October 6, 2008
Interview with Chad Orzel
It's me, doing a blog interview on how I got into science, how I got into blogging, and the future of science outreach.
(tags: science blogs physics academia)
xkcd - A Webcomic - Depth
Negative powers of ten, xkcd style.
(tags: science comics xkcd)
Seeing race and…
October 6, 2008
I got email this morning from the Obama campaign, bearing news that will no doubt have the more rabidly partisan Democrats of blogdom dancing with glee: The Obama campaign as prepared a video about the Keating Five scandal (Wikipedia link, not the campaign video), and John McCain's role in it. The…
October 6, 2008
The Empress of Eastern New York is dissatisfied:
Why? Because at this point, my DonorsChoose Challenge entry has only raised $475 from 7 donors. A bunch of theorists are cleaning our clocks.
This makes SteelyKid grumpy. And we don't want a grumpy baby.
To put things into perspective, this blog…
October 6, 2008
Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel has a post on the limiting of job searches that is an excellent example of the problems with the academic mind-set:
The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying themselves from even applying for certain positions because:
1. they don'…
October 6, 2008
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was split three ways, with half going to Harald zur Hausen for the discovery that Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer. The other half is split between Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of Human…
October 5, 2008
The politics of girliness - Ultrabrown
"Last night, Palin winked at the camera, scrunched up her nose and added a smiley timbre before thrusting any rhetorical daggers. In these moments she resembled an anime character. Kawaii ne!"
(tags: US politics stupid gender society blogs)
slacktivist:…
October 5, 2008
Steelykid says "Touchdown!" (as does her shirt):
And then goes to sleep.
October 5, 2008
The best way-- really, the only way-- to sum up David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Brief History of ∞ is by quoting a bit from it. This comes from the middle part of the book, after a discussion of Fourier series, in one of the "If You're Interested" digressions from the main discussion…
October 5, 2008
Jennifer Ouellette's pop-science book project post and the discussionaround it reminded me that I'm really shockingly ill-read in this area. If I'm going to be writing pop-science books, I ought to have read more of them, so I've been trying to correct that.
Hence, Longitude, which I actually read…
October 4, 2008
...My heart's in Accra » Cultural appropriation of the kick-ass kind
The haka comes to Texas.
(tags: rugby football culture society sports)
VOTD: I Love Sarah Jane (Zombie Short Film) | /Film
"Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way -…
October 4, 2008
Over the past several weeks, I've written up ResearchBlogging posts on each of the papers I helped write in graduate school. Each paper write-up was accompanied by a "Making of" article, giving a bit more detail about how the experiments came to be, what my role in them was, and whatever funny…
October 3, 2008
Ideas: Prediction vs Explanation: A Puzzle
"We do ten experiments. A scientist observes the results, constructs a theory consistent with them, and uses it to predict the results of the next ten. We do them and the results fit his predictions. A second scientist now constructs a theory consistent…
October 3, 2008
I've got meetings and phone calls most of the day, so here's something to keep you amused. Each of the following two-word phrases is taken from a pop song, some well-known, some faintly obscure. If you think you can identify one, leave a comment containing a more complete version of the line in…
October 3, 2008
Over at Nature Networks, Timo Hannay has posted a conference talk in which he questions the future of science blogging:
"Science blogging is growing" I confidently wrote in an essay a few months ago. Then, like any good scientist, I went in search of evidence to support my prejudice. But I couldn't…
October 3, 2008
I made it through half an hour of last night's VP candidate debate. When they got to the question of global warming, I realized that her answer was indistinguishable from something the Sarah Palin Interview Generator might cough up, and opted for Tombstone on the History Channel (!) instead.
"…
October 2, 2008
It's been eight weeks since her birth, and SteelyKid celebrates by doing the Baby Dance:
I almost didn't get to this today, but I wanted to make sure I got something up to serve as a debate alternative. She's much cuter than Sarah Palin, to say nothing of Joe Biden...
October 2, 2008
As mentioned in the previous post, the cold plasma experiment was the last of the metastable xenon papers that I'm an author on. My role in these experiments was pretty limited, as I was wrapping things up and writing my thesis when the experiments were going on.
The main authors on this were Tom…
October 2, 2008
This is the last of the papers I was an author on while I was in grad school, and in some ways, it's the coolest. It's rare that you get to be one of the first people to do an entirely new class of experiment, but that's what this was. It kicked off a new sub-field (or sub-sub-field...), the…
October 2, 2008
Over the course of the next month, I'll be highlighting some of the proposals in my DonorsChoose challenge, to let you know the benefits you can provide. Some of the proposals are heartbreakingly basic, asking for things like copy paper, but this is a science blog, so let's look at some science…
October 2, 2008
First, you hit "ctrl-p" which brings up a print dialogue box. Then you check the settings, andclick "OK." At this point, a small status bar pops up at the bottom of the page, showing that 0 pages have been sent to the printer:
This bar will remain in this state forever. Wait as long as you like,…
October 1, 2008
Nina Katchadourian
Short stories told through pictures of book spines
(tags: books literature pictures art stories language)
Cognitive Daily: Do TV, movie and game ratings actually do any good?
A good rule of thumb is that when a paper title asks a question the answer is "no."
(tags: games…
October 1, 2008
As you may or may not recall, last year's DonorsChoose fundraiser featured a few... unusual offers. At one point late in the proceedings, I offered to read and review a New Atheist screed for $1000 in new donations. And, since I had previously said that I would rather stab myself with a fork than…
October 1, 2008
I signed up for the Adopt-a-Physicist program run by the APS, and I've been "adopted" by three high school classes. The program pairs professional physicists with high school classes, and provides a web forum both groups can access. The students ask questions, and I answer them.
I'd love to be able…
October 1, 2008
As we have the past few years, the folks here at ScienceBlogs will be running a fundraiser for the educational charity DonorsChoose. If you haven't been around for the past versions, the way it works is you go to their site via my challenge page, and review proposals submitted by teachers asking…
September 30, 2008
Dr. Rivka -
How many US Supreme Court decisions can you name off the top of your head?
(tags: law US politics)
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Bloat: threat or menace?
A defense of long books.
(tags: books writing literature SF blogs)
Dynamics of Cats : why are grades…
September 30, 2008
Via FriendFeed, I came across an article by Deepak Singh on attention and science, which spins off a long rant by Kevin Kelly on the idea that Where ever attention flows, money will follow. Deepak writes:
Attention can be driven by many mechanisms, marketing being the most effective one. The key is…
September 30, 2008
The House Republicans blame their failure to pass the bailout bill on Mean Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank lets them have it:
The key bit, for those who don't want to watch YouTube: "[T]hink about this. 'Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country.' That's hardly plausible. And there are…
September 30, 2008
Sometime last week, I was directed to Chris Wilson's article in Slate, which comes with the provocative subtitle "Why can't science journalists just tell it like it is when it comes to particle physics?" I flagged this as a good jumping-off point for a blog post about how hard it is to communicate…
September 30, 2008
The New York Times today has an article on scientific studies of "alternative" medicine. Quack-bashing isn't my usual line, but it seemed to me like there was a good bit of stuff that will torque Orac off. I couldn't help laughing at the final paragraph, though:
"In tight funding times, that's…
September 29, 2008
A Tribute to Paul Newman | Popdose
"What the world will miss most about Paul Newman isn't his artistry as an actor and a director, both of stage and film, but it is his kindness and all-around stature as a good man."
(tags: movies society culture)
Study of Standardized Admissions Tests Is Big…
