jdupuis | December 29, 2009During my winter blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from September 24, 2007. It's my initial thoughts about the blog I've been using to post my IL session notes.
It's worth noting that the blog has evolved such that it's hardly about or for engineering or computer science students at all; it's more for the sessions I do for "science for non-science students" courses. Also, the use of Meebo has been a huge hit for me, really creating a new way for me to interact with students.
I'll be re-…
jdupuis | December 25, 2009Now here's a question: What do you leave by the fireplace on Christmas Eve for a great old one to snack on? Probably your neighbours' kids.
Anyways, Tor.com has posted an amusingly creepy Christmas story by Charles Stross, Overtime.
It's certainly not every treacly Christmas story that has a passage like this one, describing the aftermath of an office party:
Whoever sat on the copier lid that time didn't have buttocks, hairy or otherwise--or any other mammalian features for that matter. What I'm holding looks to be a photocopy of the business end of a giant cockroach.
Maybe I'm not alone…
jdupuis | December 24, 2009Not surprisingly, a very fine list from the AIP's Physicsworld website:
The Physics of Rugby by Trevor Davis
First Principles: The Crazy Business of Doing Serious Science by Howard Burton
Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity by Basil Mahon
Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb by Jim Baggott
Lives in Science by Joseph C Hermanowitz
13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks
Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung by Arthur I Miller
Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen
Plastic Fantastic: How the…
jdupuis | December 23, 2009A nice list from a bunch of categories from the Washington Post, although some of items in the the science section seem strangely unscientific:
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus
A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary by Andrew Levy
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid
The Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the…
jdupuis | December 22, 2009One of the five non-fiction books chosen by Salon was a science book.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
jdupuis | December 21, 2009Every year The Allman Brothers Band hold court at New York's Beacon Theatre for an extended run and 2009 was a very special year for them as it was the 20th anniversary of the event.
And being a jam band, they celebrated with a wide array of guests each night. Perhaps most notable were two nights with Eric Clapton -- notable because given the ties between the Allmans and Clapton and both their propensities for collaboration, they'd never appeared together on stage before.
Check out here for tons of Youtube coverage and directly for the songs with Clapton: Little Wing, Dreams, Why Does Love…
jdupuis | December 19, 2009A nice list of technology/business books:
Googled: The End of the World as we Know it by Ken Auletta
Inside Larry & Sergey's Brain by Richard L. Brandt
The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein
The Accidental Billionares: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the most Popular Website in America by Julia Angwin
Behind The Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
Smasher by Keith Raffel
jdupuis | December 18, 2009What better way to celebrate the yuletide season that with some gifts that honour and celebrate everyone's favourite Great Old One, Cthulhu!
Ellen Datlow has a couple of cool posts on Tor.com with some Lovecraftian gift ideas here and here.
Take a look:
Despite the fact that he's been dead for over seventy years, and his prose considered purple and overwrought by many, H.P. Lovecraft's work is still widely read, and has remained influential for generations. Evidence of this is in the 2005 publication of H. P. Lovecraft: Tales by Library of America, that bastion of literary respectability. The…
jdupuis | December 18, 2009I've cobbled together this list from three lists from The Independent: Nature & Environment, Biography and History.
The Running Sky: A bird-watching life by Tim Dee
Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo by Michael McCarthy
Edible Seashore: river cottage handbook no. 5 by John Wright
Logicomix: an epic search for truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie di Donna
Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins by Adrian Desmond and James Moore
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo
Blood, Iron and…
jdupuis | December 17, 2009Thinking about the future is very hard.
