Links for 2009-09-29

Very cool walking robot footage.

"Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person. In fact, I am smarter when I'm writing. I don't claim this merely because there is usually no one around to observe the false starts and groan-inducing sentences that make a mockery of my presumed intelligence, but because when the work is going well, I'm expressing opinions that I've never uttered in conversation and that otherwise might never occur to me. Nor am I the first to have this thought, which, naturally, occurred to me while composing. According to Edgar Allan Poe, writing in Graham's Magazine, "Some Frenchman -- possibly Montaigne -- says: 'People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think except when I sit down to write." I can't find these words in my copy of Montaigne, but I agree with the thought, whoever might have formed it."

"These reports highlight the qualitative changes in the initial employment of recent degree recipients. They document the salaries earned by experienced physicists across employment sectors and degree levels, the size of the physics academic workforce as well as the availability of faculty openings and profiles of new hires."

"[F]rom the list of finalists prepared by the Presidential Search Committee, the Board of Trustees has selected as the College's 17th President Adam Falk, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins. He will begin his presidency April 1.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 4 p.m. he will be introduced in Chapin Hall where all are invited."

"There are hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008. But the total is far larger. 70 to 80 percent are never reported.

This map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids' Right to Read Project, a collaboration of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression."

The elusive art of the science talk.

"In the 10 years since researchers at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, first reported producing the superheavy element 114 (see Physics Today, April 1999, page 21), some tens of other sightings of the element (as well as elements 115, 116, and 118) have been documented--but all by the same group. Now a team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, led by Heino Nitsche and Ken Gregorich, has confirmed the results. "

"Chewbacca has remained an enduring character for over 30 years. This stems from the fact that while he is absolutely adorable, he could also hit your head for a home run, using your leg as a bat and your torso as a tee. Chewie's extraordinary life has been well documented in hundreds of novels, comics, video games and legends of the Yeti. Since we will not admit to ever having read the majority of these actually very enjoyable stories, we will instead focus on his appearances in the movies."