May 4, 2009
I'm an experimentalists through and through, and have always known better than to attempt real theory. On two occasions, though, I've been forced to do a little bit of computer simulation work in order to interpret my results. One of these was for the time-resolved collisions experiment, and worked…
May 3, 2009
International Act Like A T-Rex Day
"Our trademark application for "Act Like A T-Rex Day" has been OPPOSED by a very large company. In other words, we got servedâ¦
The company opposing the trademark is a restaurant called "T-Rex Cafe, Inc.". They have trademarked the word "T-REX". Any merchandise…
May 3, 2009
I had a weird and disturbing shutdown incident on my tablet PC (a Lenovo X61) a week or two ago, which got me many screens of ominous looking text before it finally booted up properly again. Poking at it afterwards, it seemed to be running a bit hot, and it doesn't seem like there's a fan running.…
May 3, 2009
Why is it that you can buy apple cider all year round, but apple cider donuts are treated as a seasonal item, and only in stores for a week and a half in October?
Happily, these people make them year round, and they're available at the Schenectady Greenmarket. And they're awesome. Mmmmm.... cider…
May 2, 2009
The Washington Monthly
"It's simple, really. If a private school wants to discriminate, fine. I don't like it, but it's a private religious entity. Don't, however, discriminate and then ask the government to use tax dollars to subsidize the institution."
(tags: education politics US religion)…
May 1, 2009
slacktivist: TF: Bruce's Big Plan
"Bruce, like Tim LaHaye, has a way of running off the rails when he gets into the details of his prophecy scheme. One can, in fact, open the book of Revelation and find mentioned there seven "seals" of divine judgment. By mentioning that fact first, Bruce casts a…
May 1, 2009
Like Sauron creeping into Dol Guldur, Quantum Diaries has returned to darken the blogosphere once more, driving Tommaso Dorigo before it--
Oh, wait. More good science blogs is a good thing, not a creeping menace. Even if they are particle physicists.
Anyway, in a move that is unrelated to the…
May 1, 2009
Some time back, I was a little surprised to hear James Nicoll use Asimov as a touchstone for science popularizers. I only really knew his fiction, and can't recall hearing his pop-science books cited by anybody who wasn't also an SF fan.
So, when I ran across one of his science books while we were…
May 1, 2009
I'm walking a little gingerly today, thanks to an injury to my left foot. Sadly, this was not the result of anything cool, like rescuing orphans from a burning building, or dunking a basketball in order to win a league championship. Instead, I bruised the bottom of my foot by landing on one of Emmy…
April 30, 2009
theweaselking:
Never trust a marsupial.
(tags: silly video animals)
Do You Have Swine Flu?
Because you need confirmation from the Internet.
(tags: silly medicine internet)
Jacks of Science » Blog Archive » Learning Science through Comic Books, A List
"Reading textbooks gives me scary…
April 30, 2009
"These Baby Blogging pictures are old hat," says SteelyKid. "I could do this standing on my head!"
You can't really tell from the angle, but she's laughing. This is a game we play from time to time-- I'll tip her over backwards, gently lower her down to the floor, and say "BONK!" Then I pick her…
April 30, 2009
I have two labs today, and a lunch meeting, so no time for detailed blogging about science. It's been a while since I did a Dorky Poll, though, so here's one to keep people entertained while I'm working:
What's your favorite color?
