July 26, 2009
The del.icio.us automatic blog posting that usually produces the daily links dump posts here has been broken during the recent ScienceBlogs upgrade. The links dump posts from last Thursday on didn't happen, but we've kludged up a way to get that material back. These are the links that should've…
July 26, 2009
Kind of a lazy, sleepy day around Chateau Steelypips, hence the lack of blogging, but we did find time to try out a new baby diversion:
This is going to be an outside-only game henceforth, given the low height of the door frames in this house, but it was a hit while it lasted.
July 26, 2009
As previously noted, I will be on programming at the upcoming Worldcon in Montreal, including moderating a panel at 10am Saturday with the following title and description:
The Philosophy of Science
To what extent does SF explore the meaning of science for scientists and create the ideas that our…
July 25, 2009
Physicists frequently get laughed at for referring to problems as "trivial" when calculus is required to solve them. "Maybe it's trivial for you, Einstein," people will say, "but it looks pretty hard from here."
It's nice to see that other fields are prone to the same sort of thing. Take, for…
July 24, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 24, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 24, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 24, 2009
Over at Dot Physics, Rhett wonders about the role of homework in a world that includes cramster:
Then what is the problem? The problem is with my jobs. Yes, jobs. I have two jobs. My first job is to help students learn. I am a learning-faciliator if you like. I do this in many different ways. One…
July 23, 2009
It's been a really busy week, so I'm too fried to do anything but a really basic Baby Blogging picture. So here's SteelyKid with Appa and some of her many other toys:
The biggest recent milestone is that she's started eating actual food-- pieces of cereal, little dried banana puffs, and that sort…
July 23, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 23, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 23, 2009
I've had a few conversations with other small-college folks about how there ought to be some sort of group within DAMOP for people at small colleges, given how many of us there are who do AMO physics. Nothing has ever come of it, because nobody wants to take on the administrative hassle of…
July 22, 2009
Worldcon is less than two weeks off, which means that it's time once again for the SF part of blogdom to explode with complaints about the quality of the nominees. There are some reasonable reactions, but it's mostly slightly over-the-top broadsides.
It's worth emphasizing again that the source of…
July 22, 2009
The ScienceBlogs upgrade put a bit of a kink in my plans for monthly book hype, but I didn't want to let the day pass without noting that the official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is five months from today. (You can pre-order it from Amazon, where they're offering to pair it…
July 22, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 22, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 22, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 22, 2009
slacktivist: On offendedness
"Taking offense and getting angry aren't exactly the same thing. Anger has to do with the intolerable difference between what is and what ought to be, which is to say, with injustice. Offendedness has to do with my own discomfort with the difference between how I feel…
July 21, 2009
ScienceBlogs is getting some back-end work done this evening, with yet another server/ MT upgrade. This is intended to help with the frequent timeout problems that bloggers and commenters have been having. Opinions differ as to whether this will fix the problem, but at least Something is Being Done…
July 21, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 21, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 21, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 21, 2009
There are a lot of things about Infinite Jest that are easier to understand than most people seem to believe. I've never had a problem seeing a plot in it, for example, though a bunch of people don't see it.
One thing that I've never been entirely sure of, though, is just who is narrating this…
July 20, 2009
NASA - LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites
"NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the…
July 20, 2009
The Internet has been all abuzz today over the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Tor has the best one-stop collection of reminiscences, but there are plenty of others. They're roughly equally split between "Wasn't that the coolest thing ever?" and "Isn't it a shame we stopped going.
I was a bit…
July 20, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 20, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 20, 2009
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too…
July 20, 2009
Last week's call for non-academic scientists produced a much larger response than I was expecting-- more than 30 people volunteered. Thanks to all who volunteered, and if you're interested, please feel free to contact me-- it's not too late to get involved.
As I said in that post, I plan to post a…
July 20, 2009
I'm watching an episode of NOVA scienceNOW (eccentric capitalization makes it hip!), and Neil deGrasse Tyson is doing a segment on extrasolar planets. I'm only half listening, because I'm also trying to keep SteelyKid from trying to eat any of the furniture, but it's quite good.
All of a sudden,…
