drorzel | September 7, 2010
The Daily What
"I love xkcd wedding cakes / boom de yada boom de yada."
(tags: internet pictures xkcd comics food)
The physics.org web awards | Latest Features | physics.org
"The aim of physics.org has always been to help those interested in physics navigate this sea of information. Over the past few years we've gathered together over 4,000 of what we consider to be great webpages, and put them into our Explore database on physics.org.
To take things one step further, this year we're hosting our first ever physics.org web awards to give the best physics sites out there some well-deserved…
drorzel | September 6, 2010The AV Club offers a list of 28 gleeful breakup songs, a category that includes some great tunes. The comments contain some good additional suggestions, and they still missed one of my all-time favorites, "Bye, Bye" by the Subdudes (if that link won't play, you can get a cell-phone camera live version on YouTube-- skip the first 0:50 or so). I'm sure there are plenty of other good ones missing as well.
Of course, the real gem of the article is this charming little tune from Cee-Lo Green:
That's spectacular. Apparently this was a viral Internet smash-- the sort of thing that gets a song…
drorzel | September 6, 2010Today is Labor Day in the US, which is the traditional end-of-summer holiday. The top link in today's Links Dump is a survey of the history via Slate, headlined "Why Do We Get Labor Day Off?"
Of course, my reaction to that is "What do you mean, 'we'?" Today is also the first day of classes of the 2010-2011 academic year here at Union. Actually, it's the first half-day of classes, as we don't start until 1:50 today, but it doesn't make much difference to the poll question of the day:
Starting the new academic year on Labor Day is:survey software
This is particularly annoying, because…
drorzel | September 6, 2010
Why do we get Labor Day off? - By Brendan I. Koerner - Slate Magazine
"Though President Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, the occasion was first observed on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. A parade was organized by the city's Central Labor Union, a branch of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, a secretive labor union founded in 1869 by a clique of Philadelphia tailors. Historians still debate over whom, specifically, to credit with the idea of a holiday dedicated to the workingman."
(tags: history us politics culture society slate)
"Some Enchanted…
drorzel | September 5, 2010The 2010 Hugo Award Winners were announced on Sunday night. Of course, this being a science fiction award, it's only appropriate that they be announced from THE FUTURE, so the results were available early this morning, US time.
It turns out that I voted for 1.5 of the fiction award winners: China Mieville's The City and The City shared the Best Novel award with Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, and I also voted for the Charlie Stross novella. The other two categories, I'm basically OK with-- I "NO AWARD"-ed "Bridsicle," but that whole category was pretty weak, and it wasn't as awful as "…
drorzel | September 5, 2010We had a Barfy Toddler Incident yesterday, making a mess of Kate's spiffy new car seat, but that seems to have been a passing thing, perhaps caused by an excess of cranberry juice while on campus yesterday morning greeting new students. Thus, we went ahead with our plan to take SteelyKid to the zoo today:
We only went through the part you can walk through-- it didn't seem like we'd have much luck getting her to sit still for the "safari ride" through the rest of it-- and a lot of it was kind of shabby and depressing-- small chain-link enclosures, animals scrambling for food from visitors,…
drorzel | September 5, 2010
The short answer Yglesias's question is "Yes." - Acephalous
"[A]s it currently stands, the choice is between being a "serious" scholar who engages no one or an "unserious" scholar whose work is read by many but, because of that, counts for nothing. I'm obviously not endorsing this model, nor am I saying it's the same in all disciplines, as I would love to be in a discipline in which my work mattered on its merits rather than for what its publication wins me; however, for those invested in the system as it's currently constituted, the idea of public engagement is understandably frightening.…
drorzel | September 4, 2010Speaking of teacher evaluation schemes, as we were, Doug Natelson draws my attention to a new proposal from Texas A&M:
[Frank] Ashley, the vice chancellor for academic affairs for the A&M System, has been put in charge of creating such a measure that he says would help administrators and the public better understand who, from a financial standpoint, is pulling their weight.
A several-inches thick document in the possession of A&M System officials contains three key pieces of information for every single faculty member in the 11-university system: their salary, how much external…
drorzel | September 4, 2010
News: Searching for STEM Success - Inside Higher Ed
"During the two-decade period from 1985-1986 to 2005-2006, rural community colleges increased the number of women and minority STEM graduates by more than 42 percent. By contrast, urban community colleges boosted these underrepresented groups by just under 24 percent and suburban community colleges by about 10 percent.
Breaking down degree production within specific STEM disciplines and then by type of community colleges reveals even more variance. Rural community colleges, for example, bolstered their numbers of female engineering…
drorzel | September 3, 2010Over at Confused at a Higher Level, Melissa offers an alphabetical list of essential supplies for a condensed matter experimentalist at a small college. This is a fun idea for back-to-school time, so I'll steal it, and offer the following alphabetical list of essentials for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics at a small college, kind of a condensed version of the three part series I did a few weeks ago.
A is for Acousto-optic modulator This is a device that uses sound waves in a crystal to deflect light and shift its frequency. It's essential for rapid control of laser properties.
