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Move over Tomagotchi!

If you don't have an 8-year-old in your life, you might not know about Tomagotchi.  They're little electronic keychains/virtual animals that need to be "fed" and cared for every few hours by pressing a series of buttons.  Whatever, that's old news.  Now there's GenPet!  It's not a virtual pet, it's a real, living, genetically engineered pet.

Hybernating in their packaging, the GenPets are awakened from their dormant state when you take them home.  They never grow and stay their cute size for their entire 1 to 3 year lifespan (like having a puppy forever!).  Their combined DNA give them imited motion "like a baby or a doll" and they only need feeding once per week. But remember: never feed your GenPet after midnight.

Adam Curtis on Archive.org

Word has spread slowly about Adam Curtis' BBC documentaries. The films, Century of the Self and the Power of Nightmares, have only been released at festivals in the US.  Because both films make extensive (and brilliant) use of archival and found footage, Curtis has said clearing the rights for DVD release would be "prohibitively costly and a nightmare - no pun intended."

Fortunately, your friends at Stay Free! and the folks at the Internet Archive were able to team up and make the films available.  The Century of the Self (all four parts) and all 3 parts of the Power of Nightmares are now both available.  It's a bit of a time commitment to watch them all, but they're absolutely worth it.

Somebody at Dreyer's has a sense of humor.

"Vanilla ice cream with squirts of real Hershey's chocolate and whole candy corns" 

Ok, it doesn't really say that, but "Fudge Tracks"?  Really?

Rapier? I hardly knew her!

I recently read the aphorism, as quoted by Clay Shirky, Most people aren't funny and most funny people aren't funny most of the time. Friend and fellow comic Rachael Parenta finds that there are way too many rape jokes being told at the shows we do. (Which isn't to say that there is no such thing as a funny rape joke.) Combine Rachael's general point with Clay's and it strongly suggests that telling rape jokes isn't for mere mortals.

In this video clip, CNN's Nancy Grace (and some other dude) proves that at least one rape joke too many has been told.

Also via Gawker.

Frankly, Frank, this design sucks

Jonathan Lethem has written an open letter to Frank Gehry setting forth all of the reasons that Ratnerville is bad for Brooklyn, for architecture and for Gehry himself.

I don't have much faith, but I hope that Lethem can break through the thick cash-crust that is currently smothering Gehry's two-sizes-too-small heart - if only to save Freddy's.

Via Gawker.

Coffee Monster

Fun corporate trivia! That mythical creature depicted in the Starbucks logo is NOT a mermaid. It's a melusine !

After you play with this handy coffee cost calculator by Hugh Chou, you may conclude that the creature is a siren, luring you onto the rocks of financial ruin.

I Heart San Francisco

from travelingtiger

How science journals rig their rankings

The Wall Street Journal tells us that science journals have succumbed to a sort of academic product placement. It goes like this: editors and publishers at, for instance, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medical, will urge scientist-contributors to frontload their papers with citations to the journal's past studies. Doing so will increase the journal's rankings--or "impact factors"--thereby increasing the likeliness that libraries and other institutions will subscribe.

[I]mpact factors are essentially a grading system of how important the papers a journal publishes are. "Importance" is measured by how many other papers cite it, indicating that the discoveries, methodologies or insights it describes are advancing science. Impact factors are calculated annually for some 5,900 science journals by Thomson Scientific.

Apparently, this has been going on for years and is deeply entrenched (though, naturally, publishers deny it). But it seems to me that there's a possible (partial) solution: why not change the rankings formula to somehow discount citations of one's own journal? Or of journals linked to the same parent company? At the very least, a journal with self-citations over a certain percentage should get a good whipping.

Full story copied below the jump.

Science Journals Artfully Try
To Boost Their Rankings
By SHARON BEGLEY
June 5, 2006; Page B1

John B. West has had his share of requests, suggestions and demands from the scientific journals where he submits his research papers, but this one stopped him cold.

