Links for 2009-08-25

"[S]ince someone always finds a way to claim that they just don't know where to find such or who the women and/or people of color writing in the genre are, I hope that this list will go a long way toward alleviating that problem."

"I'm all for accepting that the gap between intent and practice will inevitably be quite wide, and that in that gap, all sorts of devils can find room to dance. It's just that those kinds of gaps also have thermals upon which angels fly. The mere existence of such gaps is not a reason to simply squat dully upon the status quo, or unchain the magic market mechanism to come along and sweep us to the promised land, nor is it, as John insists, reason to simply avoid discussion of what we ideally would like to see happen on the grounds that whatever we would like, unintended consequences will ensure that we never get it. "

"I support our new podcasting lecture overlords. If all you (as an instructor) are doing is stuff that could be a podcast, then why not have it as a podcast? I don't think that you should force students to come to class just because....I have no idea. The above article mentions that some professors have their lectures on iTunes university, but limit the number of downloads to encourage students to come to class. I don't get it. If they can get everything they need from the podcast, why come to class?"

"Part of the difficulty of getting involved in particle physics is the rather steep learning curve: the physics is very non-intuitive and the techniques are elaborate. Searching for new physics requires first learning to interact with a massive catalog of simulated collision events. By working with this data set, one can develop a set of "cuts" which will in principle eliminate all the false positives and only leave those events which represent the new physics. Even then, one needs a very good understanding of statistics to interpret whether or not the detected results are statistically relevant or not."

"I was still honored to receive the traditional NASA consolation prize, a space treadmill. I couldn't be prouder that my treadmill will soon be installed on the international space station to finally slim down all those chubby astronauts. Let's face it, being weightless is mostly just a desperate bid to keep away from that bathroom scale every morning."