June 24, 2009
I'm thinking of paring my RSS feeds down again, as I'm feeling a little overextended at the moment, and could stand to spend less time reading stuff on the Internet. This brings up the obvious question of which blogs to keep, and which blogs to jettison, and that, in turn, lends itself to a reader…
June 24, 2009
Via a comment by Christina Pikas, there's a post at the Scholarly Kitchen about a new study quantifying the use of the arxiv:
Employing a summer intern, Ingoldsby conducted an arXiv search of nearly 5,000 journal articles published by the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical…
June 24, 2009
There's an interview with me, plus bonus comments from Emmy, over at Paw Talk:
Words of advice for fellow pet owners?
If you're looking to get a dog, I'd recommend visiting your local animal shelter, as you can find lots of great dogs there. And take walks with your dog-- every now and then, I see…
June 23, 2009
Video analysis of hammer explosion lifting a guy | Dot Physics
Can an exploding hammer lift a guy? Inquiring minds want to know...
(tags: science physics video blogs education dot-physics silly)
The Last 100 Years: 1950s & The Tragedy of Fred Hoyle : Starts With A Bang
"This is the only…
June 23, 2009
Chris Mooney has found new digs, and, revitalized by the more congenial atmosphere, has been taking up the science vs. religion fight again. Yesterday, he had a post asking what can be done to get moderate scientists more involved in the argument over whether science and religion can coexist:
At…
June 23, 2009
Kate's Tolkien re-read has reached Rohan, and her latest re-read post includes a reference to a comment I made about Legolas's improbable visual acuity:
Re: Legolas seeing the Riders: I have since been advised by the resident physicist that the size of a pupil is a limiting factor on the resolution…
June 23, 2009
A wag of my finger at the Corporate Masters, for their new article about traffic jams, with the subhead "For particle physicists who study phase transitions, a traffic jam is simply a solid made up of idling cars." In the body of the article, we find:
While the concept of critical density has been…
June 22, 2009
Cynical-C Blog - » Sign for the Night
"Keep being AWESOME!"
(tags: silly food internet)
Unscientific America
"Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated "two cultures" polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow's time, some of our gravest…
June 22, 2009
There once was a dog from Niskayuna...
The previous post announced a photo caption contest for a chance to win an advance proof copy of my book, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, six(-ish) months before it's available for purchase. I thought I should include something for the less visually…
June 22, 2009
Today is six months to the day from the official release date of my book, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It feels like I ought to do something promotion-like to mark this date, and I have a couple of extra bound galley proofs (seen above with Emmy), sooo.....
I hereby announce the first of two…
June 22, 2009
In a comment to Friday's classical music post, Chris Evo recommended a TED talk by Benjamin Zander that has the goal of convincing his audience that they love classical music:
If you're not able or inclined to watch it, he goes through a Chopin piano piece in detail, and explains how it plays off…
June 21, 2009
Scientists and Kool-Aid § Unqualified Offerings
"In my department weâll often produce documents that have lots of buzzwords, but nobody really takes it seriously. You can always get appreciative chuckles in a department meeting if you poke fun at your own handiwork. Higher on the food chain,…
June 21, 2009
Via Steve Hsu, a lengthy rant by Bruce Charlton about the dullness of modern scientists:
Question: why are so many leading modern scientists so dull and lacking in scientific ambition? Answer: because the science selection process ruthlessly weeds-out interesting and imaginative people. At each…
June 20, 2009
Cocktail Party Physics: body heat
"I am in Portland for the day, having dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly hour (4 AM) to catch my flight. (On the plus side, there is almost no traffic on LA freeways at that hour.) The reason: to visit the city's Green Microgym founded by personal trainer…
June 20, 2009
It's been a while since I did a straight-up booklog post here, but most of what I've been reading lately hasn't really demanded one. I picked this up the other day after seeing a pile of them in the front of a Barnes & Noble, though, and it does deserve comment.
Dog On It is a twist on a hard-…
June 19, 2009
symmetry breaking » Blog Archive » The science of talking so people want to listen
"Connecting science to everyday experiences in jargon free terms is key to science outreach, something Turner excels at doing. He shared his insights and tips from more than a decade worth of talks with…
June 19, 2009
There's an interesting discussion going on in a place I can't link to, spinning off a comment to the NEA post from the other day:
The point is that the amount of people who see value in or are trained to appreciate more esoteric, more difficult, less accessible music **may** have dropped.
The…
June 19, 2009
The smart-people blogosphere is all abuzz about questions from the French college entrance exams, with comments from Matt Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, and Kevin Drum, among others. The general tone of the commentary is summed up by Goldstein's question:
Could you ever imagine the SAT or ACT asking…
June 19, 2009
Tom Levenson's series about the writing of his Newton and the Counterfeiter continues with a piece on the getting of blurbs for the cover:
Newton and the Counterfeiter (Amazon, Powells, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound) is by far my best-blurbed book, boasting enthusiastic and generous praise from a…
June 18, 2009
DNA Evidence Frees Man From Zoo | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Shortly after the findings were revealed, Phoenix Zoo staff tranquilized, crated, and transported Panovich by helicopter to his Mesa, AZ home, where he was released into his front yard and reintroduced to his mate and two…
June 18, 2009
Another arbitrary numerical signifier for Daddy! Yay!
Not the best Appa-for-scale picture, so here's one from earlier this morning:
Appa likes having his belly rubbed, I guess.
And that's it for me for tonight.
June 18, 2009
If I were to start using Twitter, what's the best way to go about that? That is, what interface to the service makes it the least annoying to use?
It would be a nice bonus if the package in question could handle multiple accounts, too. I will probably sign up as myself to try things out, but the…
June 18, 2009
Kevin Drum commented on a charter school study a couple of days ago, which made me go look through the report (available from this ultra-minimalist page-- seriously, you can't even be bothered to cut and paste some of your introductory boilerplate into an HTML file to give people an idea of what's…
June 18, 2009
(Alternate post title: "Hey to James Nicoll")
Via John Dupuis, our clever neighbors to the North has come up with a possible (partial) alternative to rockets:
"For decades, scientists have been grappling to find a more efficient means of getting payloads into space," says Brendan Quine (right),…
June 17, 2009
Miracle Diet Through Physics! : Built on Facts
"This immediately suggests a tempting diet plan, if not a very lucrative one: drink lots of cold water. Your body burns calories warming up the H2O, you lose weight without much effort. Plausible?"
(tags: science food blogs physics built-on-facts)…
June 17, 2009
Over at Tor.com, they've unveiled the new Tor.com store, enabling you to buy your books via your favorite SF publisher. It's pretty bare-bones at the moment, so the most worthwhile feature is probably the special picks feature, where they collect together lists of books recommended by their most…
June 17, 2009
Whether because I'm a blogger, or because I'm a previous recipient of their money (I suspect the latter), I recently got email from the Research Corporation announcing their new Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion program:
Scialog will focus on funding early career scientists and building…
June 17, 2009
One of the PDF-only studies that I complained about earlier is a hand-wringing report from the NEA on how public appreciation of art is on the decline. As summarized by Inside Higher Ed:
Compared to the NEA's 1982 survey, the steepest decline was in ballet, which that year was seen by 11.0 percent…
June 17, 2009
There have been a half-dozen stories in the past few weeks that looked interesting, but didn't even make it into the Links Dump for the day. Why not? Because the stories or studies were only available as PDF files.
I have no idea if this is actually getting worse, but I'm finding this more…
June 17, 2009
Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along:
1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations:
# Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009.
# Entries must state clearly the website where each…
