May 27, 2009
Tuesday night was the annual Sigma Xi induction banquet on campus (I'm currently the president of the local chapter, and have been scrambling to organize the whole thing in between all my other responsibilities these past few weeks). Sigma Xi, for those not familiar with it, is the scientific…
May 27, 2009
It's that time of year when I check in to the giant methadone program that is the NBA, to help ease my way from college basketball season into the long, dull, summer when nothing worthwhile happens, sports-wise. Thus, I watched the second halves of most of last week's playoff games (I didn't get…
May 26, 2009
Unscientific America: The Table of Contents | The Intersection | Discover Magazine
2009 promises to be a good year for science-y books by people with blogs.
(tags: books science social-science society politics intersection culture)
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Is the…
May 26, 2009
We no longer do what is possibly my favorite lab in the intro mechanics class. We've switched to the Matter and Interactions curriculum, and thus no longer spend a bunch of time on projectile motion, meaning there's no longer room for the "target shooting" lab.
It's called that because the…
May 25, 2009
At NIF, a Quest for Fusion Energy (or Maybe Folly) - NYTimes.com
"The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy, and NIF is meant…
May 25, 2009
I'm still recovering from DAMOP, so no really substantive blogging today. I did want to mention a couple of recent developments regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I think I mentioned a while back that the Portugese rights had been sold. Not long after that, the Korean rights were sold, and…
May 25, 2009
Over at the Inverse Square Blog, Tom Levenson is doing a series of blog posts walking through the steps involved in getting a book published. Unfortunately, there isn't a compact way to link to the whole series, but the posts to date are:
Part 0: Introduction to the Series
Part 1.0: The Proposal (…
May 24, 2009
The Physics of The (Football) Wave : Built on Facts
Why people at a football game are like atoms in a gas.
(tags: science physics blogs built-on-facts)
The Speed of Short People : The Frontal Cortex
Modern neuroscience explains why I have so much trouble keeping up with short little guards.
(…
May 24, 2009
Friday morning at DAMOP was probably the thinnest part of the program, at least for me. Annoyingly, this was the day that my cold (or possibly allergies-- whatever it was that had my head full of goo) let go, so I was the most awake and alert I managed for the entire conference.
I watched a few…
May 22, 2009
The release date for the forthcoming How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22, seven months from today, and I got a look at some sample pages yesterday, so things are moving right along. To mark the occasion, and give you something to entertain you while I'm spending another day at DAMOP, I…
May 21, 2009
Thursday at DAMOP was a little more broken up than usual for me at one of these meetings, because the nagging cold I have was bugging me more, and also because I needed to check my email a few times. There was still some neat stuff, though.
The early-morning session was the toughest call of the…
May 21, 2009
Kate here, reporting that SteelyKid says,
"Being sick is fun! I get to take baths at 10 o'clock at night, and play on nice soft towels, and have Mommy's undivided attention all day long . . . "
(She's fine, was sick last night but is rapidly improving over the day—her appetite is almost completely…
May 21, 2009
Technically, the meeting started Tuesday, but all that happened was a welcome reception, which I missed due to travel. The real beginning of the meeting was Wednesday morning, with the traditional unscheduled half-hour welcome from local dignitaries. That was followed by the Prize Session,…
May 20, 2009
I made it to Charlottesville, and am all checked in to the Econo Lodge, which is a little more Econo than I was expecting. It's an old-school motel, with rooms that open right into the parking lot, the sort of place where the towels are tiny and scratchy, the pillows and mattresses are thin, and…
May 19, 2009
I'm leaving this afternoon for Charlottesville, VA and the 40th annual DAMOP conference. At this meeting, we will once again be confirming the prediction of the bosonic character of interesting talks. Bosons, as you know, are quantum particles that happily occupy the same state as other bosons, and…
May 18, 2009
Solar charging an electric motorcycle - how long? | Dot Physics
"Questions to be answered: How much energy would the bike need to go 50 miles? How much power (average) could you expect to get from the solar panels? Andâ¦how long would it take to charge this sucker. I am sure you can store enough…
May 18, 2009
Confessions of a Science Librarian has joined ScienceBlogs. So, no more eating Chinese food in the stacks, and try to keep the noise down.
May 18, 2009
Thoreau offers without qualification some observations about the different approach to books taken by sciences vs. humanities. Specifically, he notes that despite frequent claims that it is the Most Important Book Ever, nobody actually reads Newton's Principia Mathematica
This is totally different…
May 17, 2009
This has nothing to do with the substance of Steve Benen's post about conservative preparations for judicial confirmation hearings, but the quote he used from a New York Times article is the proximate cause for this Grammar Nerd Poll:
What is the plural of "memorandum"?
A) "Memorandums"
B) "…
May 17, 2009
The Experimental Error blog considers the difference between disciplines (via Tom):
I often contemplate the differences between these two areas of study. Also, I hear fellow undergrads argue for one or the other, usually divided along the lines of their respective major. Anymore, I think they're so…
May 16, 2009
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Magic, family, uncertainty: Lisa Goldsteinâs <em>Tourists</em>
A brilliant book that ought to be much better known than it is.
(tags: culture SF books review fantasy tor)
The Big Lebowski | Film | A.V. Club
"Inspired by Raymond…
May 16, 2009
From Tuesday to Saturday, I will be at the 2009 DAMOP meeting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. I have been to Charlottesville three times before, and based on that experience, I know these things:
The White Spot is worth a visit if you're a fan of greasy spoon diners.
Getting…
May 15, 2009
The Trouble with Double X | The American Prospect
"In the site's introductory video, one of the editors, Hanna Rosin, says, "If you take something like Slate and you have it edited by three women, instead of the people it's edited by, well that's the kind of magazine that we want to turn out."…
May 15, 2009
Speaking of conferences (as we were a little while ago), the Female Science Professor has a post on the phenomenon of logos in talk slides:
Do you put your institution's logo in your talks and on your posters at conferences? If you put a logo in your talk, do you put the logo on every slide or just…
May 15, 2009
Malcolm Gladwell has a number of public responses to the sort of thing I ranted about the other day-- not to me specifically, mind, but to the same general points-- on his own blog and on ESPN's Page 2. It's pretty much the same argument others made in the comments to my post. Taking a fairly…
May 15, 2009
DAMOP is next week, and Tom uses this to talk about socialization at conferences:
The DAMOP conference is coming up, and that reminds me of a conference-related phenomenon related to gathering a group to go off to a meal. This doesn't manifest itself when the conference provides meals, so it wasn't…
May 14, 2009
News: Students as Lemmings - Inside Higher Ed
"The researchers find "clear evidence that peer driven students on average perform worse than the ability driven in terms of both average and final grade," though they acknowledge that the "effect is small in magnitude" -- about two-tenths of a grade…
May 14, 2009
This is Week 40 of Thursday Baby Blogging, meaning that SteelyKid has nominally reached the point where she has been out in the world as long as she was gestating. Let's see what she thinks:
SteelyKid says "Huh? I thought that wasn't for another couple of weeks..."
And it's true, she was late in…
May 14, 2009
I watched Jonah Lehrer on the Colbert Report a few months ago, and thought he did a really good job. So, when we were offered free copies of his new book, How We Decide, I asked for one, even though it's not my usual sort of thing.
The main point of the book is that what you think you know about…
May 14, 2009
I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen bloggers commenting on Tom Hanks's appearance on The Daily Show, in which he talks about CERN:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
M - Th 11p / 10c
Tom Hanks
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Economic Crisis
Political Humor…
