links for 2009-06-22

"In my department weâll often produce documents that have lots of buzzwords, but nobody really takes it seriously. You can always get appreciative chuckles in a department meeting if you poke fun at your own handiwork. Higher on the food chain, they actually believe it."

"You'd think mathematics could avoid the ambiguity of multiple meanings for the same symbol, but I regret to say it's not so. There's much less ambiguity to be sure, but there is some out there. Even the venerable Ï symbol has more than one common meaning. So you'll not be surprised that when physicists talk about gamma as a function, it's not necessarily _the_ gamma function. The one we'll talk about today is generally just called gamma even when treated as a function to avoid confusion."

"Hogwarts acceptance letter lost in the owl post? Never fear! Consider, instead, a career in condensed matter physics and materials science!"

"This is not how to use the catalog to see if a book you want is available in your library and to get a shelf location! Also not about finding something good to read (frankly, I'm completely out of practice with reader's advisory, so can't help you there). Books are useful containers for information, data, and stuff you need to make new science, do cool engineering, and answer whatever questions. What kinds of things might a book work best for?"