Free Thought
jdupuis | November 5, 2010York University Computer Science & Engineering professor Anestis Toptsis was kind enough recently to invite me to speak to his CSE 3000 Professional Practice in Computing class.
He gave me two lecture sessions this term, one to talk about library-ish stuff. In other words, what third year students need to know about finding conference and journal articles (and other stuff too) for their assignments and projects. You can find my notes here, in the lecture 1 section.
In the second session, which I gave yesterday, he basically let me talk about anything that interested me. So, of course,…
drorzel | October 26, 2010
Should Students buy an iPad or a Year's Supply of Pot Noodles? | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM
"Suppose you gave up washing clothes for a year, or relied on your mum to do it for you. According to the budgeting guide this would save £222, just about half of the iPad. You could go with dirty clothes for your first two years and buy an iPad for third year, I guess. How about food? The budget reckons £1295 for a year. Sheer extravagance! Two Pot Noodles a day would cost under half that at £547.50. Throw in some vitamin supplements at £1.69 and what more could you need? That saving…
drorzel | October 16, 2010
Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool
A spiffy interactive guide to the scale of things.
(tags: science astronomy physics biology measurement computing internet)
slacktivist: Hold on to the good
"Test everything. Hold on to the good.
That's from the Apostle Paul, actually. It's a bona fide biblical commandment. Both parts of it. Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Note the difference between the first part and the second. "Test everything" is unconditional. What should we test? Everything. But the second part is conditional. We're not told to hold on to everything…
oracknows | October 13, 2010October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a fact that is hard to escape. It's one of those things that I have mixed feelings about, particularly now that I've had a close relative, namely my mother-in-law, die of breast cancer less than two years ago. On the one hand, the attention that's brought to the cause of breast cancer is helpful for spurring research and donations to support research, as well as promoting screening programs. On the other hand, I do now have a bit of understanding about "pink washing," and some of the whole "pink thing" at times makes me uneasy. Be that as it may, one…
kcollins | October 9, 2010Thanks to NCSA for their mention of the USA Science and Engineering Festival on their webpage. Find the full article here.
What is the universe made of? What do engineers have to do with baseball? What is a supercomputer and how do scientists use them? Find out at the first ever USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo on the National Mall Oct. 23-24!
Children, families, and all with curious minds are invited to explore science and engineering with over 1,500 free, hands-on activities and over 50 stage shows. Build an underwater robot, chat with a Nobel Laureate, explore the science…
jdupuis | October 5, 2010This year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing took place this past week in Atlanta, GA.
I thought I'd gather together some small part of the blog posts I've been seeing floating around the Internets on this wonderful event.
Opening Session of Grace Hopper Conference - 2010
Dancing with Hundreds of Technical Women at Grace Hopper
The Impact of the Grace Hopper Celebration
It's the most wonderful time of the year
Back from GHC10@tlanta, now time to retrospect
Together, We Are Big Fish!
Grace Hopper Celebration 2010 : Day 2 (29 September)
Open Source Codeathon for Humanity (a…
gregladen | September 29, 2010This is an excellent guest post by Scott Rowed on the use of Linux in K-12 schools, including strong evidence that school districts that do not have students using the Linux operating system are placing their students at a disadvantage, as well as a description of one outstanding success story in British Columbia.
Linux in Schools
Scott Rowed
What computer operating system should students learn at school? Most schools use MS Windows or Mac, but a number have switched or are in the process of switching to Linux. For schools the advantages are lower costs, greater security, no viruses or…
jgoldman | September 23, 2010Below the fold, you'll find a complete listing of all tweets from #SMWUSC, in reverse chronological order.
@jgold85 Thus concludes "Biomimicry" @USCedu #smwuscThu, 23 Sep 2010 23:32:58 +0000 - tweet id 25352854351 - #1tweet details
@JessikaWalsten Wrapping up the biomimicry event at #smwusc. It's been fun!Thu, 23 Sep 2010 23:30:34 +0000 - tweet id 25352672665 - #2tweet details
@LisaRau Rar! RT @laura_nelson: Meet TRAKTAR, a mole-worm-kangaroo/tractor. Alan Alda wants one! #smwLA #smwUSC http://twitpic.com/2rayftThu, 23 Sep 2010 23:28:10 +0000 - tweet id 25352486577 - #3tweet…
drorzel | September 16, 2010
What higher education costs § Unqualified Offerings
"There's a lot of talk going around about the cost of higher education. Let's look at some numbers in the state university system here, which focuses on undergraduate education."
(tags: academia education economics blogs unqualified-offerings)
Do Scientists Have a Special Responsibility to Engage in Political Advocacy? | Age of Engagement | Big Think
"I do not really believe that scientific credibility is as fragile as other people seem to believe. Scientists can be terrible people and still do good science, or they can be wonderful…
jdupuis | September 9, 2010
Has the Future of the Internet come about?
A virtual counter-revolution: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it
How a watch works (via)
On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography (via)
Institutional repositories and digital preservation
The decline of studying: How university students are spending less time hitting the books while earning better grades than ever
Science publishing: the humorous side
Obsolescence in the CS literature and Confronting the Myth of Rapid Obsolescence in Computing…
drorzel | September 7, 2010
The Daily What
"I love xkcd wedding cakes / boom de yada boom de yada."
