drorzel | October 25, 2010I almost forgot something that I need to do today, so no lengthy and detailed blogging this morning. Instead, a quick poll regarding Neil Gaiman's suggestion of giving kids scary books for Halloween:
Neil Gaiman suggests giving kids scary books for Halloween. What do you think?online surveys
Halloween is a classic holiday, which means you're bound by classical rules, and can only choose one item, not a quantum superposition of multiple options.
(I think he means giving scary books to kids you know or are related to, not handing them out to Trick-or-Treaters, but it's more amusing to picture…
drorzel | October 25, 2010
Hugo Nominees: Introduction | Tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts
"I haven't, of course, read every single book nominated for the Hugos since 1953. (What have I been doing with my time?) If I haven't read it, I shall say so, and I shall say why. Otherwise I shall talk briefly about the books and their place in the field. If I'm inspired to re-read a book and talk about it in detail, I'll do that separately. I'll be very interested to hear other opinions and especially suggestions for other things of the year that should have been nominated. My views are, of course, my views,…
drorzel | October 24, 2010In yesterday's post about the experience of science, I mentioned that I had both a specific complaint about the article by Alexandra Jellicoe (which I explained in the post) and a general complaint about the class in which the article falls. I want to attempt to explain the latter problem, partly because I think it will be useful, but mostly because it's stuck in my head, and I need to at least type out the explanation before I can move on to other things.
The article in question doesn't contain all of the elements I'll mention below, but I think it clearly falls into a class of articles that…
drorzel | October 24, 2010Between my long-ago high-school French and Google Translate, I can tell that this is a good review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It does note, though, that reading the book requires knowledge of English to understand it, which is a problem. And, as far as I know, French translation rights haven't been sold yet... French publishers, je vous regarde.
In other foreign-edition news, we've sold German and Turkish rights, so there will be editions in those languages eventually. Emmy was very happy to hear that the book will be published in Turkey, though that was mostly a case of preposition…
drorzel | October 24, 2010
Hey, Tea Partiers, this wine's for you! - By Mike Steinberger - Slate Magazine
"In response to the advent of the Tea Party movement, some people have demanded to know where all these deficit hawks and defenders of the Constitution were during the Bush years. I have a different question: "Where's the Madeira?" If the Tea Partiers wish to evoke the spirit of 1776, it seems to me that alongside the powdered wigs and pantaloons, they ought to be accessorizing themselves with bottles of Madeira, which was a favorite tipple of the Founding Fathers and was supposedly used to toast the Declaration…
drorzel | October 23, 2010This week's Short Story Club entry is a Tor.com story, "The Cage" by A. M. Dellamonica. This is a story about a general contractor and the Most Adorable Werewolf Pupppy Ever.
In the world of the story, supernatural monsters are "out," known to the general public (though I don't think it mentions anything other than werewolves directly), with varying reactions-- mostly hostile in the US, more ambivalent in Canada. The story is set in Vancouver, where a woman whose werewolf sister was shot by an American fortune-hunter hires the narrator to build her a soundproof and indestructible room on the…
drorzel | October 23, 2010Some time back, I took issue with an article about "masculine" and "feminine" approaches to science that struck me as a little off. The author of the original post, Alexandra Jellicoe, has a new post on the same topic that she pointed out in comments to my original post.
I have two major problems with this article. One of them is a problem I have with the whole genre (as it were), and I'll save that for another time, because it will be difficult to write. The bigger and more immediate problem that I have, though, is that I don't recognize Jellicoe's description of science. She writes:
The…
drorzel | October 22, 2010On the way in to work, I heard yet another example of the deplorable trend of taking the vocal tracks of slow songs-- in this case, "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance" by Vampire Weekend-- and replacing the musical backing with a 120 beats-per-minute dance beat that sounds like it was generated by a high-end Casio keyboard. These turn up over and over, and every time it happens, it annoys me to no end.
But why should pop music be the only genre to get this treatment? Thus, a poll suggesting some other slow songs that ought(?) to receive this treatment:
What slow song is most in need of a dance-…
drorzel | October 22, 2010As promised, an answer to a question from a donor to this year's DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. Sarah asks:
Chad, can I get a post about how you (or scientists in general) come up with ideas for experiments? You've covered some of the gory detail with the lab info posts, but I think it would be useful for your readers to see where the ideas come from.
The answer is obvious: Ideas come from Schenectady. Which, not coincidentally, is where I live...
More seriously, in my area of experimental physics, I think there are two main ways people come up with ideas for new experiments:…
drorzel | October 22, 2010
US LHC Blog » I've Invented a New Theory, What Do I Do Now?
Surprisingly, "Start a kooky-looking webpage, and make a million dollars" isn't one of the options. Probably an oversight.
