June 22, 2006
Two music-related follow-up items:
Over on her LiveJournal, Kate has a more complete concert report from the Springsteen show, including a full set list, and some links to Springsteen resources.
Elsewhere in blogdom, the Blog on Bach is unhappy with my Old Tunes Experiment. The author seems to take…
June 21, 2006
Over at bento-box, there's a nice response to my recent post about simulations. He makes the very good point that the Sandia press release in question could sensibly be read as referring to the fact that recent computer technology requires fewer simplifying approximations:
Well, it isn't really…
June 21, 2006
Over at the Examining Room of Dr. Charles, one of the newer ScienceBlogs, there's a post reminding me that I want nothing to do with medical research. I mean, how do you sort out what's a cause, and what's an effect in data like this:
Another recent study, published in Diabetes Care this past March…
June 21, 2006
That's the inevitable conclusion to be drawn by anyone looking at the DonorsChoose Leaderboard at the moment. So far, we've had ten donations to my challenge, raising a total of $395 for deserving school teachers and students, which is good, and I thank those who have contributed.
But, man, we're…
June 21, 2006
The Miami Heat won the NBA title last night, led by young superstar Dwyane Wade, and obtained championship rings for a bunch of guys who have been around for years without winning, like Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning. It's alo another title for Shaquille O'Neal, which probably gives him a…
June 20, 2006
From Lara Beaton:
Some people are like Slinkies - They serve no useful purpose, but they do give you a smile when you push them down a flight of stairs.
(Of course, anybody in physics education would probably quibble with the statement that Slinkies are useless, but I'm willing to overlook that…
June 20, 2006
I'm a little ragged today because Kate and I went up to SPAC last night to see Bruce Springsteen, who is currently touring behind his album of Pete Seeger songs. This was a short-notice concert-- I only got the tickets (as a birthday present) on Sunday-- so this review will be pretty much it as far…
June 20, 2006
For those interested in keeping abreast of the latest stuff on string theory and its discontents, some links:
Jonathan Shock is based in Beijing, and blogging about the Strings 2006 meeting. He's got a first-day recap including descriptions of several of the talks, and incident events.
Victor…
June 19, 2006
This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question deals with blogging itself, and not so much with science:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?
I have a slightly more…
June 19, 2006
The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford…
June 19, 2006
Inside Higher Ed has an article today on a study of career tracks that found markedly different results for different ethnic groups. This ought to be interesting data for the endless debates about diersity in science hiring, especially this tidbit:
Asian doctorates - 51 percent of them - are far…
June 19, 2006
I'm really not going to keep flogging the DonorsChoose fundraiser in an active way for the next two weeks (it runs through July 1), so you don't have to worry about that. I will continue to include the donation button/ link in my posts, though:
and occasional updates will follow as events warrant…
June 18, 2006
ScienceBlogs Charity Liason Janet Stemwedel provides an update of the first two days of the ScienceBlogs fundraiser for DonorsChoose: over $8,000 in direct contributions, with our Corporate Masters at Seed agreeing to match up to $10,000. Not bad for two days, on a weekend no less.
As for the local…
June 18, 2006
I was awakened rather too early yesterday by the dog, so wound up dozing on the couch for a lot of the Portugal-Iran game. Which was pretty doze-worthy, actually-- Portugal approached the game sort of like an NBA team, and played eleven loosely connected games of one-on-one, and while Iran was game…
June 17, 2006
Via coturnix, the tremendously depressing resignation letter of a public school teacher in North Carolina. It's a rotten note on which to discover what looks like a pretty good blog.
The racist comments and inappropriate sexual remarks desribed in the letter are really pretty disturbing. I wish I…
June 17, 2006
It's been a while since I looked at the search engine keywords on Goggle Analytics for this site. It's a little depressing to find that PZ Myers turns up three times ("pharyngula," "Pharyngula," and "PZ Myers") before my own name. Worse yet, Aaron Bergman, who doesn't even have a blog any more,…
June 16, 2006
Why is this dog sad?
Because people aren't donating enough to the ScienceBlogs fundraiser... Isn't it worth a few bucks to cheer her up?
(Actually, that's not true-- donations thus far are in excess of $3,000, and Seed has promised some additional matching funds. But how could I resist the…
June 16, 2006
The Dean Dad has some interesting comments regarding this depressing New York Times article about the departure of young adults from Upstate New York:
From 1990 to 2004, the number of 25-to-34-year-old residents in the 52 counties north of Rockland and Putnam declined by more than 25 percent. In 13…
June 16, 2006
Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say "Amen!", this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release):
Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn't, we wouldn't…
June 15, 2006
Via James Nicoll, a new SF Webzine, Helix. Because you don't have enough things to read on the Interweb.
June 15, 2006
At the suggestion of our resident ethicist, we've decided to try to use the power of ScienceBlogs to do some good. Thus, we present the first-ever ScienceBlogs Charity Fundraiser.
Here's the deal: An organization called Donors Choose solicits proposals from school teachers who want equipment that…
June 15, 2006
Weight and weight loss has turned out to be more popular than I would've expected as a blog topic-- I get a remarkable number of search engine hits looking for some sort of diet information. Given that, I would be remiss if I failed to note an ongoing series of posts on "fat acceptance" at Dr. Joan…
June 14, 2006
Via Dave Sez, Chris Chase has all the J.J. Redick DUI jokes you could possibly want:
* Redick's arrest could actually help his draft status, as the Portland Trail Blazers are currently sitting at #4.
* To keep up with his pal, Adam Morrison plans on knocking off a Seattle-area liquor store this…
June 14, 2006
Tara wrote a post about pressure to be perfect a few days back. This collided somewhat weirdly with this month's Rolling Stone piece on Duke (cashing in on the lacrosse scandal), which includes a few serious issues among a bunch of credulous stuff about sex:
In 2003, Duke launched a yearlong study…
June 14, 2006
The esteemed Dr. Free-Ride has a post about politics responding to Sean Carroll's recap of Yearly Kos. Both of them say things about the practice of politics that nicely encapsulate why I'm not a political activist-- I'm too much of an academic:
Sean:
Deep down, though, I learned once again that an…
June 14, 2006
Rob Knop talks about a great teaching moment: A student who refused to just smile and nod:
I was very grateful for that student. You see, when professors ask, "do you understand that?", it's not a test. It's not the professor trying to catch the students up in admitting to being confused, it's not…
June 13, 2006
Weirdly, this week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question may be the hardest one to answer yet:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
Most of the responses have taken this as an "If you had…
June 13, 2006
Inside Higher Ed has a story this morning about Smith College moving toward requiring math. Smith, a women's college in Massacusetts, has had an "open curriculum" (i.e., no requirements at all) for many years, which has allowed lots of students to graduate without ever taking a course requiring…
June 13, 2006
There's a piece in the New York Times this morning about a German project to send a balloon-borne rover to Mars that's got a little something for everyone. It's a Mars mission, which never gets old, but it's also a privately financed project, and thus a nice demonstration of the power of private…
June 12, 2006
One of my least favorite end-of-term rituals for faculty is the dreaded student course evaluations. These have two components: the numerical bubble-sheet evaluations, which provide the pseudo-quantitatvie evaluation used to compare courses, and written responses to a half-dozen very general…
