drorzel | December 11, 2009You know, if somebody were to put together an application that would periodically check the Amazon sales rank of a given book and generate a Google Analytics style time series graph, and charge authors $5/book to see the output, I bet they'd make a bunch of money.
Granted, it would put that person on the same moral level as a crack dealer, but I imagine a big pile of $5 bills would go a long way to soothe that...
drorzel | December 11, 2009Everybody in academia has a story about the worst teaching evaluations they've ever received. None of them will ever be able to top James Marchbanks of UC Davis, though:
Two documents obtained by The Bee on Wednesday illustrate vastly different interpretations of what happened in a UC Davis acting class last week that led campus police to arrest an instructor and have him jailed for four days.
A University of California, Davis, police declaration supporting the arrest of James Marchbanks describes the fear three students reportedly felt when he presented an envelope holding end-of-course…
drorzel | December 11, 2009
Blu-ray Review: "Living Fireplace Volume 2" | Popdose
"Yes, I've written a review of a Blu-ray disc that features little more than a burning fireplace. I know it's a little weird. Here's something even weirder: Everyone has their favorite television holiday special, right? Mine is the Yule Log."
(tags: review television video holiday silly popdose blogs)
Why was Snape such a Bad Teacher?!
"Snape, as a student, apparently used the same textbook that he is teaching with now. When he was a student, he figured out all sorts of small improvements to make better potions more easily. He KNOWS…
drorzel | December 10, 2009SteelyKid was kind of overtired today, so she needed a little nap around dinnertime. This provided a nice opportunity to get a sleepy-baby picture for this week's Baby Blogging:
Bonus Kate for extra "OMG! Huuuuuge Baby!!!1!" effect.
She's wearing a way-cool roaring dinosaur shirt (purchased from the boys section, again...), but you can't really see it in any of the pictures I got tonight. We'll get it the next time she wears it, though. Unless she outgrows it first...
drorzel | December 10, 2009A purely hypothetical situation for today's poll. Purely.
You have agreed to read and review six grant proposals by Sunday. Today is Thursday, and you have not read them yet. What do you do?(poll)
If anybody needs me, I'll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
drorzel | December 10, 2009Months ago, during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I offered to answer questions from people who donated to the Challenge. I then promptly forgot to respond to the questions sent in. Mea maxima culpa. Here's a way-too-late response to a good question from "tcmJOE":
I've spent the past few years trying to explore physics and figure out what I would be interested in doing--I've settled more towards energy research, somewhere between CM and MatSci, but I've tried at a variety of different things in the along the way. So my question for you is: How did you end up in AMO? Were there any other fields…
drorzel | December 10, 2009
The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of
"EVERYONE THINKS they are open-minded. Scientists in particular like to think they have open minds, but we know from psychology that this is just one of those attributes that people like to apply to themselves. We shouldn't perhaps have to worry about it at all, except that parapsychology forces one to ask, "Do I believe in this, do I disbelieve in this, or do I have an open mind?"
The research I have done during the past ten or twelve years serves as well as any other research to show up some of parapsychology's peculiar problems and even, perhaps, some…
drorzel | December 9, 2009Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber has a very good post about schools that appear to "beat the odds", getting good results with populations that don't typically do well in school. It does an excellent job of laying out the problems with the vast majority of attempts to determine which schools are "beating the odds," let alone what methods are best to use for this. It turns out to be a lot harder to measure than most people think-- I was particularly struck by this bit:
It gets worse, thanks to my colleague Doug Harris, in his paper, “High flying schools, student disadvantage, and the logic of…
drorzel | December 9, 2009I just finished shoveling six-plus inches of snow off our cars and driveway (the forecast called for something like 3-5", but we've got more than that, with no slowing in the fall). In honor of the first significant snowfall of the year, a poll:
It's snowing:(survey)
This one has ticky-boxes, which will play hell with the percentages, but I'm too tired to deal with complaints about radio buttons.
drorzel | December 9, 2009
Physics Buzz: When chemistry dunces bake
"Shirley Corriher, a former research biochemist at Vanderbilt University, got her start in the kitchen burning scrambled eggs beyond all recognition. Later, when she ruined recipes while taking a cooking class, she impressed her teacher by being able to explain scientifically what had gone wrong. Red cabbage gone purple? Add vinegar to restore the acidity. Asparagus gone an unappetizing olive green? Overcooking broke the veggie's cell walls. Soon her teacher and chefs and bakers all over the southeastern US were calling her with their questions;…
drorzel | December 8, 2009There's been a bit of a kerfuffle in the SF blogosphere about what writers should be paid for short fiction, which has led to a lot of people posting lists of their short fiction and what they were paid for it (Scalzi has links to most of them). This naturally leads me to wonder what the analogous situation for non-fiction is (being that I am vastly more likely to be paid money for non-fiction pieces than fiction).
