November 19, 2008
I got a bunch of really good comments to yesterday's post about athletes and attitudes toward education. Unfortunately, yesterday was also a stay-at-home-with-SteelyKid day, and she spent a lot of time demanding to be held or otherwise catered to, so I didn't have a chance to respond. I'd like to…
November 18, 2008
Is getting takeout that much worse for the planet than cooking at home? - By Jacob Leibenluft - Slate Magazine
Probably not.
(tags: environment science society social-science slate)
Michael Nielsen » Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers", and the 10,000 hour rule
"One of the main claims of…
November 18, 2008
In this post we present an update to our earlier measurement of the Baby Feeding Correlation Function:
The figure above shows a histogram of the interval between feedings for SteelyKid in the 14 weeks since birth. Error bars represent 1-σ statistical uncertainties.
As you can see, we have added a…
November 18, 2008
It's a great time of year if you're a sports fan. The NFL is in full swing, and college football is coming to the inconclusive end of its season (save for the weird six-weeks-later coda of the bowl games). The NBA and NHL are just starting up, and most importantly, college basketball season has…
November 18, 2008
In the previous post, I promised to say something more about Einstein and the photoelectric effect. It turns out that I already wrote about this, back in 2005. That post is the end of a long chain of links about the history of photons.
This is a good thing, because it frees me from having to try to…
November 18, 2008
The History Channel ran a two-hour program on Einstein last night. I had meant to plug this in advance, but got distracted by the Screamy Baby Fun-Time Hour yesterday, and didn't have time to post.
The show restricted itself more or less to the period from 1900, just before his "miracle year" in…
November 17, 2008
Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: Conservatives and Unions
"Overturning Roe is certainly a conservative priority, but it's only been on the list for about 30 years. Fighting unions has been on the list for more like 130 years. If it's not central to the conservative identity in America, I don't…
November 17, 2008
Nobody reading blogs, anyway. Doug Natelson asked for comments on a recent workshop on iron arsenide superconductors yesterday, and the count of comments still stands at zero.
The under-representation of condensed matter physicists among bloggers and blog readers, relative to their abundance in…
November 17, 2008
Regarding the current financial crisis, a consensus has developed that the government needs to do something, and do something dramatic. The argument is, basically, that the normal sources of cash flow that might stimulate the economy out of recession have dried up, either through idiotic…
November 17, 2008
There's a link in today's links dump to a post from Pictures of Numbers, a rarely-updated blog on the visual presentation of data (via Swans On Tea, I think). There's some really good stuff there about how to make graphs that are easy to read and interpret.
I would like to dissent mildly from one…
November 16, 2008
Information Processing: Central limit theorem and securitization: how to build a CDO
"[T]he mathematical concepts related to the current financial crisis leave over 95 percent of our population completely baffled. If your Ivy League education didn't prepare you to understand the following, please…
November 16, 2008
When I'm in the right mood, I'm a sucker for really awful sci-fi movies. For example, Saturday night I stayed up far too late to watch the end of the tv-movie version of The Andromeda Strain, based on the book by the prolific and recently deceased Luddite Fiction writer Michael Crichton. It's been…
November 15, 2008
How the subprime good guys give home loans to poor people, strengthen communities, and still make a profit. - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine
"Since 2003, this for-profit firm based in Orange County--home to busted subprime behemoths such as Ameriquest--has issued $220 million worth of mortgages…
November 15, 2008
As mentioned briefly the other day, I recorded a Bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday conversation with Jennifer Ouellette on Thursday. The full diavlog has now been posted, and I can embed it here:
This was the first time I've done one of these, and it was an interesting experience.
