Links for 2009-08-27

"We got a good number of thoughtful comments, many of which are on the right track, and many of which have some misconceptions. Let's clear them up, and then let's give you the explanation of what gives us our figure 8, and why other planets make other shapes."

"I am very excited about these changes, and I spend some of my time checking out real-time science blogs like Useful Chemistry, participating on online science networks like Nature Network, and exploring what PLOS ONE has to offer.

But how relevant are all of these new changes to the average undergraduate? Do they need to know about them? If they don't need to know now, will they in the near future?"

"I find it remarkable that Supersymmetry (or at least a few points of its hundred-dimensional parameter space) keeps standing head and shoulder above the surge of experimental results coming out of the Tevatron, which stubbornly insists finding everything in agreement with the Standard Model and no trace of sparticles around."

"There's something a tad disingenuous here. Beavan is, after all, a man whose environmental activism began over lunch with his agent. And it doesn't take a Ph.D. in electrical engineering to see through his claims to experimental rigor. Indeed, in its own candlelit way, his project is almost as incoherent as Farquharson's. When No Impact Man shuts off the power at his apartment, you might think that his blog would have to go dark (and along with it his compulsive checking of his ratings on Technorati). But every day Beavan bikes to the Writers Room, on Broadway at Waverly Place, and plugs in his laptop."