Dr. West, the Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Physiology at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, is one of the world's leading authorities on respiratory physiology and was a member of Sir Edmund Hillary's 1960 expedition to the Himalayas. After he submitted a paper on the design of the human lung to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, an editor emailed him that the paper was basically fine. There was just one thing: Dr. West should cite more studies that had appeared in the respiratory journal.

If that seems like a surprising request, in the world of scientific publishing it no longer is. Scientists and editors say scientific journals increasingly are manipulating rankings -- called "impact factors" -- that are based on how often papers they publish are cited by other researchers.

"I was appalled," says Dr. West of the request. "This was a clear abuse of the system because they were trying to rig their impact factor."

Just as television shows have Nielsen ratings and colleges have the U.S. News rankings, science journals have impact factors. Now there is mounting concern that attempts to manipulate impact factors are harming scientific research.

Conceived 40 years ago, impact factors are essentially a grading system of how important the papers a journal publishes are. "Importance" is measured by how many other papers cite it, indicating that the discoveries, methodologies or insights it describes are advancing science.

Impact factors are calculated annually for some 5,900 science journals by Thomson Scientific, part of the Thomson Corp., of Stamford, Conn. Numbers less than 2 are considered low. Top journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, score in the double digits. Researchers and editors say manipulating the score is more common among smaller, newer journals, which struggle for visibility against more established rivals.

Thomson Scientific is set to release the latest impact factors this month. Thomson has long advocated that journal editors respect the integrity of the rankings. "The energy that's put into efforts to game the system would be better spent publishing excellent papers," says Jim Testa, director of editorial development at the company.

Impact factors matter to publishers' bottom lines because librarians rely on them to make purchasing decisions. Annual subscriptions to some journals can cost upwards of $10,000.

The result, says Martin Frank, executive director of the American Physiological Society, which publishes 14 journals, is that "we have become whores to the impact factor." He adds that his society doesn't engage in these practices.

Journals can manipulate impact factors with legitimate editorial decisions. One strategy is to publish many review articles, says Vicki Cohn, managing editor of Mary Ann Liebert Inc., a closely held New Rochelle, N.Y., company that publishes 59 journals. Reviews don't report new results but instead summarize recent findings in a field. Since it is easier for scientists to cite one review than the dozens of studies that it summarizes, reviews get a lot of citations, raising a journal's impact score.

"Journal editors know how to increase their impact factor legitimately," says Ms. Cohn. "But there is growing suspicion that journals are using nefarious means to pump it up."

One questionable tactic is to ask authors to cite papers the journal already has published, as happened to UCSD's Dr. West, who says that he has great respect for the journal and its editors despite this episode. He declined the request, and the journal published his paper anyway, in March.

Richard Albert, the deputy editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, says that the request goes out to every scientist who submits a paper. "It's boilerplate, a form letter," he says. The letter has been in use for many years, according to Dr. Albert, who says he has always opposed the inclusion of the passage but was overruled by the journal's former editor.

Journals also can resort to "best-of" features, such as running annual summaries of their most notable papers. When Artificial Organs did this in 2005, all 145 citations were to other Artificial Organs papers. Editor Paul Malchesky says the feature was conceived "as a service to the readership. It was not my intention to affect our impact factor. In terms of how we run our operation, I don't base that on impact factor."

Self-citation can go too far. In 2005, Thomson Scientific dropped the World Journal of Gastroenterology from its rankings because 85% of the citations it published were to its own papers and because few other journals cited it. Editors of the journal, which is based in Beijing, did not answer emails requesting comment.

Journals can limit citations to papers published by competitors, keeping the rivals' impact factors down. An analysis of citations in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare shows very few citations of papers in a competitor, Telemedicine and e-Health, "while we cited them liberally," says editor Rashid Bashshur, director of telemedicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Richard Wootton, editor of JTT, says that he believes it's true that his journal cites its competitor less frequently than Dr. Bashshur's journal cites JTT, "but it doesn't seem to me that there is a sinister explanation." Dr. Wootton adds that "when we edit a paper...we sometimes ask authors to ensure that the relevant literature is cited." But "I can state unequivocally that we do not attempt to manipulate the JTT's impact factor. For a start, I wouldn't know how to."

