April 8, 2008
An ad-lib from yesterday's lecture about interactions between electric fields and neutral matter, paraphrased:
So, we can divide macroscopic objects into two categories, based on what happens when you bring large numbers of atoms together. In materials that are insulators, the electrons aren't free…
April 8, 2008
The world's best known shrieking basketball analyst was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame yesterday, and event which ESPN is understandbly hyping to no end. I've written before about how Vitale is, in my opinion, one of the very worst color commentators in the business, so you might be…
April 8, 2008
When I went to bed last night, I thought the crucial moment of the NCAA men's basketball championship game was Bill Self's mystifying decision to go to a box-and-one on Chris Douglas-Roberts in the middle of the second half.
That's because I went to be lat night with two minutes to play and Memphis…
April 7, 2008
Administrating « Confused at a higher level
"Why did I say yes to the Dean when he asked whether I would take on this position? He made the request/offer to me a week after calling me to let me know I had tenure -- he claimed that this gave me a fair shot at saying no."
(tags: academia society…
April 7, 2008
Having brought in a huge new audience at the end of last week-- partly through the "framing"/"screechy monkeys" things, but mostly because my What Everyone Should Know About Science post hit the front page on Reddit-- I figured I should take this opportunity to... Well, drive them all right the…
April 7, 2008
I had planned to let the current round of screechy-monkey-bashing die, but I woke up this morning to an accusation from commenter Andrew that I don't want to leave unanswered:
As for the blog - I'm not sure you are actually moderate really, it sounds more like vaguely apathetic. Or more accurately…
April 7, 2008
When I was talking to my parents on the phone last night, my father told me about a guest op-ed in the Press and Sun-Bulletin that might be of interest to some ScienceBlogs readers and bloggers:
As if there aren't enough problems in the world, we are now on the verge of a phenomenon that will dwarf…
April 6, 2008
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times
"To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. "
(tags: blogs writing journalism society culture computing internet)…
April 6, 2008
Stealing a post-generating method from Brad DeLong, Bill Tozier posted and interesting comment that I wanted to highlight:
I've often wondered why people place me (a moderate in a lot of polarized
debates) "in the middle".
I think I'm orthogonal, not "in the middle". I'm concerned about
plenty of…
April 6, 2008
I'm looking for some recommendations of music in the instrumental jazz sort of vein, and I figure this is an area in which the Internet knows more than I do. I have some fairly idiosyncratic constraints, though, so please read the whole post before recommending stuff in comments.
Background: For…
April 6, 2008
Well, that was certainly an odd pair of national semifinal games. They were very similar in some ways-- Memphis ran circles around UCLA from start to finish, and Kansas did the same to UNC, save for a ten- or fifteen- minute stretch in the middle of the game.
I watched very little of the Memphis-…
April 5, 2008
PHD Comics: Campus architecture
"Sure, the could have built three building for the same price, but those buildings would be functional and non-leaking."
(tags: academia comics silly)
Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing
"I once met a lady named Rodana. I think she runs a successful internet business…
April 5, 2008
It's probably a little foolish to continue this on a Saturday, but I'd like to wrap up the giant framing/ religion/ screechy monkeys mess and get back to more pleasant topics, at least for a while. Putting it off until Monday would make this more visible, but it would also drag things out, so I'm…
April 5, 2008
I am obscurely glad to learn from this Times human-interest story that Kansas center Sasha Kaun is from Russia. Otherwise, he is at the age where any parent naming their child "Sasha Kaun" would've had to deal with everybody thinking "Sasha Kaun Sasha Kaun everybody Sasha Kaun..." Yes, I am both a…
April 4, 2008
Inactive kids face 6-fold risk of heart disease by teen years, study finds
Correlation or causation?
(tags: education medicine US social-science science news)
Reassigned Time: PSEUDONYMITY is not Anonymity, duh
"Pseudonymity is not about being untraceable but rather about taking on a traceable…
April 4, 2008
I had the first lab of the term yesterday in my introductory E&M class. This is the first time I've taught out of this book (Matter & Interactions by Chabay and Sherwood), which actually includes the basic elements of this lab as suggested activities in the second chapter of the text. The…
April 4, 2008
In the comments to yesterday's post about framing, Damian offers a long comment that doesn't actually contradict anything I said, but re-frames it in terms more complimentary to the Dawkins/ Myers side of things. I may deal with some of what he says over there (probably not today, though, as I have…
April 4, 2008
The Perimeter Institute will be hosting a workshop in September on "Science in the 21st Century":
Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual…
April 3, 2008
VQR » The Christian with Four Aces
A biography of the deeply creepy and corrupt Pat Robertson.
(tags: culture religion television journalism politics US society)
Coming to New York, a Science Event for the Masses - New York Times
"Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, who described himself as being from Muppet…
April 3, 2008
EurekAlert provides a sort of firehose feed of press releases, some of which contain really hilariously awkward phrases. This release about a graphene-based measurement of the fine structure constant is one of the all-time greats, though:
Prof Geim, who in 2004 discovered graphene with Dr Kostya…
April 3, 2008
Wow. I'm cranky today.
I really need to be more Zen about things. Here's a picture to meditate on:
This is the famous "Crane and Turtle" garden at Konchi-in in Kyoto. It's one of very few gardens absolutely known to have been designed by the great garden-desing master Kobori Enshu, out of the huge…
April 3, 2008
Via Matt Yglesias, the Quick and the Ed offers an absolutely terrific article about the effect of class on access to college, using AJ Soprano as an example. On The Sopranos, AJ was a delinquent, who nevertheless got sent off to college because of the tireless efforts of his mother, and the family'…
April 3, 2008
I really had intended for Tuesday's dog pictures to be my only comment on the recent framing debacle (well, Monday's expertise post was an oblique commentary on it, but nobody got that, which you can tell because the comments were civil and intelligent and interesting to read). But Chris Mooney is…
April 3, 2008
Kevin Drum points to a report comparing international education systems from McKinsey and Company management consultants. The report (9.5 MB PDF) does double duty: it serves as a useful and important contribution to the study of education reform, and also as a case study in how to use PowerPoint to…
April 2, 2008
Analytics According to Captain Kirk
A detailed statistical analysis of the Red Shirt Phenomenon in Star Trek.
(tags: articles economics math psychology statistics television SF silly science)
April 2, 2008
I have a doctor's appointment this morning, and then class, so here's another Dorky Poll inspired by the fact that I'm teaching intro E&M:
What system of units do you prefer for E&M: SI, or CGS?
This is even dorkier than usual, so I suppose I should provide some context...
The CGS system…
April 2, 2008
One of the nice things about being a semi-pro blogger is that people send me tips about things that might be blogworthy. Most of these go into the daily links dump posts, but every now and then one hits at a time when I'm short of material, and looking for something to write about.
Such as the…
April 2, 2008
In what is, alas, probably too deadpan to be an April Fools' joke, Mark Wilson offers a breathtaking suggestion on Inside Higher Ed:
I propose that all academics with research specialties, no matter how arcane (and nothing is too obscure for Wikipedia), enroll as identifiable editors of Wikipedia.…
April 1, 2008
Anil Dash: Your April Fool's Day Joke Continues to Suck
"The exception, of course, is if you're doing something truly hysterical or on a magnificent scale. But I fear we won't run into too many of those."
(tags: blogs internet society stupid)
Practical Jokes - Psychology - April Fool! The…
April 1, 2008
It's weird how blogs go in cycles-- I'll blog nothing but science for a while, and then flip into Academic Mode, as I have this week, and blog about nothing but tenure issues and academic politics. But, that just seems to be how things work, and the stories catching my eye recently are all about…
