I haven't written much about basketball this year, for the simple reason that I haven't watched much basketball this year-- between SteelyKid, the book, and my day job, I just haven't had time. This weekend, though, I watched a whole bunch of hoops, mostly involving my two teams, Syracuse and Maryland. Yesterday was a bad day, as both lost, but they each had a good run leading up to that. Various and sundry comments in no particular order: -- One thing I have not missed in my non-hoops-watching winter has been the "announcing" team of Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale. I swear, these two reach a…

Cocktail Party Physics: measles, mumps, rubellaor autism "Let me throw just a few statistics at you, just to illustrate how important vaccines have been in the increasing quality of public health in the US alone. * The incidence of polio dropped to nearly zero by 1960 (polio vaccine introduced in 1955) * Measles cases dropped sharply between 1955 and 1970 (measles vaccine introduced in 1963) * The incidence of congenital rubella syndrome dropped from an estimated 20,000 in 1964 to 7 in 1983 (the rubella vaccine was introduced in 1967)" (tags: science society medicine history…

One of last year's highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say "weirdly" because it wasn't much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea. It's that time of year again, and Tom's back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don't have much to add, but one of Tom's items: We physicists quantify relationships -- something that is complicated is "nonlinear," or even "highly nonlinear." Opposites are "inversely proportional" reminded me of a great literary reference, from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life": "So they can read a word with equal ease…

One of my colleagues in biology just finished his Comparative Vertebrate anatomy course. For the final class projects, he has teams of students make little videos presenting the results of their research into some aspect of vertebrate anatomy. Such as, for example, this Sesame Street episode on flying snakes: The full set of videos are available on Scott's YouTube page, labelled "2009 - CVA." The fake "Colbert Report" segment on polar bears even has a blooper reel. If you're looking for a way to kill a few minutes in a biology-themed activity, you could do a lot worse than watching these.

The Washington Monthly "Watching the evisceration, I couldn't help but wonder why it takes a comedian on Comedy Central to do the kind of interview the non-fake news shows ought to be doing. When the media establishment marvels at Jon Stewart's popularity, they tend to think it's his humor. It's not. It's because he calls "bullsh*t" when most major media players won't. He did so last night, and it made for important viewing." (tags: politics economics stupid television journalism business) Tournament of Books - Shadow Country v. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - The…

I have an official release date for the book-in-production: December 22nd. There's no lay-down date, though, so they may turn up in stores before then. Mark it down on your Christmas list now... There's also an official title and cover: Emmy's slightly miffed that she's not the dog on the cover, but that's what she gets for refusing to do the quizzical head-tilt when I have the camera. I am, as you might guess, pretty excited. I've also got a complete schedule for the process from here on out-- the next step is getting the copyedited pages, which should get here in the second week of April.…

SteelyKid's hard at work on tooth number five, and as a result, her nose has been running like a deranged ultramarathoner. Yesterday, it tipped over into a bit of a sinus infection, so there was no way to get a good Baby Blogging picture. She made up for it this morning, though, as Kate snapped a picture of the two of us discussing photo options: As you can see, she's already happier today. We'll keep her home today, and by Monday, she'l be back to being the Empress of the infant room.

My plans to write long and smart blog posts today was thoroughly derailed last night by a combination of a slightly sick SteelyKid (she's had a runny nose for a while because of teething, but it seems to have slid into a bit of a sinus infection) and an incredible basketball game. Syracuse and UConn played an extra thirty minutes, with Syracuse finally winning in the sixth overtime. The game started at 9:30 pm, and ended at 1:30 am, and in the final OT, both teams were playing walk-ons who were seeing the court for only about the tenth time this season. This was a good old-fashioned Big East…

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Did the Phoenix spacecraft find liquid water on Mars? Maybe. (tags: science astronomy news space planets) How Vise Grip Pliers Saved My Life - Stories about How Vise Grips is a Toolbox Hero - Popular Mechanics "Can Vise-Grips save a life? Sure, and they can replace a stick shift, save a marriage and clamp blood vessels. They can do all this, and so much more. PM shares ten "unbelievable tales" of rescue and ingenuity from Irwin's "Tell Us Your Vise-Grip Story" contest." (tags: silly tools) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / The Wheel…

The Female Science Professor has been having a hard semester, and recently caught some students cheating on an exam: In the situation I had to deal with recently, I saw one student glancing repeatedly at another student's exam. I kept the two exams separate when they were handed in, compared the documents, saw the same strange but identical wrong answers on each one, and knew for sure that I had a Cheating Incident. I suppose if cheaters knew the answer to a question well enough to make a stab at it themselves, they wouldn't write down the word-for-word strange wrong answer of the person…