Scientists and publishers worry that the cult of the impact factor is skewing the direction of research. One concern, says Mary Ann Liebert, president and chief executive of her publishing company, is that scientists may jump on research bandwagons, because journals prefer popular, mainstream topics, and eschew less-popular approaches for fear that only a lesser-tier journal will take their papers. When scientists are discouraged from pursuing unpopular ideas, finding the correct explanation of a phenomenon or a disease takes longer.

"If you look at journals that have a high impact factor, they tend to be trendy," says immunologist David Woodland of the nonprofit Trudeau Institute, of Saranac Lake, N.Y., and the incoming editor of Viral Immunology. He recalls one journal that accepted immunology papers only if they focused on the development of thymus cells, a once-hot topic. "It's hard to get into them if you're ahead of the curve."

As examples of that, Ms. Liebert cites early research on AIDS, gene therapy and psychopharmacology, all of which had trouble finding homes in established journals. "How much that relates to impact factor is hard to know," she says. "But editors and publishers both know that papers related to cutting-edge and perhaps obscure research are not going to be highly cited."

Another concern is that impact factors, since they measure only how many times other scientists cite a paper, say nothing about whether journals publish studies that lead to something useful. As a result, there is pressure to publish studies that appeal to an academic audience oriented toward basic research.

Journals' "questionable" steps to raise their impact factors "affect the public," Ms. Liebert says. "Ultimately, funding is allocated to scientists and topics perceived to be of the greatest importance. If impact factor is being manipulated, then scientists and studies that seem important will be funded perhaps at the expense of those that seem less important."

Write to Sharon Begley at sharon.begley@wsj.com1
      URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114946859930671119.html

Meat and Candy

Stay Free!, by edict of the Board of Directors, is by and large a sports-free zone. That leaves me little reason to link to Gerard Cosloy's Can't Stop the Bleeding as I don't get any of his indie rock references. And then, out of nowhere, it became a trademark blog. Here's what I learned.

1) Meat Loaf sued songwriter Jim Steinman for the rights to the trademark "Bat out of Hell." Steinman wrote the songs on the album that Meat Loaf made famous so it isn't clear to me who should be able to claim the rights to the trademark. Meat Loaf wants it so that he can release yet another album bearing that title, which is reason enough to oppose it -- but for the fact that even if he doesn't get the title back he will still release the album.

2) It was common knowledge among nerds like me that the Baby Ruth candy bar was not named for Babe Ruth but rather for "Baby Ruth" Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland. It turns out that "common knowledge" is better described as PR bullshit.

Now that the candy company wants to be affiliated with Major League Baseball it has essentially admitted that the Ruth Cleveland story was a ruse to avoid having to pay Babe Ruth to use his name. Now that money can be made by both sides, everyone is friends again.

George Washington, Patriot

Last year, Brad Neely, creator of the embattled Wizard People, Dear Readers and the man behind Creased Comics, sent Stay Free! a video he made about the father of our country. I loved it. So, naturally, I spent months forgetting to ask him if Stay Free! could put it online. I should have just assumed it was YouTubed, but didn't find out until today.

Please enjoy Creased Comics' Washington, by Cox & Combes.

Video link via Protein Wisdom.

Rocks is the new Sucks

I have to admit, I don't remember virginity rocking -- and I remember an awful lot of virginity.

Plus, take a look at that picture. Those two kids are so totally fuckin' each other.

Via WNYC

Panexa Commercial

I've been doing marketing for an amazing drug, Panexa, for quite some time now. Now that marketing has been taken to the next level, thanks to the excellent efforts of Kirby Furgason and associates, who have produced Panexa's first commercial!

Steamy Bat on Girl Action

By now you must have heard the news that Batwoman is gay. I'd be the first to congratulate DC Comics on their progressivism if we didn't already know that - despite greenlighting Val Kilmer's codpiece - they are very sensitive to the suggestion that Batman is gay.

I'd probably be even more outraged at the hypocrisy if she weren't totally hot.