August 25, 2008
How to get a college roommate you can live with
First and foremost, don't be a jerk yourself.
(tags: academia education social-science psychology news)
Want to Lower the Drinking Age? Hope You Like Spam :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
MADD-- all class,…
August 25, 2008
Seen tonight, as we were leaving for our evening walk:
That is, I believe, one of the neighborhood red-tailed hawks, having killed a rabbit in our next-door neighbor's back yard. I might be wrong about the "red-tailed hawk" part, but it's definitely a bird of prey that killed a rabbit next door.…
August 25, 2008
Over on LiveJournal, Johan Larson has a great discussion topic:
Our hero, the time traveling engineer, starts out in 1901, with the goal of
working on the coolest engineering projects of the twentieth century.
Assuming he knows well the history of technical development during that
time, but is not…
August 24, 2008
Evolving Thoughts: The real Olympic performers
"[U]sing the Wikipedia population figures and the official medal tally, I plotted gold medals per million population and medals overall per million population"
(tags: sports blogs silly)
Why You Should Turn Gmail s SSL Feature On Now - Webmonkey
"…
August 24, 2008
Total strangers keep congratulating me on the birth of SteelyKid. No, not people on the Internet, people in real life.
We have a standard dog-walking route that we take Emmy on every night, and Kate and I usually do the evening walk together. Of course, Kate's not coming along on those now, and now…
August 24, 2008
Curious Baby says "I wonder what happens when I press this?"
She's going to end up a scientist, like her old man...
August 23, 2008
DFL: Getting to the Games: A Reality Check
"A common misconception -- a result, no doubt, of the countless stories about Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eel -- is that it's not that hard to qualify for the Olympics, if you pick your sports and countries shrewdly."
(tags: sports blogs)
Methodist…
August 23, 2008
"I think so, SteelyKid, but what if the rhinoceros doesn't want to be milked?"
August 23, 2008
To: Windows Vista
From: Chateau Steelypips
Please note that when I change your settings, I do it for a reason. You do not need to be aware of the reason, just know that there is one.
In particular, when I change the "Windows Update" setting to something other than "Install updates and automatically…
August 22, 2008
Great Olympic moments on YouTube
"One of the best ways to watch the Olympics is to chase down all the references made by NBC's commentators on YouTube and watch them in addition to (or instead of) the regular telecast. "
(tags: video sports youtube history)
August 22, 2008
Every time I mention the idea of teaching physics to a wider audience than just physics majors, somebody brings up Richard Muller's course, "Physics for Future Presidents," at Berkeley. So, I was pleased to find out that he has turned the course into a book, also titled Physics for Future…
August 22, 2008
Over in LiveJournal Land, James Nicoll has a good idea that I'm going to steal. Over at SF Signal, they asked a bunch of writers what they would change about SF. Ken Macleod (author and occasional blogger) wrote, in part:
It's just rare to see stories written about a future that the writer believes…
August 22, 2008
For reasons that really aren't important, I found myself doing some Google Image searches for pictures of political leaders, and I was struck by how many of the top results were caricatures. It occurred to me that you could probably say something about the collective emotional age of the Internet…
August 22, 2008
Over at Tor.com, David Levine describes a really cool event he went to just before Worldcon: a crash course in modern astronomy for SF writers:
The idea behind Launch Pad is Gernsbackian: getting good science into popular fiction as a form of public education and outreach for NASA. SF writer and…
August 21, 2008
Cocktail Party Physics: calculus is craptastic
"Few science bloggers have the good fortune to write off a Vegas trip as "research", but that's exactly what it was: my next book for Penguin is all about my experiences as a former English major learning calculus, inspired by a series of blog posts…
August 21, 2008
The experiment described in the previous post was published in early 1998, but the work was done in 1997. This was the year when things really turned around for me in grad school-- the optical control paper was done in the summer 0f '94, and '95 and '96 were just a carnival of pain. Everything in…
August 21, 2008
I announced my intention to do some research blogging a little while ago, and managed one pair of posts before the arrival of SteelyKid kind of distracted me. I'm still planning to complete the Metastable Xenon Project blog, though (despite the utter lack of response to the first two), and the…
August 21, 2008
We had a pediatrician appointment yesterday, at which it was declared that SteelyKid is in excellent health. She gained 8 ounces in the last week, or 1/16th of her weight (she was 8lbs even last week, and 8lbs 8oz this week). To put that in perspective, for me to make an equivalent change, I would…
August 21, 2008
The recent news about the Amethyst Initiative, in which a number of college and university presidents are calling for a lowering of the drinking age from 21, has sparked a bunch of discussion. Jake Young and Mark Kleiman have good contributions.
There are two main arguments against lowering the…
August 20, 2008
Survival Blog for Scientists û Blog Archive û Giving your new results away too soon
"[W]here do you announce your results first: in the title? In the abstract? In the introduction? Or, in the results paragraph?" All three of those, plus the Conclusion.
(tags: academia writing science journals…
August 20, 2008
Chris Mooney has a new Science Progress column on the number of scientists that challenges the claim that there are not enough students earning science degrees.
The facts clearly say otherwise, no matter how you slice them. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2006--the last year for…
August 20, 2008
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, Union, like most other colleges and universities, installed a new emergency alert system, which they test much more frequently than it can possibly require. This always produces a flurry of emails alerting us to the upcoming test, and then the test…
August 20, 2008
The Mad Biologist points to and agrees with a post by Jonathan Eisen with the dramatic title "Why I Am Ashamed to Have a Paper in Science. Eisen's gripe is mostly about Science not being Open Access, but he throws in a complaint about length restrictions, which is what the Mad Biologist latches on…
August 20, 2008
Via Swans On Tea, a ranty blog post titled Sucky Schools - How To Repair Our Education System, which takes its structure and much of its tone from Paul Lockhart's "Mathematician's Lament" (which, unfortunately, is a PDF file). I'm fond of ranty posts about education reform, but both of these kind…
August 19, 2008
slacktivist: Saddleback
"The Democratic senator wasn't there to try to win evangelical votes by touting his support for abortion rights. Nor was he there hoping to persuade them to change their minds on that question. What he did instead was this: He disagreed with them."
(tags: politics US…
August 19, 2008
First of all, if you're Tony DeCapio, you need to send Kate an email address so she can contact you regarding the free book offer. Leave it in a comment at her LiveJournal-- she's screening the comments, so there's no chance that spammers will get it.
If the previous sentence doesn't make sense to…
August 19, 2008
The New York Times today has an article about obesity, showcasing new studies that find weight isn't that important as an indicator of health:
Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided.
Last…
August 19, 2008
Via a comment to an earlier post, here's an example of a journalist doing science right: NPR's Sarah Varney looks at "cleansing" foot pads, and finds them wanting.
She took a set of the pads, tried them out, and then brought used and new pads to a laboratory at Berkeley, where chemists studied the…
August 19, 2008
I'm at the computer, typing, when SteelyKid starts fussing in the porta-crib in the living room. "Oh, why are you crying?" I say, as I cross the room. This is the fifth outbreak of fussiness today. "What am I going to do with you?"
"We could eat it!" the dog says, from her pillow next to the crib…
August 18, 2008
College cocktails lead to science career
""I could mix drinks without measuring," Sacchettini recalls. "Turns out that was perfect training for biochemistry.""
(tags: academia biology chemistry medicine science jobs drugs)
Musical Perceptions: Can't even win a dull contest
We're #2... on the…
