October 10, 2007
Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle is a nominee for a $10,000 blogging scholarship (that is, a scholarship given to someone who blogs, not a scholarship for studying blogging). The winner will be determined by popular vote.
Of course, the responsible thing to do here would be to go read the blogs of…
October 10, 2007
From email, a silly fake commercial from CollegeHumor:
Why do I care? Look at 1:35.
That's our wedding picture that flashes up on screen.
I don't think I know the people responsible-- I think they probably wound up with our picture because our wedding pictures page was in the first page of Google…
October 9, 2007
Physics 2007
Fert and Grunberg, for Giant Magnetoresistance. People have been calling for this for years.
(tags: physics news science)
October 9, 2007
Here's another post to highlight a worthy proposal with a good science connection. "Little Scientists" is looking to bring marine habitats to pre-kindergarten students in Buffalo:
Animals and life sciences are of particular interest to young children, so we try to discover a lot about animals and…
October 9, 2007
I'm going to be in Boston all day, visiting MIT with a bunch of students, so here's a Dorky Poll to keep you entertained while I'm gone:
Which E-name mathematician do you prefer: Leonhard Euler or Paul Erdös?
They're both famous, they both have Numbers, and they're both dead. You almost literally…
October 9, 2007
We're one week into the DonorsChoose challenge for this year, and readers of this blog have already contributed over $2,000 to help school teachers and students. Those of you who have contributed, thank you very much for your generosity.
We've still got $4,000 to go to reach the goal for the…
October 9, 2007
Having gotten that silly Medicine business out of the way, the Swedish Academy has moved on to the important Award, with the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics going to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. This is one that people have been calling for for a while,…
October 8, 2007
The Booze News
Because the world needs another web site dedicated to drunk college students
(tags: academia stupid)
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: The Educrats' Attack on Teaching
Hugo Schwyzer goes to a workshop on "improving student learning outcomes,"…
October 8, 2007
In the "You Learn Something New Every Day" file, I was double-checking some dates for the Many Worlds chapter, when I ran across the following at the end of the Wikipedia page for Hugh Everett III:
Everett's son, Mark Oliver Everett, is also known as "E", the lead singer and songwriter for the band…
October 8, 2007
It's a public holiday here in the US, which means it's an Open House day on campus, as Admissions brings in a whole herd of high-schoolers to try to convince them to apply and enroll. This messes up the parking even more than usual, and also requires a bit of extra faculty effort to chat with…
October 8, 2007
There are a great many reasons to hate David Horowitz, but near the top of the list has to be the fact that his constant harping on "liberal bias" in academia has spawned a thousand studies of the politics of academics, complete with chin-stroking analysis peices about What It All Means.
The latest…
October 8, 2007
I somehow managed to lose track of time for a bit, and forgot that it was Nobel season until I saw this morning's announcement that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine hase just been announced, going to Mario R. Capecchi, Sir Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies,
for their discoveries of principles…
October 8, 2007
BBC SPORT | Rugby Union | Laws & Equipment | Rugby union positions guide
A guide to accompany the World Cup
(tags: sports rugby)
Particle-physics detector warms to forest fires - Physics World - physicsworld.com
New spin-off technology from CERN. Clearly, we must build the ILC!
(tags:…
October 7, 2007
"Books? I like books!"
Here's the next occasional book progress update:
Introduction
Current Revision: 1
Total Words: 422 (dialogue only)
Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality
Current Revision: 5a
Total Words: 5,279
Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle
Current Revision: 7
Total Words: 4,499
Chapter 3:…
October 7, 2007
The title sounds like the opening to a really odd joke, but in fact it was the concert bill last night in Albany. Bob Dylan is touring as always, and Elvis Costello is along doing a solo set, with Amos Lee opening for both. Kate and I went to the show, and it was... unusual.
I'll put most of the…
October 7, 2007
Cognitive Daily: Casual Fridays: Most citizens don't pass the citizenship test
I aced it, how about you?
