August 30, 2006
OK, they dumped the analogy questions ages ago, but for oldsters like myself, those are still the signature SAT questions...
Inside Higher Ed has a piece today on the new SAT results, which expresses concern over some declines:
Mean scores on the SAT fell this year by more than they have in decades…
August 30, 2006
So, you're interested in discussing politics or religion or other Deep Issues with other people. What do you do?
You could go on the Internet, but you end up talking to, like, freaky physics professors and stuff, so you'd prefer to talk to real people face to face. You could randomly approach…
August 29, 2006
Medium Large has critical advice for all you websurfers.
Of course, you didn't need me to tell you that, because you already read Medium Large. Right? Right?
August 29, 2006
Over at A Blog Around the Clock, Bora put up a sixteen part series of posts talking about clocks. Unfortunately, he was talking about biological clocks, which are a specific and sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics.
I talk a bit about clocks for our first-year seminar class, as…
August 29, 2006
It appears to be a good week for non-controversial posting, so while I'm making enemies, I might as well go all out...
The recent call for book ideas from the Feminist Press has sparked an interesting discussion at Cocktail Party Physics, but I want to highlight one comment in particular:
There is…
August 29, 2006
Tim Powers is one of those authors who has carved out a niche for himself telling a particular type of story, sort of like Guy Gavriel Kay with his pseudo-historical fantasy novels. In Powers's case, the niche might be summarized as "supernatural secret history." His best novels are set in…
August 28, 2006
Here's the other quote from Chuck Klosterman IV that I mentioned earlier, this one from an essay in Esquire on people who feel betrayed by pop culture:
Do you want to be happy? I suspect that you do. Well, here's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to…
August 28, 2006
It feels a little silly to quote Chuck Klosterman as some sort of Deep Thinker-- this is a guy whose whole claim to fame revolves around the expression of weirdly absolute opinions about pop culture ephemera, after all. Then again, the best political reporting being done these days is done by a…
August 28, 2006
Word has reached me[1] that, "me that the most notorious creationist on the Ohio State Board of Education, Deborah Owens Fink, has a challenger in the Novemeber 7th election." For the politically inclined out there, some information:
The challenger is former Ohio congressman Tom Sawyer. She is…
August 28, 2006
Via a comment at Cocktail Party Physics, I have become aware of the existence of the "Physics Chicks" LiveJournal community. It's probably safe to assume that the Female Science Professor isn't wild about the name.
It's billed as "An online community for crazy and cool women in physics," or at…
August 27, 2006
The Internet has been broken all afternoon at Chateau Steelypips, which is where there hasn't been anything new psoted, and why it's taken forever to approve a couple of comments that were held for moderation. Sorry about that.
(I'm typing this from my office on campus-- we turned Her Majesty's…
August 27, 2006
This year's Hugo Awards (either the Oscars of the Golden Globes of the science fiction/ fantasy field, depending on who you ask) were announced last night at the Worldcon in LA. Pleasant surprises abound:
1) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson won the Best Novel Hugo. As I've said before, I think it was…
August 26, 2006
A day late for the usual pet-blogging, you say? I prefer to think of it as being six days early.
Caption: "Hey! Who said you could stop petting me?"
(The Queen of Niskayuna is shown in her usual spot, on a pillow next to the couch, which is my usual spot when I'm downstairs watching tv or reading…
August 26, 2006
Kate's out of town for the weekend, leaving me here by myself (well, not counting the Queen of Niskayuna), needing to find something to do to entertain myself. My first thought was "big long bike ride," but it's raining, and I'm just not that committed to bicycling.
Second thought was "Maybe I'll…
August 25, 2006
The start of the new term brings not just new students and qualifying exams, but another round of introspection and soul-searching among the academic set. Which is a good thing for lazy bloggers, because it provokes lots of interesting articles to link to...
First up is the always interesting…
August 25, 2006
One of the things required for the tenure review is a full and up-to-date curriculum vitae. Having spent an inordinate amount of time updating and re-formatting my CV, it seems a shame not to make more use of it than that, so I might as well recycle it into a blog post (after stripping out my home…
August 25, 2006
I've talked before about the tension between the desire to encourage students to major in physics and the tight job market in academia. Every time I talk about ways to draw more students into physics, it seems that somebody pops up to call me irresponsible for trying to lure them into a dead-end…
August 25, 2006
(This is a screen cap of my desktop at work. The shortcuts are frequently-used folders, and I added one for my tenure materials only a couple of days ago.)
August 24, 2006
There's been a lot of hand-wringing in the science blogosphere about the low numbers of women in science, and I've contributed my share of comments. On the theory that you shouldn't curse the darkness when you could be fumbling for a book of matches, I'll pass along this call for proposals from the…
August 24, 2006
Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley has decided to ask us all a nice, simple, uncontroversial question:
"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"…
August 24, 2006
In the comments to the recent post on BMI, commenter Colst pointed to another study of mortality and BMI that found significantly higher risks for overweight people. Today, I see that Kevin Beck at Dr. Bushwell's Chimpanzee refuge has a post describing what I think is the same study, with the title…
August 24, 2006
Gordon Watts reminds me that the start of a new academic year means more than just the arrivial of a new crop of freshmen. For grad students, it's qualifying exam season.
For those not in the know, "qualifying exams" are a common feature of most Ph.D. programs. These are big, comprehensive tests…
August 23, 2006
Over at A Blog Around the Clock, Bora has reposted an old article written in response to a list of "must-read" SF books, in which he sets out to generate his own list. Never one to shy away from excess, he ends up with a nearly complete list of genre novels since about 1890. Steinn points out a few…
August 23, 2006
New students will be showing up on college campuses all across the country in the next few weeks, which means it's time for the annual "kids these days" reflections on the character of the new freshmen. Apparently, they don't know all kinds of important stuff, but they don't drink as much as they…
August 23, 2006
Via Arcane Gazebo (who adds a category), an entertainingly snarky taxonomy of lab scientists:
Weird and Whacky
Consider the "mad scientist" of popular fiction, someone so obsessed with their subject that they forget to dress and show up to the lab in their pyjamas. Without wishing to indulge in…
August 23, 2006
This morning's Times bring a story saying that astronomers are still dithering about Pluto. The latest plan would create a new category of "dwarf planets," and presumably get the International Astronomical Union eaten by Cthullu.
My immediate response is: "Jesus, people, make up your frickin' minds…
August 22, 2006
The classroom across the hall from my office is currently being remodeled into interview rooms for the Psychology department (we traded it for some laboratory space in the basement). As a result, my usual office soundtrack of KEXP streaming over the web has been supplemented by, well, whatever the…
August 22, 2006
Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake has a nice post about a study showing that the ever-popular Body Mass Index measure is not a good predictor of the risk of heart disease. He's got a lot of details about the study, including this graph of risk vs. BMI:
Now, here's the thing. This is the second study I…
August 22, 2006
Opinions differ about Vernor Vinge's latest book, Rainbows End (the apostrophe was intentionally left blank), and mostly seem to be correlated with how people approached the book. For example, Mike Kozlowski approached it from the standpoint that it's a new Vinge book, and thus expected to be as…
August 22, 2006
I want to take a quick moment to echo what Dave Sez about the World Basketball Championships:
Now, I know what you're thinking. You've seen the US play in past years and have been underwhelmed and maybe a bit disgusted. I'm with you. I felt the same way. Ever since the Dream Team in 1992, we've…
