June 16, 2009
World Science Festivities | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"Iâm back from the World Science Festival, which was a rousing success, leaving thousands of smiling attendees chattering excitedly about the mysteries of the universe as they dispersed through the streets of Manhattan. So naturally…
June 16, 2009
The recurrent timeout problem in the comments has been dragging on and on, but I'm not sure how much of a problem it is for you, the end user, as opposed to me, the guy who has to endure six timeouts while clearing out Turkish dating service spam. Of course, I can't very well ask people to leave…
June 16, 2009
Female Science Professor is revisiting an old topic, namely, the academic novel:
I was thinking about the general topic of academic novels because I was looking for some books to read and was looking through the lists in the links above. And then I wondered: Why do I want to read an academic novel…
June 15, 2009
The dark side of animation
"To test their hypothesis, the team recorded two versions of a PowerPoint lecture. The presentations differed only in the presence of animation to incrementally present information. They then showed students either the animated or non-animated lecture and then tested…
June 15, 2009
Google the title phrase, and you'll find a bunch of New Age twaddle. This is a physics blog, though, so here's a reliable scientific method for finding the location of a rainbow, such as this one seen over Chateau Steelypips after the thunderstorms that went through earlier this evening (it was…
June 15, 2009
The main speaker at yesterday's Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama's economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current…
June 15, 2009
Martin Perl, a 1995 Nobel laureate in Physics for the discovery of the tau lepton, was awarded an honorary degree yesterday at commencement. Perl actually has a significant Union connection-- he started his career as a chemical engineer, and was working for GE making vacuum tubes when they sent him…
June 14, 2009
Flying Flux: The Dullness of Details
"Short sentences; active voice; keep the audience in mind; draw clear diagrams; minimize jargon; use paragraphs; spell correctly; conjugate verbs; employ diacritics properly; use metric; resist idiomatic speech; avoid overusing semicolons; write in English.…
June 14, 2009
As the faculty started down the steps into the area where the families and friends of the Class of 2009 were seated, somebody in the crowd yelled "Thanks for passing most of our kids!" that may be my new favorite audience comment.
Last night, it was looking as though we might need to go to the "…
June 13, 2009
1) If you search Amazon for my name, you get four results: the book-in-production, two books where I'm mentioned in the acknowledgments, and a fourth book where I am apparently cited as a source for the "assume a spherical cow" joke.
2) Weirdly, I have a fan site, of sorts. I have no idea who's…
June 12, 2009
slacktivist: TF: Skip verse 10
"Be sure to use the King James Version when you bring up Luke 17:34 -- "In that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left" -- and then argue that a literal interpretation suggests that precisely 50 percent of…
June 12, 2009
Tom Levenson has another post up in his ongoing series about the writing and publishing process of his new book, this one about generating publicity. At this point, he's gone past what I've experienced so far, but this is fortuitously timed, as I got a note from my editor yesterday saying that the…
June 12, 2009
There's a nice write-up about the World Science Festival in the New York Times today:
The second annual World Science Festival, a five-day extravaganza of performances, debates, celebrations and demonstrations, including an all-day street fair on Sunday in Washington Square Park, began with a star-…
June 12, 2009
Dave Ng has recently upgraded the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique site, which provides a variety of achievement badges for members to claim and post. I'm not a big one for extra graphics on the blog (they delay the loading of the cute baby pictures), but…
June 11, 2009
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive « alex.moskalyuk
"50 scientifically proven ways constitute 50 chapters of the book, longest of which take 7 pages. The authors take the position that persuasion is a science, not art, hence with the right approach anybody can become the master…
June 11, 2009
A little while ago, I griped about the Short Story nominees for this year's Hugo Awards. I've now finished the nominees in the Novella and Novelette categories, so I thought I'd comment on them as well.
As a general matter, I'd just about be willing to contribute money toward a fund to buy…
June 11, 2009
You get Baby Blogging early today, because I have a ton of grading to finish today, and don't have time for bloggy things. This week, SteelyKid shows off two new-ish skills:
She can stand up, and she's strong enough to lift a bison! Look out, world...
If you're clicking through to warn us that…
June 10, 2009
Random musings of Lizard Bench Mango - an affirmation?
"When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think 'Damn this is hard for me. I wonder if I am stupid,' and then I remember I have a degree in astrophysics from Cal Tech; I must not be stupid."
(tags: psychology silly academia)
June 10, 2009
Dear Email Recipients:
Thank you very much for responding rapidly to the question I sent you. Now, please go back to my original message, and respond to the other four questions that were in that message.
Thank you for your reading comprehension,
Annoyed Re-Sender of Emails
June 10, 2009
OK, it's not really a full post-mortem, because I haven't graded the final exams yet, but I wouldn't tell you about those, anyway. Still, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past term, which was my first teaching introductory mechanics on the Matter & Interactions curriculum.
On the…
June 10, 2009
Over at Cosmic Variance, Julianne is annoyed at Nature's embargo policy. It seems that somebody or another posted a paper to the arxiv while submitting it to Nature, and included a note on the arxiv submission asking people to abide by Nature's embargo.
So, instead of blogging about the Incredibly…
June 9, 2009
Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online - NYTimes.com
"Westport school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes. The percentage of the…
June 9, 2009
I'm watching Pardon the Interruption after work, and they're talking about the Belmont Stakes. They show a clip of horses running, and Emmy pipes up: "I like horses!" She does this when she feels I'm not paying her enough attention.
"Horses are okay," I say.
"Okay? Horses are really neat!" She…
June 9, 2009
Every year around this time, references to that damn sunscreen speech pop up again, as people start thinking of graduations. It's in the air (Union's graduation is this Sunday, and I don't think I've ever been happier to see the end of an academic year).
And, of course, I have actually been asked…
June 8, 2009
Youâre Like School in the Summer⦠« The First Excited State
"Summertime is a time to focus on your research, without the distractions of tests, homeworks, and (hopefully) teaching duties. But many grad students, at least in physics, take the summer as an opportunity to attend summer schools,…
June 8, 2009
Two things that are worth a plug beyond the Links Dump level:
1) Over at the Intersection, Sheril Kirshenbaum wants you to look at pictures of people kissing. This is for Science, so stop giggling, and tell her what you think of the pictures.
2) There's a new blog, Ecocomics, dedicated to exploring…
June 8, 2009
Somebody recently asked me whether I had figured out who Female Science Professor is. I truthfully replied that I haven't even tried.
That was the first thing that came to mind when some jerk from the National Review revealed the identity of "Publius", kicking off another round of discussion about…
June 8, 2009
Tom at Swans On Tea comments on an article about meetings:
The most common meeting in my experience is the status meeting, where everyone gets together and reports on what they've accomplished. If it's a small group, these are usually fine because you already have familiarity with the tasks. But…
June 7, 2009
Who Underestimates Their Systematic Uncertainties ?
"It is a well-known fact that it is much easier to measure a physical quantity than to correctly assess the magnitude of the uncertainty on the measurement: the uncertainty is everything! "
(tags: physics particles experiment statistics blogs…
June 7, 2009
Two annoying technology moments yesterday:
1) Kate and I got cell phones when we bought this house, and have been overpaying for them for quite some time. We rarely use them (partly because we get no signal inside the house), and have never come close to using our monthly allocation of minutes.…