You'd think I'd know just how hard it is, having engaged in it on numerous occasions during my blogging career and even writing a book about it. But the more I think about the future -- of the climate, of society, of the economy, of information, of publishing, of libraries and, ultimately, of librarians like me -- the harder it is to pin down what I really think is going to happen. The future has a nasty way of sneaking up on you and actually happening in the past. Some things happen faster than you thought, some slower. Some things you thought were…
jdupuis | December 17, 2009From Time's Top 10 Non-Fiction books:
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di DonnaAs usual, if you've seen any best book of the year lists out there that you think I should mention, please let me know.
jdupuis | December 16, 2009A nice list from The Barnes & Noble Review:
Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Joseph Kanon Michael Specter
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
Ivory's Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants by John Frederick Walker
The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christopher Cokinos
A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana by João Magueijo
jdupuis | December 15, 2009A selection of articles from two recent IEEE publications which have special issues devoted to humanitarian service in engineering. Note that most of these articles will be behind the IEEE paywall.
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, v52i4.
The Role of Information and Communication in the Context of Humanitarian Service by Haselkorn, M; Walton, R
Adapting to Change: Becoming a Learning Organization as a Relief and Development Agency by Smith, S.; Young, A.
Listening as a Missing Dimension in Engineering Education: Implications for Sustainable Community Development Efforts by…
jdupuis | December 15, 2009Not surprisingly, being a science magazine Seed has a very fine list of books for science enthusiasts:
Boyle: Between God and Science by Michael Hunter
A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Ettore Majorana, the Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age by João Magueijo
NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Moyasimon 1: Tales of Agriculture by Masayuki Ishikawa
Nature's Patterns: a Tapestry in Three Parts (Shapes, Flow, Branches) by Philip Ball
Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate by…
jdupuis | December 14, 2009A short list from the Christian Science Monitor:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and the Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability by David Owen
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
jdupuis | December 14, 2009...five different ways!
In a bit of a twist on some of the "Five songs I love" posts I've done, I thought I'd take one of my favourite songs and see if I could find a bunch of different versions of it.
Some songs seem to naturally lend themselves to re-interpretation by different artists, and Warren Haynes' song Soulshine seems to be one of them. he recorded it first with The Allman Brothers but he's also performed it both as a solo act and with his other band, Gov't Mule. As we shall see, it's also been performed by other acts as well.
Now, I have a bit of a dilemma here. There's a…
jdupuis | December 12, 2009The latest issue of IT Professional (v11i6) has some interesting articles on strategic planning for IT organizations.
Information Technology Strategic Planning by Hong, Edward K
IT Innovations: Evaluate, Strategize, and Invest by Sahoo, Manas
Professional and Interpersonal Skills for ICT Specialists by Llorens-Garcia, Ariadna; Llinas-Audet, Xavier; Sabate, Ferran
IT and Business Alignment: The Effect on Productivity and Profitability by Nash, Elby M.
Finding Your True IT Transformation by Kraynak, Peter
Copyright Infringement and Protection in the Internet Age by Berti, John
Virtual Teams and…
jdupuis | December 11, 2009...on Tor.com!
Check it out:
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn...
In deference to the Great Old Ones, Tor.com has devoted this December to everyone's favorite cosmic tentacled thing-that-cannot-be-described from Vhoorl. All month long we'll be posting articles, stories, and comics relating to the Lovecraft Mythos, and we've invited scholars, editors, and fans of the snuggly beast to contribute. We're thrilled to welcome as bloggers Ellen Datlow, Stephen H. Segal, Seamus Cooper, and others on Tor.com for this very special occasion (along with our regular lineup, natch).
We'll…
jdupuis | December 10, 2009Yet another solid list from the Globe and Mail, assembled from a few different categories. This list focuses on gift/coffee table-style books; I've left out a few of the many science and nature books that seem a bit more peripheral to my main mission.
Aviation in Canada: The Formative Years by Larry Milberry
Gil Cohen: Aviation Artist by Gil Cohen
Eco House Book by Terence Conran
Illustrated Birds of North America by Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer
Whole Green Catalogue: 1,000 Best Things for You and the Earth edited by Michael W. Robbins
Birds of North America: The Complete Photographic…
jdupuis | December 9, 2009A good selection from The Economist.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Robert C. Allen
Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity by Mike Hulme
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species by Sean B. Carroll
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Graham Farmelo
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham.
Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story by Gabriel WestonBy the way, is anybody else noticing that the Dirac bio is shaping up to be the book of…