I spent most of yesterday huddled under a pile of blankets on the couch-- being feverish and light-headed is great if you're in a Pink Floyd song, but not so much if you're trying to be a functioning adult. It seems to be the Thing That's Going Around this term, though, and while I'm feeling better today, I have a lot of catch-up to do. So, no Deep Thoughts today, but here's a pop-culture topic to pass the time: I recently found myself buying the Radio Edit for "Toe Jam" by "The Brighton Port Authority," a Fatboy Slim side project. It's a bouncy little song with silly lyrics ("A boy looks at…

The physics of why bicyclists hate stop signs - Hard Drive "In their essay "Why Bicyclists Hate Stop Signs," University of California physics professor Joel Fajans and Access transportation journal editor Melanie Curry write that requiring cyclists to follow the same complete-stop rules as motorists defies science. "While car drivers simply sigh at the delay" of a stop sign, they write, "bicyclists have a whole lot more at stake when they reach a stop sign."" (tags: science environment politics bike) What Does This Generation Think it Means to be a âScientistâ? "I agree with Alberts that…

New ScienceBlogger and American Gladiator Ethan Siegel of Starts With a Bang has a couple of nice posts about dark matter and how we know it's there (one, two). These posts reminded me that I never did follow up on the discussion following my post about Magic World Media, who are looking to publish kids' books about science, and seeking kindergarten-level explanations about dark matter and dark energy. A few commenters expressed doubts about whether this could or even should be explained to kids at that level. I don't have any strong feelings about the "should" question, but it seems to me…

Brigham Young U.'s Student Newspaper Is Pulled After Embarrassing Typo - Chronicle.com "The caption described a photograph illustrating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsâ General Conference, and it referred to the groupâs âQuorum of Twelve Apostatesâ rather than âApostles.â Rich Evans, editorial manager of The Daily Universe, the student paper, told the Tribune it was âthe worst possible mistake.â BYU is owned and run by the church, as the Mormon Church is formally known. The error was an accident: A student had misspelled the word âapostle,â and the articleâs editor chose…

Between the sleep deprivation caused by being home alone with the baby, and the new Jim Butcher book, I realized that I almost forgot to mention North Carolina's defeat of Michigan State for the NCAA basketball championship. I'm glad to see it for two reasons: their victory let me win two of the basketball pools I was in (neither involving money, alas), but more importantly, I like Roy Williams and I like this team. They play some really good basketball when they're clicking, and they absolutely dismantled the Spartans last night. They're not going to displace Syracuse or Maryland in my…

Via Matt Yglesias, a new CBS/ New York Times Poll has been released, accompanied by quite possibly the stupidest graphics ever. The pseudo-pie-chart at right is one of three, all of which have the same glaring flaw as this one. Somebody really ought to lose their job for this. There's just no excuse for putting out "pie charts" that are this incompetent. Sadly, this probably went through two or three people before hitting the web, and nobody noticed. It's hard to think of a better example of how deeply innumeracy has penetrated the media.

SteelyKid is eight months old today, and to celebrate... Kate went down to the City for an oral argument. So, SteelyKid and I had our first night at home without Mommy. Fortunately, there was a basketball game last night, and she slept peacefully on my lap through the whole game. I did cop out a bit when it came time for bed, though. I'm a heavy sleeper as it is, and some of the allergy meds I take make me sleepy at the best of times, so I was worried that I wouldn't hear her in the middle of the night. So, I brought her into our room, and she slept on Kate's part of the big bed. We've been…

After North Carolina, Hansbrough Faces a Skeptical N.B.A. - NYTimes.com âYou guys make it out like I just came back to school just to win a national championship,â Hansbrough said. âI came back to school because I enjoy college.â (tags: academia sports basketball)

Over at the First Excited State, the quasi-anonymous proprietor laments the tendency of basketball replays to focus on the shot rather than the play that set up the shot, and compares this to a maddening student habit: Students in introductory physics classes inevitably place too much focus on the final numerical answer of the problem, which in reality is the least important part. I graded a quiz last week where I spent way too much time trying to decipher the numbers the students wrote down, because they placed the numbers in their equations rather than writing them clearly with the symbols…