(tags: politics science US)
james_nicoll: Where are the collapsed world-states of SF
"Isn't it a little odd,..., how few SF settings ever seem to have an Earth where a world-government has…
October 6, 2007
It's as good an explanation as any for this:
I'm not sure what this particular bit of Engrish is advertising, but I like the poster. It was hanging on a wall in Kamakura when we visited there in the pouring rain.
The original image, and 140 other pictures from Kamakura, can be found in this Flickr…
October 6, 2007
As noted here in the past, I had horrible stomach problems for a good chunk of last year. This was diagnosed as "Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease" or "GERD," which basically amounts to "Your stomach hurts." After a number of deeply unsatisfactory appointments with a gastroenterologist, and some…
October 6, 2007
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Early (Encouraging) Data on Early Colleges
If you offer college courses to good high-school students, they do better in college. Also, grass tends to be green.
(tags: education academia)
Improbable Research
The 2007 Ig Nobel…
October 5, 2007
I picked up three new albums from iTunes last weekend (yes, I know, you can buy DRM-free MP3's from Amazon now, but I have some iTunes credit to use up, and I haven't steeled myself to download and install the necessary application yet, which I just know is going to irritate me). The three were:…
October 5, 2007
The New York Times has a story on a novel approach to teaching high-school English: assigning homework to parents:
So far, Mr. [Damion] Frye, an English teacher at Montclair High School, has asked the parents to read and comment on a Franz Kafka story, Section 1 of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"…
October 5, 2007
Inside Higher Ed has a puzzling opinion piece about science and math education by W. Robert Connor of the Teagle Foundation. It's not his arguemtn that's puzzling, though-- that part is perfectly clear, hard to disagree with:
Public and private funders have spent billions of dollars -- sometimes…
October 5, 2007
Euler's Constancy
A short biography of and tribute to the mathematician Leonhard Euler, who did a bit of everything
(tags: math academia physics)
Scientists 'weigh' tiny galaxy halfway across universe
Six billion light years away, 1/100th the mass of the Milky Way
(tags: astronomy news science…
October 4, 2007
At the time of this writing, the Uncertain Principles blog challenge stands in first place on the ScienceBlogs Leaderboard, with just under $2,000 in donations so far. That's almost a third of the challenge goal of $6000 in just three days, which is fantastic. Thank you for your generosity.
Of…
October 4, 2007
I got a rather odd email yesterday, with the Subject: header Help me identify a youtube video and solve my grandfather's mysterious death. That's eye-catching, to say the least, and the text of the message was also interesting:
There's a youtube video involved in my grandfather's odd circumstances…
October 4, 2007
The Institute of Physics is the UK's main organization of physicists (sort of like the American Physical Society), and yesterday, they announced their awards for 2007. The full list of winners is only available as a Word file, for some odd reason, but it's a distinguished group.
The prizes are…
October 4, 2007
Stopping atoms
A "coil-gun" method for slowing atomic beams without lasers, from the Raizen group at Texas
(tags: physics low-temperature science atoms)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: An Open Letter to Mayor Richard M. Daley
The Dean Dad is less polite to Hizzoner than I was
(tags:…
October 3, 2007
Inside Higher Ed has an article about a HHMI initiative to encourage more students to pursue science careers:
Until now, calls for action to bolster Americans’ science aptitude and increase the number of graduates who move on to scientific research have focused on nurturing individual students,…
October 3, 2007
So, in a fit of procrastinatory behavior, I've spent a bunch of time over the last few days playing with Facebook. I have to say, I can understand how this would get to be addictive-- I'm inordinately amused by the fact that I can go to a web page and get a little message telling me that a division…
October 3, 2007
The new issue of Physics World is out, and features a bunch of Sputnik-anniversary stories. Among them is a long piece on science on the International Space Station:
Exponentially over budget, plagued by technical glitches and some seven years behind schedule, critics have always found the…
