Yes, you can boot Mac OS 10.6.4 via eSATA
As my MacBook Pro enters the twilight of its long and storied career as my day-to-day working machine, I have begun to back it up obsessively. I have Time Machine back up to a 500GB La Cie drive attached by USB to an Airport Extreme base station, and I clone the laptop disk each night (well, early morning—the backup is scheduled for 4 am) using SuperDuper! to a G-Drive 500GB portable. The G-Drive is definitely stylish looking. Its FW 800 ports seem to have quit, though (or maybe the MacBook Pro’s?). I think there’s a loose connection somewhere. It derails the SuperDuper! cloning routine, and, even though the cables are pretty well-seated in the ports on the laptop and the drive, the drive disconnects itself at random. I was at the Apple Store today—shopping for a new MacBook Pro, I might add—and I saw the same thing happening to the G-Drives connected to the laptops on display. So beware the G-Drive.
In any case, I was at the lab, and feeling *really* obsessive, and I started cloning the laptop to the 1TB LaCie drive I have there. I have that drive connected to my MacBook Pro by eSATA (External SATA), using the expansion card slot. I didn’t even consider whether the machine would boot from the eSATA drive when I started. I probably shouldn’t have admitted that—who would listen to someone who just goes right ahead without even doing a cursory Google search? Caveat lector—but, well, the cloning came off without a hitch, as did booting from the eSATA drive. Also: it was FAST!
“Avalanche control” in scientific literature: A role for informatics
In “We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research,” it is claimed that much of the scientific research literature published recently is “redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor” and that “research has swelled in recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs.” “Countless” is intended in a negative sense here. No argument is provided for the first claim, unless the claims about frequency of citation—generally very low, if at all, for any paper in the literature—are to be taken as an argument that recent literature is poor in quality. It does seem clear that the authors believe that there is too much literature, and it seems to me that their claims and arguments that there is too much literature might be just as strong if it weren’t paired with the argument that the literature is generally low in quality.
Taking a larger view, the problem is probably worse than the “Avalanche” authors suggest. A prominent case in point: the Biodiversity Heritage Library, whose holdings amount at present to 30,512,292 pages in 80,976 volumes, is growing daily, and more and more libraries are joining the project, including those in Europe and the Pacific rim. (Perhaps the “Avalanche” authors would find this reassuring. Back in the good old days, when men were real men (and women didn’t do science), only what was worth reading was published, and everyone read it.) Nonetheless, finding works relevant to a given topic is difficult and will become more so.
Matt Ridley: The promiscuity of things and ideas
On the evening of Wednesday, 19 May, 2010, author Matt Ridley gave an hour-long talk on his new book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. He spoke at the New York Academy of Sciences, at its headquarters at the newly constructed 7 World Trade Center, which provides stunning views of Manhattan and, as Ridley pointed out at the start of his talk, represents the resilience and ingenuity he believes to be typical of human beings, and which informs his optimism about our future. The event was a part of the “Science in the City” series. About 100 people were in attendance, and the event was filmed for C-SPAN’s Book TV. Ridley is an engaging speaker, eminently clear, speaking at a measured pace in simple but elegant language, humor simmering just below the surface, coming up at just the right moments. He’s excited about his work, and he makes the audience excited about it too. He exhibited model form as a speaker, outlining his talk at the start, and sticking to his plan throughout. Its Book TV presentation is highly recommended; consult the Book TV or NYAS site for schedule information. Science in the City frequently makes podcasts or video footage of its events available on its site as well.
My aim here is to give readers rapid access to the central claims and arguments of the talk. Note that everything I say here is drawn from the talk rather than the book, although it’s reasonable to believe that the aim of his talk is to convey the book’s main ideas. I stay away from evaluating his claims, which I intend to do in a later post. Here I just want to give readers a clear sense of what Ridley is up to.
WHOI Top Stories- Studying Climate Change from Beneath the Ocean—and OnlineWhat's it like to join a research cruise if you're not a scientist or an engineer? Follow along as former high school science teacher Heather Pacheco blogs about her experiences lending a hand aboard the R/V Knorr as part of an expedition organized by WHOI's Lloyd Kegwin to study Earth's past climate through the lens of sediments brought […]
- Studying Climate Change from Beneath the Ocean—and Online