Stop what you’re doing and go read Cameron Neylon’s blog. Specifically, read his new post, Improving on “Access to Research”. Regular readers of SV-POW! might legitimately complain that my so-called advocacy consists mostly of whining about how rubbish things are.

As we all know, University libraries have to pay expensive subscription fees to scholarly publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, Wiley and Informa, so that their researchers can read articles written by their colleagues and donated to those publishers.

Yesterday I was at the Berlin 11 satellite conference for students and early-career researchers. It was a privilege to be part of a stellar line-up of speakers, including the likes of SPARC’s Heather Joseph, PLOS’s Cameron Neylon, and eLIFE’s Mark Patterson. But even more than these, there were two people who impressed me so much that I had to give in to my fannish tendencies and have photos taken with them. Here they are.

In lieu of the sauropod neck cartilage post that I will get around to writing someday, here are some photos of animals London and I saw at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum this Sunday morning. In chronological order: Mountain lion, Puma concolor Black bear, Ursus americanus , which taxon has also graced these pages (and my desk) with its mortal remains.

Anyone who’s found the SV-POW! Tutorials useful will also like the excellent, detailed osteology posts on Tom Carr’s newish blog Tyrannosauroidea Central. Highly recommended — especially for those, like me, who have a lot to learn about skulls. Composite skull of a subadult Albertosaurus libratus in right lateral view with the major openings and struts labeled. From the first of Carr’s blog entries, linked below.

I first met Wann at SVP in 1997, in Chicago. I was an undergrad, still three months away from my B.S., presenting a poster arguing that OMNH 53062 (which would eventually become the holotype of Sauroposeidon ) was a new sauropod.

My spouse, Vicki, the other Dr. Wedel, is a physical and forensic anthropologist. And she’s one of a very small number of scientists who have (a) learned something new about the human body, and (b) used it to help identify dead people.

[Neuroscientist and open-science advocate Erin C. McKiernan invited readers of her blog to vote on which of four candidate projects she should work on next. Today she posted the results, and I couldn’t help but comment. This is what I said, lightly edited.] You should work on what you want to. Time spent on any project other than the one that’s burning in your hindbrain will feel painful, awkward and boring, and probably be unproductive.

Here’s where I thought Dave Hone’s Academics on Archosaurs series was going: Be honest: aren’t you just a little disappointed that it’s not? [The actual Tom Holtz article is here.

Folks, you should all stop reading this blog right now, and get yourselves across to What’s In John’s Freezer? , the awesome new blog of biomechanics wizard and brachiosaur-cervical scan facilitator John Hutchinson.