I'm rocking the…
November 15, 2008
Yesterday afternoon, SteelyKid and I dozed off in the living room recliner. When I woke up, it had been three hours since she last ate, roughly her usual between-feedings interval, but she was still sound asleep on my lap. Kate was due home in half an hour or so, though, so I wasn't sure whether to…
November 14, 2008
We filled up the last sheet on the legal pad we've been using as a baby-feeding log, which reminded me that it's been a while since I updated this:
Again, this is the feeding pattern for SteelyKid, with darker colors indicating longer duration. Bottle feedings are arbitrarily assigned to 20…
November 14, 2008
I got a great "Living in the future" kick out of the headline on the New York Times story about Thursday's big astronomical announcement: First Pictures Taken of Extrasolar Planets. The phrasing of the headline conjures images of pictures of clouds swirling on distant gas giants; alas, the reality…
November 14, 2008
It's seminar week over at Female Science Professor, and today she's polling her readers as to the best day and time for seminars.
Our departmental colloquia are generally held on Thursdays at lunchtime. We provide pizza and soda as an enticement for students (which doesn't work as well as you might…
November 13, 2008
Dw. Dunphy On... Bob Mould | Popdose
A series of creative peaks that never translated into sales. Copper Blue remains an amazing album, though.
(tags: music review blogs)
scottberkun.com » Do we suck at the basics?
"The longer I'm on this planet, the more I think the problem with everything is…
November 13, 2008
Another Thursday, another picture with Appa. And SteelyKid throws her arms wide to say "I'm this big!"
She was nice and quiet earlier while I taped my half of a bloggingheads conversation that should hopefully appear on Saturday. She's been making up for that the last hour or so, demanding all…
November 13, 2008
Over at Dot Physics, Rhett has just completed a two-part post (Part I, Part II) on quantum physics arguing against the use of photons in teaching quantum physics. Part I gives a very nice introduction to quantum physics, which is why I linked it, but Part II goes a little off the rails. There's not…
November 13, 2008
Bora's beating the drum for submissions to this year's science blogging anthology. He doesn't seem to be suffering from a lack of submissions, but if you've got something you would like to see re-printed in dead tree form, submit it before December 1. I'm not clear whether this will be going…
November 12, 2008
The Supreme Court grapples with the primordial ooze of the Summum case. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
"[T]he current Third Aphorism of Religion Cases: Government establishment of religion is only impermissible when it freaks out Justice Stephen Breyer."
(tags: religion politics law silly…
November 12, 2008
Speaking of departmental seminars, as we were, it occurs to me that this might be an amusing Dorky Poll question:
What's the craziest thing you've heard asked of a seminar speaker?
One of the nice things about academia is that lots of educational events are put on, free and open to all. The…
November 12, 2008
The Female Science Professor is thinking about seminar series. Specifically, whether attendance should be mandatory for students:
Being required to attend the departmental seminar eliminates that pesky decision-making process about whether to go to seminar or not. But then, if required to attend,…
November 11, 2008
The Case of M. S. El Naschie | The n-Category Café
I wouldn't've started a blog if I'd known I could get Elsevier to give me my own journal...
(tags: science publishing academia journals stupid)
Backreaction: Technetium-99
"what a strange element is technetium in the first place, as without…
November 11, 2008
Sometime commenter "Dr. Pain" asked, on a mailing list, for book recommendations for his son, who "wants to read up about physics, especially weird modern physics." He adds some qualifications:
Kid's books on physics are way too elementary for him, but the typical "naive adult" book is over his…
November 11, 2008
Edward Glaeser has an op-ed in the Boston Globe arguing for more education funding:
The clearest result from decades of education research is the importance of teacher quality. My colleague Tom Kane finds that students who are lucky enough to get a teacher in the top quarter of the teacher-quality…
November 11, 2008
In the recent discussion of Many-Worlds and making universes, Jonathan Vos Post asked what science fiction treatments of the idea I like. The answer is pretty much "none," because most SF treatments are distractingly bad.
For example, last night I finished Neal Stephenson's Anathem, a whopping huge…
November 10, 2008
Mars Lander Succumbs to Winter - NYTimes.com
Farewell, Phoenix, thou good and faithful servant.
(tags: space planets science astronomy news)
Deep Secrets of 'The Daily Show' - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
"Mr. Remnick asked the writers and producers what a typical day at "The Daily Show" is…
