March 5, 2009
I'm looking travel arrangements for this year's DAMOP meeting in Charlottesville, VA in May, and, boy, do the options suck.
Flying into Charlottesville itself involves at least one stop, and undoubtedly one of those ridiculous little prop planes that require me to spend the whole flight in…
March 5, 2009
Two announcements of science-related festivals have turned up in my email in the last week or so:
The second annual World Science Festival will be held in New York June 10-14 this year. They feature an impressive array of speakers again, including Nobel laureates (Physicists David Gross, Frank…
March 5, 2009
EurekAlert had a press release yesterday titled Quantum paradox directly observed -- a milestone in quantum mechanics, which sounds like it ought to be great. The actual release, though....
For one thing, the description of the actual experiment is so vague as to be completely useless. It's not…
March 4, 2009
The Verne Gun â KarlSchroeder.com
"I call it the Verne gun because frankly, a name like THE ATOMIC CANNON would just not go over well in certain circles. In any case, the principle is the same as Verne's original idea, but using modern technology: you set off a nuclear charge underground where…
March 4, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, I moderated a global warming panel at Boskone. The panel was recorded by Richard Amirault, who has now posted the video on his Boston fandom website (Episode 41, if it moves off the front page before you click that link). I haven't watched the video, but I listened to the…
March 4, 2009
I spent a few hours Sunday afternoon interviewing students for positions in the Minerva House program, a student life initiative that I'm involved with. The interviews were don by a panel-- me and four students-- and we tried to mix in a few oddball interview questions with the serious stuff.
The…
March 4, 2009
I went to a panel discussion yesterday on teaching critical thinking skills. It was more of a panel presentation than a panel discussion-- the panelist-to-allotted-time ratio was too high to allow much discussion-- but it was interesting to see how different disciplines approach the task of…
March 3, 2009
Science in the open » What is the cost of peer review? Can we afford (not to have) high impact journals?
"I believe in post-publication peer review because it reduces the costs and time wasted in bringing work to community view and because it makes the filtering and quality assurance of that…
March 3, 2009
Having complained about the lack of recognition for good physical science writing recently, it would be bad form for me not to note Dennis Overbye's story about the Kepler spacecraft in today's New York Times:
Presently perched on a Delta 2 rocket at Cape Canaveral is a one-ton spacecraft called…
March 3, 2009
Back before things went pear-shaped this weekend, Jonathan Zasloff had a good post about why "clean coal" is important:
I think it's terrific that the Coen Brothers are making funny, effective ads against relying on "clean coal" as part of the US energy program. But I worry that the clean energy…
March 2, 2009
Foodie Politics | The American Prospect
"Good food -- the sort Waters features at her restaurant -- is considered a luxury of the rich rather than a social justice issue. As Waters frequently argues, no one is worse served by our current food policy than a low-income family using food stamps to…
March 1, 2009
The Neon Season - Why I Would Not Have Greenlit Dollhouse
"Last night I watched an episode of a show I had been avoiding due to issues I had with the premise, despite the creator having written some of my favorite TV shows. It had every single problem I would have expected it to have based on my…
March 1, 2009
Kate's father passed away today. He's been battling cancer for while, so this was not unexpected, but the end was still surprisingly fast. He was at least at home with loved ones, including Kate and SteelyKid, who went down there yesterday.
He will be missed.
March 1, 2009
A partial list of phrases I would like bound to a macro key, to save myself typing them over and over again as I mark up student lab reports (not all of these apply to the current crop of students):
Not only were you able to [verb] the [noun], you did [verb] the [noun]. Say that directly.
You are…
February 28, 2009
Cowbirds in Love
Mad science vs. mad engineering
(tags: science comics silly)
Analysis of the price of a piece of a lego set | Dot Physics
There's nothing you can't do with a least-squares fit.
(tags: blogs math statistics kid-stuff toys dot-physics)
February 28, 2009
Because everybody could use some extra baby pictures, a reminder from SteelyKid that a baby's reach should exceed her grasp...
... but not for too long.
February 28, 2009
This week was Founder's Day at Union, one of the three big academic-procession events of the year (the others being Convocation in the fall, and Commencement in June), and this year's event had a clear theme about race and equality, with the keynote speech being given by James McPherson on Union's…
February 28, 2009
One of last year's physics majors is spending the year in rural Uganda working at a clinic/ school there. He's keeping a blog, which is intermittently updated by western standards, but remarkably up-to-date given where he is.
This week, he blogged about putting his physics education to use:
I have…
February 27, 2009
Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm: "That guy is better than he looks": Appearance vs. ability
"Here's a topic I think about all the time: What factors most affect opinions about players' skills, and by what process do those opinions change? In pickup basketball, there are often unknown…
February 27, 2009
Via email, Mike Steeves points me to an Ars Technica article about a Thomson Reuters report on the "decline in American science":
The US is beginning to lose its scientific dominance. That's
the message from Thomson Reuters, the people behind EndNote and impact factors.
According to a report in…
February 27, 2009
The Dean Dad is annoyed with the New York Times, for an article about how the recession is affecting the humanities. The whole piece is worth a read, but he singles out a quote from the former president of my alma mater:
Some large state universities routinely turn away students who want to sign up…
February 26, 2009
362 - Greek To Me: Mapping Mutual Incomprehension « Strange Maps
""Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph?â Well apparently there has, even if only perfunctorily, and the result is this cartogram.
When a Hellenophone has…
February 26, 2009
For this week's Baby Blogging, SteelyKid shows off the latest look for the baby on the go:
In this picture, she's all set to face a busy day at day care. She's in her car seat, with the dangling toys on the handle (Left to right, a rattling snail, a butterfly with crinkly wings, and a flower with…
February 26, 2009
ScienceWoman offers a good discussion question:
You are in a room with a bunch of other female faculty/post-docs/grad students from your university. You know a few of them, but most of them are unfamiliar to you. The convener of the meeting asks each of you to introduce yourself by answering the…
February 26, 2009
Prior to SteelyKid's arrival, the "Pasta with Butter, Sage, and Parmesan" recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything had become one of our staple recipes. It's dead simple to make, we always have the stuff on hand (I've been planting sage in pots outside for the last couple of years), and it…
February 25, 2009
The Problem of Pretension. « The Internet Food Association
Is it pretentious to insist on fresh food for school lunches?
(tags: food politics class-war)
the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » Calculating the cost of dirty bombs
Basically the same analysis that's in "Physics for Future…
February 25, 2009
Over at Dot Physics, Rhett is taking another whack at photons. If you recall, the last time he did this wasn't too successful, and this round fares no better:
So back to the photon. In my original post I made the claim that the photoelectric effect is not a great experiment to show photons. Maybe…
February 25, 2009
Now that we have a President who is smart, articulate, and has the best interests of the country in mind, I feel compelled to actually watch his major speeches, like last night's not-really-the-State-of-the-Union address.
It's a small price to pay for having a President who speaks to the nation as…
February 24, 2009
slacktivist: Saving newspapers
"I'm glad at least though that Time and Isaacson are trying to deal with the question of newspapers' survival. That's more than I can say for many of the newspapers themselves. Take for example my employer, the largest newspaper chain in the country. They own dozens…
February 24, 2009
The winners of the American Physical Society's Science Writing Awards for 2008 were announced today:
Ann Finkbeiner won in the Journalist category for The Jasons, her book about a secretive groups of scientists who work on classified problems for the US government.
Gino Segre won in the Scientist…
