Links for 2010-01-07

"Saudi Arabia's laws against sorcery, it seems to me, are incompatible with its laws against heresy. The heresy laws are based on the idea that there is one and only one true religion. The sorcery laws are based on the idea that other religious beliefs may be powerfully true, but yet forbidden. The state cannot condemn a person for sorcery without thereby taking the official position that sorcery is true and real and powerful. And thus the state cannot enforce its own anti-sorcery law without itself violating its own anti-heresy law."

Rhett investigates the xkcd comic about gravity wells, and finds a wealth of good science.

"The Christmas holiday is one of the most difficult times of the year to stay 'green,' but rocket launching our Christmas tree was a great way to recycle our trash destined tree. 32 large rocket engines and some careful calculations ensured fun for the whole family. "

"The Science Book Challenge is easy as pi: read 3 (or 3.14!) science books during 2010, then tell us about the books you've read and help spread science literacy. " I'd be happy to suggest a book or two, if that would help...

"What if grades are a discouraging force for original, innovative, and creative student work? What if our students focus on delivering what they think the professor wants in order to receive an "A" - rather then challenging the professors ideas and the prevailing wisdom? I'm starting to wonder if teaching faculty realize that grades are serving to demotivate creative student work, and are therefore taking grades "off the table" by defaulting to a higher grade. I'm starting to see grade inflation as perhaps a good thing."

"If you're going to cover science, real science, happening now, it's not enough just to know that "researchers" have published in "the Journal of Sexual Medicine". It's not a very small journal. There's not an exact date. It could have been any one of the last 40 articles published. I'm sure you think the topic "the g-spot" narrows it down. But it doesn't. It's the JOURNAL OF SEXUAL MEDICINE. At least half of the articles are on orgasm, and a good 70% of those are in women.

And then of course, who are these "researchers"? There was so much "controversy" over the topic in question that I actually had a great deal of trouble figuring out WHO the lead author was. It was buried at the end of a quote on one side of the page. At first, I thought the majority of quotes were from the lead author, but in fact they were from the lead author who disagreed with the study. "

"To keep make the playing field fair to the applicants, just about all departments have agreed to the particle theory postdoc deadline agreement, which states that no offer can be made that requires a response before January 7th. (That's tomorrow!) This is effectively a deadline for the first round of offers and protects applicants from offers that try to force a commitment before other universities can make offers.

But now there's still a lot of 'game theory' involved in the process. As is often the case in theoretical physics, a simple "toy model" is sufficient to demonstrate the phenomenon."