Friday links: a listing of upcoming online ecology seminars, RIP Slate Star Codex, and more

Also this week: demography of textbook biologists, NIH vs. sexual harassment, betting on sharks, nature vs. you and your hammock, and more.

From Jeremy:

Writing in Proc Roy Soc B, Sara Wood et al. analyze the inferred gender and race of scientists whose discoveries are featured in 7 widely-used US introductory biology textbooks. They find that textbook-featured scientists who made more recent discoveries are more diverse in terms of gender and race, with representation of women in biology textbooks equal to their representation among tenured US biology professors. The authors also break the results down for specific demographic subsets.

One of the internet’s most popular blogs about science (and other topics), Slate Star Codex, has shut down and the old posts have been deleted. Pseudonymous author Scott Alexander took it down because the New York Times found out his last name and planned to reveal it in an upcoming positive story about the blog. Here’s a news article on the situation. Speaking as someone who read SSC very occasionally, I think this is bad news. People should be able to blog under pseudonyms.

Writing in Nature, Liv Boeree reviews psychologist Anna Konnikova’s memoir of becoming a professional poker player.

Writing in Science, here’s Montrai Spikes questioning what it means for a prof to dress and act “professionally”.

Here’s a regularly-updated list of upcoming online ecology seminars and virtual conferences.

Stephen Heard reviews Mathematics For Human Flourishing. It’s on my reading list.

Following on from the previous link: a convicted murderer and self-taught mathematician has proved an ancient conjecture in number theory while in prison.

NIH will now require that institutions disclose sexual harassment by grantees.

MyBookie wants to offer gamblers the chance to bet on, um, great white shark movements.

From Meghan:

This twitter thread made me laugh until I cried and was totally what I needed this week:

I’ve started a new evening ritual: I leave all my technology inside except my Walkman, and I get into the hammock in the back yard and listen to an album from start to finish.

My cat has been curious about this new habit, and I’ve been trying to coax him into the hammock —

— Aaron Reynolds (@aaronreynolds) June 23, 2020