February 12, 2009
...Abraham Lincoln.
Yeah, most of ScienceBlogs is celebrating Darwin's birthday, but I don't have anything interesting to say about that. Actually, I don't have anything all that interesting to say about Lincoln, either, but given that he's unquestionably one of the two greatest Presidents (neck…
February 12, 2009
I usually post something here about what panels look interesting when the Boskone program goes up on the web. This year's program went up over the weekend, and I'm just now getting around to making a list of worthwhile items. This tells you what kind of week I'm having.
Anyway, I looked the program…
February 12, 2009
I watched (bits of) a couple of basketball games last night for the first time in ages: Syracuse put up a good fight for a bit more than a half before being put away by a really good Connecticut team, and North Carolina blew Duke away late to win their fourth straight in Durham. These were two…
February 11, 2009
I didn't expect the post griping about the Best American Science Writing anthology to generate as much discussion as it did. Shows what I know.
In comments, "bsci" made a good suggestion:
Instead of complaining about this volume, I'd love it if you and your readers made a list of the best physics…
February 11, 2009
Back in the fall, I got all caught up in the election, like everybody else, and I added a bunch of blogs to my RSS feeds in Google Reader. I'm thinking that I might need to cut back to pre-election levels, if not lower, though. Following too many political blogs is giving me whiplash.
This has…
February 10, 2009
Fish Food « Easily Distracted
"Let me add to the âStanley Fish is just kind of patheticâ dogpile a bit here. In many ways, Fishâs latest column kind of reveals just how naked the emperor has become when it comes to hack complaints about the leftist intolerant academic-freedom abusing groupthink…
February 10, 2009
I'm running a little behind this week, but I wouldn't want this week's Science Saturday bloggingheads to slip by without a mention. It's a conversation between George Johnson and Louisa Gilder about The Age of Entanglement, which I liked quite a bit:
The conversation is primarily about her book,…
February 10, 2009
Like a lot of physics departments, we offer an upper-level lab class, aimed at juniors and seniors. There are a lot of ways to approach this sort of course, but one sensible way to think about it is in terms of giving students essential skills and experiences. That is, i's a course in which they…
February 9, 2009
Backreaction: Singularities in your Kitchen
"I was fascinated most by what I've learned since then about singularities in fluid dynamics - singularities that actually occur in the kitchen, every time a drop of water falls off the tap."
(tags: science physics blogs liquids backreaction)
Attack…
February 9, 2009
Kind of a belated gripe, but something I was reminded of today that I forgot to blog when I first noticed it. I griped last year about the fomulaic nature of the "Best Science Writing" anthology, but I had no idea that the 2008 version would be worse.
OK, I haven't read it, but I leafed through it…
February 9, 2009
The Book-in-Progress is slowly but surely moving toward being the Book-in-Production. There isn't an officially official date yet, but I've gotten what should be the last round of edits, and been told that it should be out this fall, just in time for holiday gift-buying.
Between the book and my…
February 8, 2009
A physics history-mystery: magnetism from light? « Skulls in the Stars
"Iâve been looking into Faradayâs contribution to the understanding that light is an electromagnetic wave. That investigation led me to some early work by other researchers on the light/magnetism connection, and led me in…
February 8, 2009
Back in the 25 things post, I alluded to a long-ago encounter with Jonathan Frakes in Williamstown. This has led to a number of requests for the full story, which I will put below the fold, for those who care:
I stayed on campus for the summers when I was in college, doing research and hanging out…
February 8, 2009
I only started using FriendFeed a few months ago because other people at the Science in the 21st Century workshop were documenting the conference on it. I quickly became a fan of the service, which not only added an extra dimension to the meeting, but has also been a continuing source of…
February 8, 2009
Williams has long held a dominant position in a number of categories of blogging: Dan Drezner on economics and politics, Marc Lynch on the Middle East, Ethan Zuckerman on the developing world and really cool conferences, Derek Catsam on history and Red Sox fandom, yours truly on canine physics. And…
February 7, 2009
SteelyKid is six months old today! To celebrate, here's some video of her bouncing around in her jumper:
(That's spliced together from a bunch of shorter clips. You can here me babbling inanely in the background, because my brain turns to cheese whenever I'm within about five feet of her. I was…
February 7, 2009
Since everybody I know on Facebook seems to have done this, it seems I'm obliged to post a list of twenty-five random facts. I wouldn't want to have my Internet License revoked, or anything.