B is for…
drorzel | September 3, 2010Earlier this summer, I talked about the blog and the book on the phone with somebody from the APS, providing material for a profile of me that was posted yesterday on Physics Central. It's pretty good, but it's still a little strange to see my name and picture on their profile index with some of the other names there-- I don't really think of myself as being in the same category as Margaret Murnane or Mildred Dresselhaus, who are really amazing scientists.
So, it's very flattering to see this up there. It would also probably be a useful reference for anybody who would like to update my stub…
drorzel | September 3, 2010Via Thoreau, a story at Free Range Kids about "zero tolerance" policy run amok, this time from someone who moved to the US as a kid and ran up against the modern school culture in a bad way:
Once again, I came from a culture where you were made fun of if you forgot your pocket knife on a school trip. Then I entered a post-Columbine/Zero Tolerance hell. I hadn't used or even removed my knife from my bag while in school, but I did use it to cut a twig on my way home from school one day, and was apparently seen by one of my classmates. The next day, I was called into the principal's office where…
drorzel | September 3, 2010
Tom Waits | Music | Gateways To Geekery | The A.V. Club
"Waits, who made his proper recording debut with 1973's Closing Time, inspires music writers' wild, Charles Bukowski-fueled imaginings because his work has always been about the losers, the freaks, the slow 3 a.m. drunks who fumble change out of their pockets for the broken jukebox; the lurching, homeless fools who mark out their days with piano wire and broken bottles; the lovers for whom love is the only lie still worth living for. He is by turns macabre, melancholy, cynical, and optimistic, a heap of broken images left rusting in…
drorzel | September 2, 2010For this week's Toddler Blogging, SteelyKid demonstrates her mastery of bubble technology. Appa is not that impressed.
Her other big new trick is bossing us around in great detail-- she'll put something on her fake grill, close the lid, turn the knobs, then say, "Daddy! No touch! Hot!" pointing at the grill, followed by a very clearly enunciated "Be careful!" complete with finger-wagging. That's a little harder to get a good picture of, but I'll see what I can do for next week.
drorzel | September 2, 2010"Hey, dude, whatcha doin'?"
"Signing these contracts. I'm not sure why they need four copies, but they do."
"Contracts for what?"
"The new book. Remmeber, the one we've been talking about these last few weeks? Sequel-of-sorts to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog? About relativity?"
"Oh, yeah, that's right! We're doing another book! Where do I sign?"
"What do you mean, 'Where do I sign?' You're a dog."
"I could, you know, put a paw print on the line, or something."
"I suppose you could, but it wouldn't be legally binding. Dogs aren't allowed to sign contracts."
"You know that's horribly…
drorzel | September 2, 2010Over at Inside Higher Ed, there's a list of "survival tips" for women entering grad school in the sciences. It's a pretty good and pretty typical list of advice-- you can find more or less the same advice posted somewhere every fall.
What's striking about it, though, is that if you stripped all the specific gender references out, it would still be a good list of advice, for students of either gender. Here's the list with gender-specific terms removed:
Be realistic about support from faculty. As a general matter, faculty of either gender want to see their students of either gender succeed.…
drorzel | September 2, 2010
BBC News - Would more holiday be good for America?
"Whenever citing Americans' acceptance of the longer hours they work or their lack of paid leave, the cliche is to say it goes back to the country's Puritan heritage or the Protestant work ethic.
I disagree. I think it comes from raw fear."
(tags: us world society economics class-war vacation jobs)
The View From Mercury : Starts With A Bang
A slew of pictures of Mercury, plus one of Earth from Mercury.
(tags: science astronomy pictures blogs planets starts-with-bang)
Science and religion vs. humanities and religion § Unqualified…
drorzel | September 1, 2010Rubber dino, you're the one,
You make bathtime lots of fun
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
Doo-doo doo-de-doo
Rubber dino, fearsome roar,
Good thing you're a herbivore
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
doo-doo doo-de-doo
Every day when I,
get undressed next to the sink,
I find a
Little fella who's,
cute and yellow and extinct
When I squeeze you, water squirts,
Then I giggle, 'til it hurts
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
Doo-doo doo-de-doo
You're my favorite bathtime toy,
Watch out for that asteroid!
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of,
Rubber dino…
drorzel | September 1, 2010Prompted by an off-line conversation, a question about the magnum opus of Jim Steinman and Marvin Lee Aday:
Playing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" at a wedding reception is:online surveys
I'm sure you can come up with lots of songs that would be even less appropriate. Feel free to leave them in the comments.
drorzel | September 1, 2010There's been a lot of energy expended blogging and writing about the LA Times's investigation of teacher performance in Los Angeles, using "Value Added Modeling," which basically looks at how much a student's scores improved during a year with a given teacher. Slate rounds up a lot of reactions, in a slightly snarky form, and Kevin Drum has some reactions of his own, along with links to two posts from Kevin Carey, who blogs about this stuff regularly. Finally, Crooked Timber has a post about a recent study showing that value-added models aren't that great (as CT is one of the few political…