Links for 2009-09-25

"One thing that frustrates me at times about "big history", world history or large-scale historical sociology is the extent to which historians writing in those traditions tend to assume that it's turtles all the way down, that the insights of big history extend symmetrically to the smallest scales of human life, that microhistory contains no surprises or contradictions for the macrohistorian. "

"I'm thinking it might make sense to stratify tech purchases based on their likely uses. If a given lab will use computers just for word processing and web surfing, why not go cheap? I write most of my blog posts on a netbook that cost 400 bucks when I bought it, and that probably costs 300 now. For this purpose, it does just fine. (In labs, where we could use desktops, we could go even cheaper.) Then, we could reallocate some of the savings to do a white-glove test of classrooms and labs, and devote money to the lower-tech but still crucial stuff like lighting, blinds, paint, screens, and such. "

"Physicists, of course, were well-represented among the ranks of TED speakers, but when Oxford prof Joshua Silver took the stage, the audiences weren't in for the usual science lecture. Silver is an atomic physicist, but lately he's been obsessed with optics; not because he wants to design an invisibility cloak or improve high-speed communication, but because he wants to address a very important problem for the world: bad vision."

"The Nobel Foundation hereby announces that the prize awarding institutions have set the following dates for their announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"

"There appears to be, to the surprise of planetary scientists, water, water everywhere on the Moon, although how many drops future astronauts might be able to drink is not clear.

Data from three spacecraft indicate the widespread presence of water or hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom as opposed to the two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up a water molecule. "

"The basic plan is to use a numerical calculation to model the motion of a bullet."