Of course, I can't claim a long list of sales that I can list as my contribution to the discussion. I've only had a handful of pieces printed in commercial outlets: two pieces (so…
drorzel | December 8, 2009John Scalzi sends along photographic proof of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog working for a dog who isn't Emmy:
This isn't quite an "in the wild" shot, as it's not at a store or a store-bought copy (John wrote a blurb for the book, so he got sent a copy), but we're getting close. The official release date is just two weeks from today. It may well start showing up in stores before then (it's not in the Barnes & Noble store in Colonie yet, though I swear I did not go in there just to check that...). You can, of course, order it from Amazon, as several people have obviously done already,…
drorzel | December 8, 2009... walk into a bar. No, wait, that's not what I want...
In the interval before this morning's Mike and Mike show became the Tiger Woods Scandal Hour, they were talking about Tim Donaghy and his allegations about the NBA, which basically amount to the league being just a few steps up from the WWE. Mike Greenberg in particular kept blasting these rumors as completely outlandish because the sort of game-fixing Donaghy alleges would be blatantly illegal, and if it was exposed, people would go to jail. "These are wealthy and powerful people," he said, more or less, "You're crazy if you think they…
drorzel | December 8, 2009
News: Lincoln U. Ends Obesity Rule - Inside Higher Ed
"For the past few weeks, "Fitness for Life" may well have been the most discussed college course around. From now on, however, no one at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania will be required to take it.
The course became famous because of a requirement adopted at Lincoln for classes that entered in 2006 or later: that any students with body mass index scores above 30 show that they have lost weight or taken the course by the time they graduate. This year's seniors were the first to be covered by the requirement, attracting publicity that…
drorzel | December 7, 2009It's that time of year again when I have to fill out my annual Faculty Activities Sheet, reporting on everything I did last academic year. Technically, I should've done this a while back, but it always slips into the December break.
This always takes much longer than it ought to, in large part because it's hard to remember exactly when certain significant things happened, which leads to a lot of searching of my email trying to determine when various things saw print, and which of the available categories it fits in. I probably really ought to keep a running tally of my activities as the year…
drorzel | December 7, 2009It's officially December, so there are no longer really solid reasons for objecting to the playing of Christmas music. With the exception of the sort of stuff that shows up in Mellowmas, that is. And speaking of Mellowmas, there is this. About which, a poll:
A Bob Dylan Christmas album:(survey software)
Please choose only one, hard as it may be to believe.
drorzel | December 7, 2009
Sunday Conversation: The case for Pluto | SciGuy | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
The controversy just never ends...
(tags: science astronomy planets media blogs)
Chromoscope
How the Milky Way looks at a variety of different wavelengths.
(tags: astronomy space science pictures physics galaxies)
Less Wrong: Parapsychology: the control group for science
"There's no particular reason to think parapsychologists are doing anything other than what scientists would do; their experiments are similar to those of scientists, they use statistics in similar ways, and there's no reason to think they…
drorzel | December 6, 2009I'm kind of fried from all the recent driving, and I've got some stuff to catch up on. So we'll ease back into regular blogging, by posting a clip from last week's Colbert Report with everybody's favorite Jesuit, Brother Guy Consolmagno, talking about how alien life would affect Christianity:
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gold, Frankincense and Mars - Guy Consolmagno
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor
U.S. Speedskating
There's your "science and religion are compatible" item for this month, as well.
drorzel | December 6, 2009
Questions Odd and Profound - NYTimes.com
"In the following pairs of excerpts, which sample, A or B, is from a Royal Society letter, explaining earnest scientific endeavor, and which is the work of a deeply skeptical satirist in the guise of Lemuel Gulliver? "
(tags: science history literature culture books)
The 10 Best Books of 2009 - The New York Times
It even includes a book about science...
(tags: books review literature)
The best films of the '00s | Best Of The Decade | The A.V. Club
"The scene was not unlike 12 Angry Men (or, in this case, 3 Shlubby Men, 1 Exasperated Woman, And A…
drorzel | December 5, 2009
Angular Momentum Example : Dot Physics
Rhett explore my favorite demo from intro mechanics.
(tags: science physics education blogs dot-physics)
Luis von Blog: Advice On Grad School Applications
(tags: academia education blogs silly)