Janet Stemwedel

Commencement LOLdrums

scientopia.org — I want to lay this at Julie's feet, or maybe John Lynch's, but I'm starting to think the LOLcats are taking over! My kids speak to each other in LOL dialect, and I've been mentally captioning ... well, everything. My internal dialogue from part of commencement transcribed below.

A commencement story.

scientopia.org — Ahem. Beach ball here! Kids, I'm not going to march myself into the stadium! That's better. Thanks dude! The pomp! The circumstance! How long is this supposed to take? Well, the people on the podium giving the speeches won't mind if we entertain ourselves. Whee!

Nostalgia for commencements of yore.

scientopia.org — Actually, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to invoke "yore" for events that happened within the last five year. If there's an appropriately qualified language- or measurement-geek who'd like to make a ruling I'd be much obliged. Anyway, my fair university had its commencement ceremony this past Saturday.

"Respect my authority! (And put down the beach ball.)"

scientopia.org — My fellow university faculty, have you ever felt that your official commencement faculty marshal badge is just too pedestrian to command the respect it deserves? Me too. Luckily, it's the kind of thing you can remedy. Observe: For those of you muttering "Free-Ride has finally gone round the bend," let me put a few more facts into evidence: 1.

UCR Professor: Ethicists’ Behavior Not More Moral

losangeles.cbslocal.com — RIVERSIDE (CBSLA.com) - Professors who study moral philosophy and its application in the real world may not be all that ethical themselves when it comes to responding to students, according to a new study.

Serious allegations emerge about Mitalipov human cloning paper

ipscell.com — According to Retraction Watch, the human embryonic stem cell cloning paper in Cell by the Mitalipov Lab (I blogged about it here last week) cropped and reused some images, a potentially major issue. These serious allegations claim that there are quite a number of images within just this one paper that are reused in cropped forms throughout: "- Fig.