnivals around non-political topics, may probably of intereste to at least some Kossians.  There were two earlier attempts to make a liberal carnival (The Blog Tower and the Carnival of Un-Capitalists) but they did not last long.

Al Gore's big issue is the environment.  He says he is not running for President.  Maybe he will, maybe he won't. But no matter what happens, it is obvious that the environment is Gore's passion and that he will spend the rest of his life fighting for it.  His passion is what drives so many people to push him to run for office again.

A science (and medicine) blogging conference, the first of its kind, has now been officially announced for January 20th 2007 in Chapel Hill, NC.  We have about 30 people signed up and a few more signaling their intentions to come.  We are also spreading the word in the local community: scientists, students, librarians, science writers, science journalists and bloggers.

What can you do?

Yesterday, I spent a wonderful day in Greensboro, most of it on the NC A&T campus attending ConvergeSouth. I am still trying to recover from the event, so this post is just a big Hello to everyone I met there and another post about buidling online communities inspired by the meeting will follow soon.

I went to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Monday to hear Elizabeth Edwards read from her new book, Saving Graces (I could not make it to the earlier event in Chapel Hill as I was picking up the kids from school at the time).  Quail Ridge Books and the surrounding area can get quite busy when a famous person is coming in to sign books (e.g., when Al Gore and Jimmy Carter came there) so I made sure to come really early.  By 6:45pm I have already dropped the kids off at grandma's yet I still had to make a couple of circles to find a parking space and the bookstore was already full.  I'd say there were more than 300 people there, including several familiar faces from OAC and the Wake County Dems.

So, the Big Day has finally arrived - the inauguration of the new SEED scienceblogs homepage and the addition of 24 new bloggers to the stable is scheduled for noon today! So, go check out the brand new front page and all the old (like PZ Myers and Chris Mooney) and new bloggers there (listed under the fold).