April 19, 2008
There's just no getting away from science-and-religion. Yesterday's (snail) mail brought a flier from the Williams College Society of Alumni, giving the schedule of events for my upcoming 15th (!!) college reunion. The very first item on Thursday's list of faculty lectures:
1 p.m. "Celebrating…
April 19, 2008
The whole framing/ "screechy monkeys" fracas led to a number of people asking for more frequent postings emphasizing a more moderate view of the great science and religion flamewars. As I said at the time, I'm a little hesitant about this, because there just isn't that much there that crosses the…
April 18, 2008
Preliminary thermal modeling accounts for some (but not all) of the Pioneer Anomaly - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
Some of the mysterious extra acceleration may just be uneven heating.
(tags: science space physics astronomy thermo theory computing)
Car Talk
"Coming April…
April 18, 2008
I drank the last of the Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre last night (I don't go through beer very quickly these days), which means the fridge is nearly empty, and it's time for a beer run. Which, of course, is a great excuse for a filler-iffic audience participation question:
What sort of beer should I…
April 18, 2008
(Because nothing brings in readers like a physics pedagogy post...)
Out in Minnesota, Arjendu is expressing high-level confusion about the business of lecturing:
As I've said a few times before in this blog, I prefer to let students read the text to get a preliminary take on physics content on…
April 18, 2008
"Why in the world are you posting that?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's a yappy little dog. We don't like yappy little dogs."
"True enough, but it's a picture of a yappy little dog in the infrared, and that's pretty cool."
"I don't think it's all that cool. You should take pictures of me in the…
April 17, 2008
The Scientific Activist: Why Are Veins Blue?
It's all about optics.
(tags: social-science medicine biology optics physics blogs)
100 Greatest Novelty Songs
Feel the pain.
(tags: music silly stupid culture)
April 17, 2008
I picked up the new Rustic Overtones album a week or two ago, partly on the strength of this review at 75 or Less, but mostly because I really liked "Hardest Way Possible" off Viva Nueva, and can't understand why it wasn't a huge hit. (The self-cover on this album probably indicates that the band…
April 17, 2008
Janet posted a few days ago about asking questions of grad students in seminars and journal clubs and so on. This is part of a larger conversation that I'm too lazy to collect links to-- Janet has them-- about whether grad students should show solidarity with their fellows and refrain from asking…
April 16, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Science Fairs and School Boards
"From looking at the other projects, this year's theme was baking soda volcanoes. " This year, and every year.
(tags: education science kid-stuff)
Physicists Claim to Have Found 'Dark Matter' Again - New York Times
"Juan…
April 16, 2008
Via Sheril, I see that the National Science Board has released a report on Science and Engineering Indicators 2008. It's chock full of useful and interesting information, particularly if you start poking around with the tables and figures, which are available for download.
This ought to produce all…
April 15, 2008
Meeting Announcment HTML Email
Including the classic anti-quack essay "DRIVE THE PSEUDOS OUT OF THE WORKSHOP OF SCIENCE," by the late J. A. Wheeler, albeit in a nearly unreadable format.
(tags: science stupid medicine psychology physics quantum)
Fighting Gossip With Graphics :: Inside Higher Ed…
April 15, 2008
Back when I was a kid, and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I spent about a week one summer staying with a great-aunt in Arlington, VA. I don't remember exactly when-- some time in the early 1980's-- and I don't remember where my parents and sister were at the time. I recall that they came down later…
April 15, 2008
Mike Huckabee spoke on campus last night, to the second-biggest crowd I've seen for an on-campus speaker (the biggest was Maya Angelou, back in the fall, where a few hundred people were turned away). It was a very good speech in a lot of ways, but ultimately, the whole thing was kind of frustrating…
April 14, 2008
Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will be speaking at Union tonight. This has provoked the predictable huffy reaction from the usual suspects, but I expect it will be an interesting event, and certainly better than David Horowitz or Pat Buchanan, who I'm told were the first two…
April 14, 2008
Going off to a rugby alumni weekend generally requires entering a 48-hour news blackout, at least for me. Of course, the outside world doesn't stop just because I'm enjoying myself, so I emerge from my fog this morning to find that John Archibald Wheeler passed away. The New York Times obit is here…
April 13, 2008
In honor of my weekend, here's Larry Miller on the Five Stages of Drinking. This is one of my all-time favorite comedy bits, and it's defintiely in the "funny 'cause it's true" category.
Details will, of course, need to remain scarce to protect the political careers of those involved, but it was a…
April 11, 2008
Seth Godin offers a parable about toasters and web sites:
We recently acquired what might be the worst toaster in the history of the world. It's pretty fancy and shiny and microprocessor controlled. And it makes toast.
But here's what I have to do to use it:
[list of 10 steps]
He goes on to draw a…
April 11, 2008
With the "Vox Day" business winding down (one way or another), it's time to unwind with something less contentious and controversial: Framing! No-- seriously. Most of the really loud opponents have publically washed their hands of the whole topic, so I expect this will be relatively non-…
April 10, 2008
A thought -- Words Words Words -- The Dream Cafe Weblog
"If President Bush has sunk lower than others, it is only because he is being stood on by giants."
(tags: US politics silly)
Mythbusters' Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage | The A.V. Club
Zombie Feynman says it's science, and that's good…
April 10, 2008
I'm feeling pretty harried this week, because I'm teaching using a new curriculum, which requires all-new lecture slides and notes and homework assignments. I'm also going away this weekend, to Williamstown for the celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of my college rugby club.…
April 10, 2008
I'm not sure whether he's making some kind of obscure point, or just trolling, but John Scalzi gave a recent installment of his "Big Idea" series over to the witterings of "Vox Day," talking about his book The Irrational Atheist. Curse you, Scalzi, for getting me to even look at that.
And it's not…
April 10, 2008
Inside Higher Ed notes in passing that several NCAA Presidents are complaining about alcohol advertising during the NCAA Tournament. The source for this is a study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:
According to CSPI's analysis of broadcasts of the semifinal and championship…
April 9, 2008
Satisfying application of physics
Another great idea for an intro mechanics lab.
(tags: physics academia education experiment science)
Michigan laser beam believed to set record for intensity
Includes a great lab-porn picture of the laser in action.
(tags: science physics optics news experiment…
April 9, 2008
Over at Cosmic Variance, Julianne waxes rhapsodic about her calculator, a HP-15C. This is such an obvious Dorky Poll topic that I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier:
What sort of calculator do you use?
My students, particularly the future engineers, are always shocked by my answer:
I use a…
April 9, 2008
The much-promised peer-reviewed research post is going to slip by another day, becuase I had forgotten about a talk by Neil Lewis last night on campus. Lewis is an alumnus of Union, and a writer for the Times best known for writing about the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he was speaking…
April 9, 2008
The College maintain an "OnCampus" page, intended to serve as a clearinghouse for electronic resources on campus. I have it set as the home page for all my campus computers, because it lets me access a lot of stuff very quickly-- Blackboard, course rosters, academic calendars, etc.
This page has…
April 8, 2008
Most powerful laser in the world fires up
"The Texas Petawatt laser reached greater than one petawatt of laser power on Monday morning, March 31," Good thing, or they'd feel pretty dumb about the name.
(tags: physics optics science news)
Cats Laughing
Everybody's favorite band of SF authors,…
April 8, 2008
(This is the second of two background posts for a peer-reviewed research blogging post that has now slipped to tomorrow. I started writing it, but realized that it needed some more background information, which became this post. And now I don't have time to write the originally intended post...)…