Cocktail Party Physics: brew masters "I seem to have collected an impressive array of items on various science-y aspects of beer, which forms the topic of today's monster post. Benjamin Franklin once observed, "Beer is living proof that God wants us to be happy," and we're all about sharing the joy here at the cocktail party." (tags: science physics blogs biology chemistry booze cocktail-party beer) I smoke pot, and I like it - THE WEEK "Marijuana is neither evil nor dangerous. Scientists have proven its medical uses. It has spared millions from anguish. But the casual pleasure marijuana…

peake: What you won't read "Nevertheless, just possibly because of my own slight interest in the outcome, I have been following the responses to this yearâs shortlists [for the Hugo and other SF awards] rather more intently than I might otherwise. And I have been struck by a number of observations. Nothing earth shattering about them, they are the sorts of observations that occur year in year out, which is itself sadly interesting; but unavoidable observations for all that." (tags: movies SF books awards) Page 1 | How to Write about Africa | Granta 92: The View from Africa | Magazine |…

The monthly Sigma Xi email newsletter for April included a link to Magic World Media, a new company producing children's books about science: Magic World Media was founded in 2008 by scientists in order to offer children a view into the mysterious ways of life and the universe through books and other forms of media. Our goal is to nurture the imagination and wonder of young children by introducing them to the world that exists beyond the limitations of our senses and, importantly, exposing them to the vastness of what is still unknown. Our books generally place the child at the center of a…

Over at his new digs, Chris Mooney talks about efforts to re-launch the OTA: I’m starting to detect some buzz on this very important front, which I wrote about in detail in 2005’s The Republican War on Science and elsewhere. Basically, the story is this: In 1995 the Gingrich Republicans, looking to slash budgets–and looking askance at science in general in many areas–got rid of their scientific advisory office, which had been in existence since 1972 and had become world renowned not only for accurate studies, but for far-ranging analyses that forecast future science and technology problems…

â¦My heartâs in Accra » From protest to collaboration: Paul Simonâs âGracelandâ and lessons for xenophiles A great post about one of the most successful cultural appropriations ever. (tags: politics culture music history world zuckerman) Career Advice: Check It Out by Checking It Off - Inside Higher Ed "Before you assign an essay three things need to be in place: 1. Your expectations need to be spelled out in detail. 2. Students need to know your grading criteria. 3. You need a plan to return the papers promptly." (tags: education academia writing humanities inside-higher-ed) News:…

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, we instituted a complicated emergency alert system, involving sirens, loudspeakers, text messages, and emails. The whole thing gets tested far more frequently than it really needs to-- every few weeks, we get a barrage of emails warning us that a test is coming up, then another barrage of emails and text messages on the day of the test. The system has been used exactly once, and it was a fiasco. A year or so ago, we got a flurry of messages telling us that there had been a shooting a couple of blocks from campus. These directed everyone to a web…

My friend Paul, this blog's Official Middle East Correspondent, and his wife, Helen, just had a baby, which they (well, he) announced to the world via the new tradition of changing his Facebook status message. Paul, Helen, and baby Ray are all healthy and unironically happy, so congratulations to the whole family. And on that note, I'm declaring this a Happy News Open Thread. Leave a comment saying something positive. (Yeah, I know, this is lazy blogging. But really, every other topic-of-the-moment just makes me grumpy, and there's no real reason why I should be in a bad mood, let alone…

Shhhh! Stop reading so loudly! You'll wake the baby: It's been a while since we had a sleeping baby picture of the week, and conveniently enough, SteelyKid slept late this morning. So there you go.

Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet "My basic premise is that the internet is not replacing advertising but shattering it, and all the kingâs horses, all the kingâs men, and all the creative talent of Madison Avenue cannot put it together again." (tags: economics society culture internet advertising business media) Views: Monsters With Constituencies - Inside Higher Ed "Although Antioch may not be anyone's image of a disciplined campus, the 500 students and faculty in the auditorium that day in 1964 were well disciplined indeed. They sat in absolute silence throughout the talk.…

Physics World this month has a nice article by Robert Crease on the strategies used in popular physics books, drawing on a study of popular books by Elizabeth Leane (Reading Popular Physics, much of which is available via Google Books). He talks about three different strategies that she identifies, and how they're employed in different fields. I was particularly amused by this: Explaining quantum theory, for instance, seems both to require and to shipwreck metaphors — for what is “down there” just does not behave like what is “up here”. A common tool is to anthropomorphize, personifying…

The spring round of the Adopt-a-Physicist outreach program will begin soon. I did this in the Fall, and it was a good experience, so I've registered myself again. The program pairs volunteer physicists with high school classes, and provides a web forum in which students can ask questions about physics and careers in physics. Back in the fall, the students I communicated with asked smart and interesting questions, and it was a pleasure to talk to them. If you have a degree in physics (undergraduate or graduate), and would like to help encourage high school students to consider physics, you…