There's a really good article from Martin Rees in the latest issue of Seed, on the scientific challenges that won't be affected by the LHC: The LHC hasn't yet provided its first results, the much-anticipated answers to questions we've been asking for so long. But they should surely come in 2009, bringing us closer to understanding the bedrock nature of particles, space, and timeâ--âtoward a unified theory of the basic forces. This would push forward a program that started with Newton (who showed that the force that made the apple fall was same one holding the planets in orbit), and continued…

Inside Higher Ed has an article on grade inflation this morning, which reminds me of my improbable research theory. Academic scolds are always talking about grade inflation, saying that the average grade years ago used to be lower than it is now. Medical scolds are always talking about the obesity epidemic, saying that average weights used to be lower than they are now. Has anyone ever considered that the two might be related? That is, might it be that the grade points per pound has remained constant over the years? Using some government reports on weight, and totally bias free GPA trends…

Matthew Yglesias » The DC Voucher Program Has Nothing to Do With Sidwell Friends "Virtually none of the recipients of the DC voucher program could go to Sidwell Friends like Barack Obamaâs kids. For one thing, they couldnât get in. And for another thing, they couldnât come close to affording the tuition. But the former point is actually more fundamental. Elite schoolsâbe they colleges, high schools, or whateverâare largely in the business of selecting their own students. Sidwell has a lot of interest in having Barack Obamaâs kids as students. Sidwell has virtually no interest in having…

"OK, here's your profile."" "You used the good picture of me, right?" "Of course. Look here." "Oooh. I like that one. I look regal." "Yeah, I guess. So what do you want to add?" "What do you mean?" "Well, you can add applications, and become a fan of various things. Here, I'll make you a fan of Physics." "OK, but isn't there better stuff. How about steak? I like steak! Make me a fan of steak!" "Ummm... Well, there are over 500 results for 'steak.' Which do you want?" "All of them! Click them all!" "Why am I the one doing this again?" "Because I can't work the mouse." "All right, look, I'm…

Most people's first exposure to the ideas of modern atomic physics comes through the Bohr model of hydrogen, which treats the atom as something like a little solar system, with the positively charged nucleus as the sun, and negatively charged electrons orbiting in well-defined circular orbits. It's a very compelling picture, and works well for hydrogen (provided you make a couple of really odd assumptions), but it's completely wrong on the details. Electrons do not move in well-defined orbits, but rather exists as fuzzy wavefunctions spread over the space near the nucleus. It turns out,…

Via FriendFeed, Daniel Lemire offers a suggestion on "branding": Stop saying you are "John from school X". Say that you are "John who works on problem Y". Don't rely on your employer to carry your message! Of course, this is only the second of the three possible options. You could also be "the guy who works on Problem Y at school X." This is pretty much the state of play for my thesis advisor, who never had any trouble remembering problems or institutions, but often forgot names. He could describe a person's whole scientific career-- worked on this problem at this school, then moved to that…

One of my coaches, back in the day, always used to say that basketball was a game of quickness. Usually when he had just stolen the ball from somebody thirty years younger than him. It's true, quickness is a big asset in basketball. But it's also a game of timing-- knowing when to shoot, when to pass, when to cut to the basket, and when to step into the passing lane and steal the ball to secure Cleveland State's first NCAA bid since 1986. And, if you're talking pick-up basketball, there's also the important question of when to show up at the gym. Arrival time is a major issue in places where…

Science in the open » Why good intentions are not enough to get negative results published "The fundamental problem is that the âwe need a journalâ approach is stuck in the printed page paradigm. To get negative results published we need to reduce the barriers to publication much lower than they currently are, while at the same time applying either a pre- or post-publication filter." (tags: science publishing open-access journals) Open Reading Frame "If the primary measure of a journal's value is its impact -- pretty layouts and a good Employment section and so on being presumably…

The Gordon Research Conferences are a great program, if you're in a field that offers them. These are mostly in New England in the summer, and involve a lot more down time than most professional conferences, to allow for more informal interaction between attendees. At past Gordon conferences, I've played soccer with a Nobel laureate, and basketball with a number of Ivy League faculty. I got an email announcement of the 2009 Atomic Physics Gordon Conference, to be held at the Tilton School in Tilton, NH June 28-July 3. This year's meeting is chaired by Tiku Majumder at Williams, and he's put…

The book is now starting through the production process, and people at Scribner are thinking about publicity. I got email asking whether I could set up a Facebook page for Emmy as a promotion. I'm not sure whether that meant a fan page for the dog, or a Facebook profile for her, as if she were a user of the site. I'm also not sure whether setting up a Facebook account for my dog is acceptable within the normal Facebook operating parameters. Still, it's amusing to consider what she would have on her Facebook profile. I mean, obviously, she's looking for random play, and her interests include…