Links for 2009-11-03 : Uncertain Principles

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"Uncertain Principles" features the miscellaneous ramblings of a physicist at a small liberal arts college. Physics, politics, pop culture, and occasional conversations with his dog.

You've read the blog, now try the book: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog will be published December 22nd by Scribner.

"Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics." (anonymous student evaluation comment)

Emmy is a German Shepherd mix, and the Queen of Niskayuna. She likes treats, walks, chasing bunnies, and quantum physics.

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Links for 2009-11-03

Category: Links Dump
Posted on: November 3, 2009 7:02 AM, by Chad Orzel

Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog.

"I'm not real sure how I got here in the first place, and when you think about it you really have to go all the way back to school, and mom thought I should be a doctor and dad thought I should be an industrial wood lathe and I wanted to be the Cenozoic Era and we tried to work out a compromise but lookin back it was really the kinda situation where nobody was gonna end up really satisfied in the end"

(tags: fafblog silly blogs)
Unsolicited Advice X: How to Frame a Winning Proposal | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

"Pretty much every successful proposal starts with a variant of the following structure: 1. Topic X is important and interesting. 2. But. 3. This is how we will address "But." The rest of the proposal reiterates those three points with enough detail to make it believable. "

(tags: academia science funding bloggingheads cosmic-variance)
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Swine flu hysteria claims another victim.

(tags: medicine disease silly comics)
World Affairs Journal - The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English

"The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information. The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of art. But let's remember that this aesthetic delight is mainly savored by the outside observer, often a professional savorer like myself. Professional linguists or anthropologists are part of a distinct human minority. Most people, in the West or anywhere else, find the fact that there are so many languages in the world no more interesting than I would find a list of all the makes of Toyota. So our case for preserving the world's languages cannot be based on how fascinating their variegation appears to a few people in the world."

(tags: language culture world essay)
Books to Read Now § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and new strategies for containing deadly strains of flu.

(tags: books science biology medicine review physics literature poetry)
Gender Bias Bingo | The Intersection | Discover Magazine

It's fun for at least half of the family.

(tags: gender politics academia blogs society)
News: Probe of Extra Help for Men - Inside Higher Ed

"The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has started an inquiry into the extent to which liberal arts colleges discriminate against female applicants -- in an attempt to minimize gender imbalances in the student body. On Friday, the commission agreed on a set of colleges -- primarily in the Washington area -- to investigate, but declined to release a full list. The issue is an extremely sensitive one for many liberal arts colleges, many of which in recent years have worried about their gender ratios reaching points (60 percent female is commonly cited) where they face difficulty in attracting both male and female applicants"

(tags: academia education gender diversity law politics society culture)