"What's dorky about that?" you ask. You need to give your answer…
April 29, 2009
Confessions of a Community College Dean: The Boy, On Scientists
"My hero is a scientist. Every day they mak EXITING discoveries. They also make AWESOME potions, space probes and cool new ships. They launch rockets and space ships. I like it when the Space Shuttle goes up. It always makes me think…
April 29, 2009
I got email this afternoon from Andrei Derevianko, the leader of the research project badly described by the press release mentioned in the previous post. He sounds a little surprised by the whole thing (though not much more surprised than I am that my griping on the Internet got brought to anybody…
April 29, 2009
A wonderfully incoherent press release came across my EurekAlert feeds yesterday, with the headline "Particle physics study finds new data for extra Z-bosons and potential fifth force of nature." You can tell it's going to make no sense at all from the very first sentence:
The Large Hadron Collider…
April 29, 2009
I've had the Quiche Moraine post on editing open in a browser tab for far too long, now, but it deserves a more prominent comment than just a link in the daily links dump. It really is an excellent presentation of the important role of editing:
Editing requires the strange ability to stand in the…
April 28, 2009
Gallery: Flickr users make accidental maps - tech - 27 April 2009 - New Scientist
"Billions of photos have now been uploaded to the internet, and many are tagged with text descriptions. Some are even geotagged â stamped with the latitude and longitude coordinates at which the image was taken.…
April 28, 2009
So, the President gave some sort of speech to a bunch of smart people yesterday (video, transcript), and hearts are a-flutter all over the science blogosphere, as President Obama promises great things for science:
We double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a…
April 28, 2009
Yesterday, EurekAlert served up a press release titled New blow for dinosaur-killing asteroid theory, reporting on Gerta Keller of Princeton, who says that the Chicxulub crater isn't really from the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. Keller thinks the crater had nothing to do with the…
April 28, 2009
Well, it is. What with the jumping around, and the giggling, and waving toys in the air, and the tickling and giggling, and taking a walk in the stroller...
It just tires a baby right out.
(If you've clicked through to warn us that letting SteelyKid sleep on her stomach is Incredibly! Dangerous!…
April 28, 2009
My major "service" activity at work is involvement with the Minerva program, which attempts to blur the line between academic and residential life. I enjoy this because it gives me the opportunity to work closely with students outside a narrow academic context, and I've been very impressed with the…
April 27, 2009
Acephalous: Concerning the inherent superiority of printed text to irresponsible online drivel.
"Is it absolutely necessary for the image gracing the cover of the most recent issue of the official mouthpiece of my professional organization to depict something that, when seen on my desk by a…
April 27, 2009
I'd like to interrupt the ongoing discussion of how we're in the early chapters of The Stand for a quick question about what really matters: the cute behaviors of my dog.
There's probably a technical term for that thing dogs do where their back legs twitch when you scratch them in just the right…
April 27, 2009
Back in the stone ages, when I was a student and walked uphill through the snow to class, if you wanted assistance on a homework assignment, you needed to track the instructor of the class down in person, either by going to their posted office hours, or calling them on the phone to set up an…
April 26, 2009
LiveLeak.com - Smart Mutt
How to get your tennis ball out of the pool without swimming.
(tags: silly video animals dog)
April 26, 2009
I've had an article called How to Set Up a Blog (For the Long Run) open in a browser tab for long enough that I no longer remember what first sent me to it. Which is probably a good thing, because it's irritating as hell:
Life-saving market research tip #2: Use Google. If you do a search for the…
April 25, 2009
ROCKET SCIENCE « Pundit Kitchen: Lol News and Lol Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden and more
"It really is that hard, but the results kick ass."
(tags: science astronomy space silly pictures internet)
http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physics-faq.txt
"This document (a simple…
April 25, 2009
Chad Orzel now knows more than he would like to about the loathsome political views of some old acquaintances.
Chad Orzel is pretty sure the people in question don't read the blog, or at least won't know he's talking about them.
Chad Orzel is grateful for the feature that allows him to stop…
April 24, 2009
A lot of ignorance neednât stop you from offering contradictory theories § Unqualified Offerings
"I have no particular opinion on why there is a gender gap in certain fields of science. I have a lot of skepticism for various theories offered, but I have no theory of my own. And it isnât just…
April 24, 2009
SteelyKid says "Look at me! I'm HUGE!"
Seriously, look at how small she used to be.
This is it as far as blogging today, by the way. I have to teach a class, and then I need to get through the copyedits on the book-in-production. Try to contain your disappointment.
