Do not FUCK with science bloggers!

My friend and colleague Dr. Danielle Lee had a run in with the man this weekend. Dr. Lee is a postdoctoral researcher in Oklahoma and she writes a blog for the Scientific American Blog Network called The Urban Scientist. She was recently asked by another organization (whom I had never heard of before) called Biology-Online.org to contribute a monthly blog post. After she politely asked if she was going to be paid for her writing she received an unthinkably unprofessional and flagrantly demeaning reply. Aghast that Danielle may want to actually get paid for her work, the representative asked...

"Are you an Urban Scientist or an Urban Whore?"

What. The. Fuck?

Prominent blogger PZ Myers points out the "nuances" of the questioners intonation.

"Urban whore". "Urban" is redneck code for "black". RT @PaulNiland: @jbey why do you claim a race bias also is behind this insult?
— PZ Myers (@pzmyers) October 12, 2013

 In the wake of this electronic slap in the face Danielle took it upon herself to post the e-mail on her blog at Scientific American and record the following video response.  I am absolutely amazed at her composure. I do not think I would have been able to hold back my emotion the way she does here.



So, Scientific American had her back from the start and took steps to sever connection to the person who wrote that e-mail to Danielle, right?

Unfortunately, not exactly.

As we found out later - the legal team at Scientific American got all worked up over Dr. Lee's decision to share the e-mail exchange on a blog with their letterhead on it so they took it down without telling her.

They censored her to cover their asses, that is exceedingly clear.

But to us, their concerned public, SciAm Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina tweeted this

Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.
— Mariette DiChristina (@mdichristina) October 12, 2013

This was Saturday morning and ZOMG did shit hit the fan. The internet exploded with a veritable rallying cry behind Danielle under the banner #StandwithDNlee. The part about how the post fell outside the mission of "discovering science" epitomizes everything I find frustrating about the old model of media, that there are these shining beacons of truth and that we should really trust brands over people. In this day-and-age words ARE science! Words on the internet are highly traceable data points. There is an entire branch of science emerging that makes hay out of twitter data. Someone will post a graph of #StandwithDNlee trending data over the last three days and I will post it here when I find it. To say that any blog-post on any topic is not about "discovering science" is to be caught unaware about what science on the internet looks like today and will continue to develop into in the future.

After calls to Boycott SciAm from Dr. Isis and fierce push-back from within the very SciAm Blog Network itself Mariette DiChristina issued a more thorough public statement here.

In the statement DiChristina attempts to explain what happened and the precarious timing of it all as this went down on a holiday weekend and so on and so forth.

I wanted more ownership of the fuck-up but hey, people are going to protect their interests first and foremost.

Currently, Dr. Lee's Post is back up and my other hero Bora Zivkovic, the blogfather himself, is doing his best to pull up the mainsail on a network that had a rough weekend. 


If you are sick of all this drama and just want to laugh for a bit. Check out our first #MicroscoParty. I'm posting this so you can witness first-hand the awesomeness that is Dr. Danielle Lee.

Rebecca Skloot on science journalism

During a 2010 visit to her alma mater - Colorado State University - Rebecca Skloot gave a series of seminars on communicating science to the public. I asked her what she thought about the role of science journalism in a world where more and more scientists are communicated directly to the public. Here is her answer.

Hey Colorado: Stop Backdoor Taxation!

by Kristopher Hite

Though this blog has brought me a lot of good things - Publication, Publicity, and (perceived) Participation in democracy - one thing it has never brought me is money. This is a fact I'm totally OK with because I love writing and posting my thoughts here.  Lord knows I've tried to monetize this site in the past. But never once have I received a paycheck from any affiliate program in which I've enrolled: Amazon, Adsense, Powell's Books, Share-a-sale etc.

But now, even if I did have a breakthrough insight that rocked the internet and was dugg, facebooked, and tweeted all over the planet I would not be able to make a dime because the State of Colorado has decided to continue their campaign of backdoor taxation.  Rather than just being honest with people and saying

"Hey Colorado residents, there are more of you now and y'all need more things like roads, schools, fire departments etc.  Therefore, we need to increase your taxes a smidge."

