links for 2008-12-22

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Confessions of a Community College Dean: College Prep "In some circles, 'college' is an undifferentiated term for a place that other people go to get the kinds of jobs that other people get. It's probably some kind of racket, though the exact workings are hard to detail. In some circles, 'college…
Every Hug, Every Fuss - Scientists Record Families' Daily Lives - NYTimes.com "[T]he U.C.L.A. project was an attempt to capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. The investigators have just finished working through the 1,540…
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Stories / Shade by Steven Gould Teleporteurs sans frontieres. (tags: SF stories) Search Magazine - On God P.J. O'Rourke does his best Gregg Easterbrook impression. (tags: science religion stupid) Built on Facts : Falling from Heaven " If my opinion is…
Creating Citizen Scientists § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM "A few days ago, sitting in my office, I contributed to peer-reviewed scientific research in biology, astronomy, and psychology. Even though I don't hold degrees in any of these fields, my contributions will help advance science: I was doing real…

Ugh, that last one is awful! A cursory web search will reveal a lot, as his commenters quickly reveal...and then there's the typos...

"Quantum" isn't either big or small, but means having a discrete unit or change in a case where it wasn't supposed to have made sense. IOW, electromagnetic waves seems to be continuous and without any specific connection to units of energy (other than arbitrary units used to measure them) but then we found out that light could only be emitted or absorbed in units proportional to energy E = h nu. You all know this, I wanted to make a nice wrap of the term.