(tags: physics theory experiment lhc-blogs science blogs particles)
...My heart's in Accra » The ley lines of globalization
"To use Maersk's calculator, you need to register with the site, download a client browser certificate and accept three server certificates from Maersk before you can access their secure site. But once you do, it's just a few short clicks before you can calculate the cost of shipping a…
drorzel | October 21, 2010This week, we see Appa and SteelyKid with all the essential elements of bedtime:
From right to left, we have: Goodnight Moon, the Winnie-the-Pooh collection I've started reading to her after her bottle, and the brown-and-white doggie she has adopted as her essential comfort animal. This was apparently a Valentine's Day promotion from some chain store a few years back, as Kate learned while finding a backup doggie on EBay-- we can't do bedtime without it, and don't want to think about what would happen if it got lost.
Despite the giggling and laughing that accompanied the picture-taking, she…
drorzel | October 21, 2010I haven't been flogging the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge as hard this year as in past year, but I do want to post a reminder that the challenge is ongoing. If you donate, the money will go to help deserving school kids; if that's not enough, it can also earn you cool stuff like:
The largest individual donor will get a signed copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and the chance to have their pet appear in the sequel. Want to read about your companion animal moving at relativistic speeds? Make a big donation (current leader is just over $370), and you can get it.
Too cash-strapped to buy…
drorzel | October 21, 2010Melissa at Confused at a Higher Level has a nice post on the tension between faculty research and teaching:
Malachowski writes, "We all know that working with undergraduates is time consuming and in some cases it slows down our research output, but work with undergraduates should be supported, celebrated, and compensated at a high level. For most of us, the process involved in research with students is as important as the product." If colleges adopt a narrow definition of scholarly productivity measured only by publications, they may unintentionally provide incentives for faculty not to…
drorzel | October 21, 2010
Views: The Real Cost Equation - Inside Higher Ed
"All of these arguments place the higher education system at the center of the universe worth examining. Holding up a magnifying glass to the industry can indeed yield a wealth of detailed information, but without context that information is partial, and it can be quite misleading. The college-centric view of the world all too often lends itself to an easy politicization of complex issues. Before we jump on the apocalyptic bandwagon, there is mileage in placing the higher education industry firmly within the industrial structure of the…
drorzel | October 20, 2010As a sort of follow-up to yesterday's post asking about incompetent teachers, a poll on what you might call the "Peter Threshold," after the Peter Principle. Exactly how many incompetent members can an organization tolerate?
The acceptable level of incompetence in any organization (that is, the fraction of employees who can't do their jobs) is:Market Research
This was prompted by one commenter's estimate that 30% of business managers are incompetent, which seems awfully high to be acceptable, particularly in the business world where, we're told, incompetents are regularly fired without…
drorzel | October 20, 2010
In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Green Energy - Series - NYTimes.com
The power of framing in action.
(tags: science politics environment energy society culture religion media communication nytimes)
Physics Buzz: Twin Paradox a Paradox in Low-Earth Orbit
"Relativity enthusiasts will be excited to learn that in a few months, twin brothers will meet in space for the very first time! But who will age more, the brother spending six months in orbit, or the brother on the quick shuttle hop to the International Space Station?"
(tags: science physics physics-buzz blogs relativity space)
Why…
drorzel | October 19, 2010As mentioned in the previous post, there has been a lot of interesting stuff written about education in the last week or so, much of it in response to the manifesto published in the Washington Post, which is the usual union-busting line about how it's too difficult to fire the incompetent teachers who are ruining our public schools. Harry at Crooked Timber has a good response, and links to some more good responses to this.
I'm curious about a slightly different question, though, which is in the post title. There's a lot of talk about how incompetent teachers are dragging the system down, but…
drorzel | October 19, 2010There have been a bunch of interesting things written about education recently that I've been too busy teaching to comment on. I was pulling them together this morning to do a sort of themed links dump, when the plot at the right, from Kevin Drum's post about school testing jumped out at me. This shows test scores for black students in various age groups over time, but more importantly, it demonstrates one of my pet peeves about Excel.
If you look at the horizontal axis of this plot, it shows regularly spaced intervals. If you actually read the labels, though, you'll see that they're anything…
drorzel | October 19, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Tossing Bottles
One of the staples of 80's teen movies was the moment when the screwup hero realized that he had imbibed (or allowed others to imbibe at a forbidden party) much of what was in the parents' liquor cabinet -- these houses always had well-stocked liquor cabinets -- and didn't want to get caught. Invariably, he'd add water to the various bottles to make the cabinet look, at first glance, undisturbed. Tossing bottles would have given the game away.
SUNY Albany is tossing bottles, and catching holy hell for it. Apparently, it's suspending…
drorzel | October 18, 2010As you may or may not be aware, we are once again in the middle of a DonorsChoose fundraiser to support public school students and teachers. The good news is, the Uncertain Principles entry for the 2010 Challenge is in second place among ScienceBlogs blogs with $373 in donations thus far; the bad news it that more than half of that money is from the initial contribution I made when I set the challenge up.
We've done much better than this in the past, but I realize these are tough economic times, and people may not have as much disposable cash to give to charity. I was thinking, though, about…