Have to blog and run today. I get to spend three hours this afternoon trying to persuade skeptical calculus students that “related rate” problems aren't so bad. A forlorn quest, I know. Anyway, how about I just point you towards some interesting reading:
- Over at CSICOP's site, Penny Higgins offers this excellent article on the topic of transitional forms generally, and Tiktaalik in particular. Worth it for the diagrams alone!
- Joshua Roebke, writing for Seed, gives us a concise summary of Grigory Perelman's refusal of the Fields Medal for proving the Poincare conjecture.
- The New York Times has this brief account of new research into the demise of the Neanderthals. Worth a look.
More like this
Most of you know that I was in NYC this weekend and I hung with the ScienceBlogs crowd. Others have summarized the goings on with eminent competence, so I won't add more to that. There was lots of fun to be had, and I made sure I had some of it.
I've had this quote up on my wall since the very beginning.
"We don't make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies."
-- Walt Disney
I think it probably also rings true for many scientists.
It's back! Here are the stories that were moving and shaking this week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de:
From a Science Museum Basement
Related rates--good stuff. If I am ever teaching implicit differentiation and a student asks me why we do it, I would like to tell him what my professor told another student: "Because it works." (Actually, he did some more explaining after that but I have always wanted to say that.)