(tags: internet pictures xkcd comics food)
The physics.org web awards | Latest Features | physics.org
"The aim of physics.org has always been to help those interested in physics navigate this sea of information. Over the past few years we've gathered together over 4,000 of what we consider to be great webpages, and put them into our Explore database on physics.org.
To take things one step further, this year we're hosting our first ever physics.org web awards to give the best physics sites out there some well-deserved…
drorzel | September 1, 2010
This is why I "support" majoritarian rule. - Acephalous
"As a means of registering my discontent with conservative claims that the fact that 70 percent of Americans abhor the idea of the "Ground Zero Mosque" means it should be abandoned, I hereby present other things that 70 percent of "certain" Americans once hated."
(tags: politics us blogs acephalous race religion society)
Square Signals : An Anesthetic Default
"I have this problem.
When I get home from work, I sit down on my couch and open my laptop. When I'm waiting for the next bus, I pull out my iPhone.
Then there's the unconscious…
ably | August 31, 2010Our friend Victoria Stodden is the lead author on a paper published today in Computing in Science and Engineering summarizing the recommendations of a roundtable we participated in at Yale on data (and code) sharing in (computational) science. Seed's Joy Moore is an additional author on the paper.
To adhere to the scientific method in the face of the transformations arising from changes in technology and the Internet, we must be able to reproduce computational results. Reproducibility will let each generation of scientists build on the previous generations' achievements.... Reproducible…
mikethemadbiologist | August 31, 2010
So, Nature Reviews Genetics has an article, "Computational solutions to large-scale data management and analysis", which claims the following in the abstract (italics mine):
Today we can generate hundreds of gigabases of DNA and RNA sequencing data in a week for less than US$5,000. The astonishing rate of data generation by these low-cost, high-throughput technologies in genomics is being matched by that of other technologies, such as real-time imaging and mass spectrometry-based flow cytometry. Success in the life sciences will depend on our ability to properly interpret the large-scale,…
drorzel | August 30, 2010Last week, John Baez posted a report on a seminar by Dzimitry Matsukevich on ion trap quantum information issues. In the middle of this, he writes:
Once our molecular ions are cold, how can we get them into specific desired states? Use a mode locked pulsed laser to drive stimulated Raman transitions.
Huh? As far as I can tell, this means "blast our molecular ion with an extremely brief pulse of light: it can then absorb a photon and emit a photon of a different energy, while itself jumping to a state of higher or lower energy."
I saw this, and said "Hey, that's a good topic for a blog post…
drorzel | August 30, 2010
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Why experimentalists hate theorists.
(tags: science silly cartoons comics)
YouTube - Hitler and P = NP
Why the hell am I paying you morons to use a f&#$*% brute force algorithm?! That blasted Russian Perelman can solve the Poincare conjecture. Why can't you dimwits solve something as simple as finding the best route?"
(tags: science math computing silly video)
jdupuis | August 28, 2010Some interesting articles, as usual, in the latest issue:
External Characteristics of Computer Operations: Toward Large Conversational Time-Sharing Systems by Wiehle, Hans Rudiger
First Edition Unix: Its Creation and Restoration by Toomey, Warren
The Network Information Center and its Archives by Feinler, Elizabeth
Promoting the Prosaic: The Case for Process-Control Computers by Aylen, Jonathan
There are also a few articles on the AEG-Telefunken TR 440 computer.
drorzel | August 28, 2010
Williams College - The Purple Cow goes national: ESPN College Football GameDay commercial looms
"In 2007, when I was but a wee sophomore at Williams College, ESPN College GameDay visited our campus marking the first and possibly last time they visit a Division III school. I thought that would also be the last Williams College would ever hear from ESPN. Boy, was I wrong, and glad to be.
It was an ordinary Wednesday (May 4th) when I received a call from Eph Sports Information Director Dick Quinn (DQ) asking if I knew how to get my hands on the Purple Cow mascot outfit, because if I did, then…
drorzel | August 23, 2010I'm a big fan of review articles. For those not in academic science, "review article" means a long (tens of pages) paper collecting together the important results of some field of science, and presenting an overview of the whole thing. These vary somewhat in just how specific they are-- some deal with both experiment and theory, others just theoretical approaches-- and some are more readable than others, but typically, they're written in a way that somebody from outside the field can understand.
These are a great boon to lazy authors, or authors facing tight page limits ("Ref. [1] and…
jgoldman | August 22, 2010Here's your weekly round-up of fun and fascinating:
To start with, I did a 6-part series on numerical cognition and the development of math skills, here and at Child's Play:
1. The Developmental Origins of Numerical Cognition
2. What is Dyscalculia? How Does It Develop?
3. Developmental Dyscalculia Explained: Strategy, Memory, Attention
4. Numbers on the Brain: Neurobiology of Mathematics
For an evolutionary perspective, there were the two companion pieces this week here:
5. What Are The Origins of Large Number Representation?
6. The Origins of Small Number Representation
Science
From Lucas…