NO, the state does not do this, they just keep adding on all these taxes to the little things that everyday people get hit with the hardest.  Example:  car registration.  It costs me over $100 to register my car here every 12 months.  In New York, where I grew up, you paid $60 every 3 years.  Sure the State of Colorado appears to be light on taxation (Property tax is 7-10 times lower here than in New York) but in reality the backdoor tax practices the state uses hurts lower and middle class people DISPROPORTIONATELY. 

So why I'm I complaining about this here?  Here is a copy of the e-mail I just received from Powell's Books telling my that my Powell's Partnership is terminated because of Colorado's new tax law.

"Dear Powell's Partner:

It is with great regret that we are terminating your participation in the Powell's Book, Inc. Partnership Program. We are doing this because the recent change to Colorado's tax code - HB 10-1193 - is too burdensome to continue to profitably work with our Colorado-based partners.

These new sales tax regulations do not require Powell's Books to collect sales tax. Rather they mandate that we send a letter to all Colorado residents who purchase from Powells.com or our partners informing them of their sales tax obligation. Likewise, the law requires Powells.com to send a similar letter to the state of Colorado informing the state of the tax burden of each Colorado resident who is a Powells.com or partner customer. The complication and expense of performing these actions makes participation with our Colorado partners unprofitable for a business of our size.

We encourage you to contact your elected officials to encourage them to repeal this regulation. If Colorado repeals the law or changes it to allow online retailers to collect sales tax in a way that is not so burdensome, we will happily reinstate you into our Partnership Program.

Your account has been closed as of April 2, 2010, and we will no longer pay commissions for customers you refer to Powells.com after that date. All qualifying commissions earned prior to April 2, 2010, will be processed and a check will be sent to you in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of April 2, any final payments will be paid by April 30, 2010.

Thank you for participating in the Powell's Partnership Program. If regulations change in the state of Colorado, we hope to do business with you again.

Sincerely,

The Powell's Partnership Program Team"

See all the little book covers on the right sidebar of this page?  Those used to link to the Powell's sites selling each book, if a web surfer was to buy a book from Powell's after clicking on one of those images I would have received a 7% commission. No more.

So what, who cares, why are you still reading this?


BECAUSE these backdoor taxes hurt low income people and simply benefit the wealthy content guardians of dead-tree yesteryear.  Historical power centers have remained and stagnated into stinking corruption  for centuries because those in power, without fail, end up taxing those who can not afford to defend themselves. Well with the light of the internet, my keyboard and fingers, I hold a giant middle finger up at the law makers that passed HB 10-1193.  As my Grandmother would say, SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on YOU!

Blog posting about blog posting... the infinite loop

On the tech-crunch podcast this morning that came to my hammer anvil and stirrup over the Stitcher radio application on my iPhone, a voice told me that a bloggers only hope for getting links back is to post at least 2-3 times per day. They reported that the top 42% of all blogs actually post 10 times per day or more!!! This came as a shock to me, as I only post about once every three months on average. So her I go. I will try to take a few minutes every two to three hours during the day to see if this lonely blog starts to see any more traffic.

So I have to wonder about sites that post 10+ times per day. First of all these sites probably have many, many contributors. So If I were to recruit say 30 contributing bloggers and we all had a schedule, we could keep up to that level and only post once every three days. I think that is reasonable. This will be my goal.

So what is there to talk about in a free thinking realm on Thursday September 25 2008? Oh yes - the economy. Let's say we did go into a depression what would happen? Would it go so far as people having to grow their own food, and make their own cloths and not have time for anything else like blogging? People would have to put away their speed boats and travel less for sure. Who would be at the top of the food chain? I think small farmers would. Would anyone care about the government, while the government would be helpless themselves to do anything... No, they would not at all. Nationalism would surely take a downturn and tribalism would resurface. I think in order to keep the people paying attention to them the US government may start to threaten our allies and bully them into sending us chocolate. Our borders would probably be death zones and passing from one town to the next would be treacherous, as the residents would wonder where you got the money to fill up your gas tank and try to take your fuel from you. What about the children. Well they would be hungry. What about the pets? Well they would be food. All and all we can deal with this no matter how bad it gets. The people who can't deal with it are those that can't stomach the possibility that they will now have to drink tap water instead of bottled. These will be the nut jobs that throw themselves from tall buildings in the face of all this. The rest of us will be the stronger for the struggle and come out with a fresh gene pool of hardy individuals ready to build a new world from scratch, with a new ethics for the ages -->Peace