I've always been tall-- I'm not one of those tall people who was 5'7" in the tenth grade, and then shot up…
February 6, 2009
The Crowd-Sourced Reading List | The Loom | Discover Magazine
"Last week I blegged for examples of great science writing from over the years, and you did not disappoint. Rania Masri, who teaches writing to scientists in Lebanon, asked if I could share the list. Itâs the least I can do in exchange…
February 6, 2009
Not long after I posted my comments about textbook prices, I went to a panel discussion on teaching, where a social scientist made an interesting observation about the ways different disciplines interact with books.
In the humanities, the whole point of the class is to discuss the books. Nothing…
February 6, 2009
There's a new paper from the PAMELA dark matter search out that's written up in Physics, including a link to a free version of the PDF. This paper is considerably less dramatic than one that appeared last year, leading Physics World to suggest that they're backing off the earlier claim.
What's the…
February 6, 2009
Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt got her 1000th win last night, a record that will probably stand for a good long while. Nobody else in college basketball really has much of a shot-- the record for men's basketball coaches is Bob Knight at 902, and the most wins by an active coach is…
February 5, 2009
Textbooks have jumped the shark | Dot Physics
"I have been afraid to really speak my mind on this issue because I donât want to completely enrage the textbook publishers. They do send me free books sometimes. Oh well, first what is the chance they will read this? Second, I already have tons of…
February 5, 2009
This week's Baby Blogging is in honor of SteelyKid's continued growth: she had her six-month checkup on Wednesday, and has now officially exceeded the weight limit on the bassinet attachment to her porta-crib. We've had to lower her all the way down to the bottom of the crib, where she can look out…
February 5, 2009
Having mentioned this a few times in course reports, I thought I'd throw out a link to my lecture notes (PDF) on complex numbers. This is the one-class whirlwind review of complex numbers from defining i to Euler's theorem about complex exponentials.
To answer a slightly incredulous question from a…
February 5, 2009
As you may or may not have heard, the evidence in the upcoming perjury trial of Barry Bonds was unsealed yesterday, and includes a number of positive drug tests. And, really, my main reaction was "Oh, thank God."
It's not that I'm enthusiastic about hearing steroids-in-baseball talk again, but the…
February 4, 2009
NY Times article on force and physics and football | Dot Physics
"People say I am picky. Ok, sometimes I am. But somebody has to stand up for what is right and just. Maybe I am that person.
Please stop using the word force if you donât know what it is.
There. I said it. You can attack me now."
(…
February 4, 2009
The big news of the day from the world of politics is that President Obama plans to cap executive pay at banks that take bailout money in the next round of emergency cash payments. This is not popular with the executive class:
"That is pretty draconian -- $500,000 is not a lot of money,…
February 4, 2009
I got the last round of line edits on the book-in-progress Monday night after work, but I haven't had a chance to do more than leaf through the pages. This is mostly because I had lab reports to grade-- the second written report is due Sunday, and I needed to get comments back to the students…
February 4, 2009
In the last report from my modern physics course, we wrapped up Relativity, and started into quantum mechanics, talking about black-body radiation and Planck's quantum hypothesis. The next few classes continue the historical theme
Class 10: I make a point of noting that Planck himself never liked…
February 3, 2009
Bruce Springsteen misreads the national mood in his halftime performance. - By Stephen Metcalf - Slate Magazine
A desperately stupid article about the Super Bowl halftime show
(tags: politics stupid society sports music)
PHD Comics: Not a good sign
"I should be done in a year..."
(tags:…
