Some interesting tidbits over the last few weeks in the blog-o-verse…

• Dr. Paul Knoepfler of UC Davis asks on his blog if the large numbers of recent retractions in Nature may be a good thing. Knoepfler discusses the pattern of retractions in the journal over time, the higher numbers of retractions in the last two years, and some ideas about what could be going on.

• Margaret Atwood is the first author to contribute a work to The Future Library Project according to this report in The Guardian. Over the next 100 years, works will be added and remain secret until they are finally read in 2114 after being printed on paper from 1,000 trees, recently planted trees near Oslo.

• ZDNet’s Rob O’Neill reports on a discussion going on in New Zealand about making the re-identification of massive open anonymized data illegal.

• CVS quit selling cigarettes a month earlier than promised and made a big display in Bryant Park today as reported by Forbes.

• The once-respected journal Experimental and Clinical Cardiology was sold to an offshore company, now printing nearly anything for a fee.  The shady practices were put to the test by the Ottawa Citizen.