drorzel | December 19, 2008When I saw ZapperZ's post about this paper (arxiv version, expensive journal version) from the group of Serge Haroche in Paris, I thought it might be something I would need to incorporate into Chapter 5 of the book-in-progress. Happily, it's much too technical to require extensive re-writing. Having taken the time to read it, though, I might as well make a ResearchBlogging post of it... (My comments will be based on the arxiv version, because it's freely downloadable.)
So, "Freezing Coherent Field Growth in a Cavity by the Quantum Zeno Effect." That's quite a mouthful. What does it really…
drorzel | December 18, 2008
The Art of SATergy - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
"Consider the following question for the GMAT (the test given to MBA applicants). Unfortunately, issues of copyright clearance have prevented us from reproducing the question, but that shouldn't stop us. "
(tags: science education academia psychology social-science)
Op-Ed Contributor - It's a Narnia Christmas - NYTimes.com
"That I'm not a Christian doesn't much hinder my enjoyment of either the holiday or the book, but the presence of Father Christmas bothered many of Lewis's friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien, whose Middle-…
drorzel | December 18, 2008Past Baby Blogging entries may have created the impression that SteelyKid does nothing but lie in her back in her crib. Quite the contrary-- here's a picture of her in one of her favorite activities, shaking the hanging animal toys in her play gym. The traditional Appa-for-scale is in the background-- beware of forced perspective effects.
SteelyKid came through the whole Power Outrage like a champ. Probably better than either of her parents, whose schedules have been blown to flinders by the outage and attendant recovery activities.
drorzel | December 18, 2008The US Chamber of Commerce has a education website, which provides "grades" for states based on various measures of their educational performance. One category is "Academic Achievement," based on the percentages of students scoring at or above grade level on the NAEP test. Another is "Rigor of Standards," which is a little fuzzier, but is based on official standards for graduation in that state-- state curricula, exit exams, and that sort of thing.
What's interesting about this is their correlation: if you click back and forth between the two, looking at their spiffy map, you can watch the…
drorzel | December 17, 2008
Barack Obama Defeats Barack Hussein Obama | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Though few had heard of the freedom-hating extremist before, Barack Hussein Obama quickly garnered attention in several key regions of the country, and saw his popularity buoyed by conservative talk-radio hosts, mass e-mail forwards, and thousands of Americans riding on the backs of flatbed trucks."
(tags: politics US silly onion)
PhDinHistory: Social Darwinism or Meritocracy in the History Profession?
"Would you like to know where you will end up in the history profession? I have discovered a formula…
drorzel | December 17, 2008Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean has a nice, concise post about what's wrong with college football. He's responding to a desperately stupid post that ends with this:
Let's not ruin college football's fabulous 13 week do-or-die regular season with a playoff!
This was posted back in October, so the author can perhaps be forgiven for failing to anticipate the way this very season would completely undermine the "do or die" claim. Specifically, consider the case of the Big 12's South division. Two teams, Oklahoma and Texas, finished with identical records of one loss each.
Texas's one loss was to…
drorzel | December 17, 2008Steve Hsu has a nice post on teaching, following up on the Malcolm Gladwell piece that everyone is talking about. Steve took the time to track down the Brookings Institute report mentioned in the piece, and highlights two graphs:
The top figure shows that certification has no impact on teaching effectiveness. The second shows that effectiveness measured in the years 1 and 2 is predictive of effectiveness in the subsequent year. In this case effectiveness is defined by the average change in percentile ranking of students in the teacher's class. Good teachers help their students to improve…
drorzel | December 16, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: "It's Just a Job" vs. "We're All in This Together"
"[T]here's been a fascinating exchange in blogland between Tenured Radical and Dr. Crazy. Both addressed the ways that budget issues are being discussed at their respective colleges. Stipulating upfront that neither was really arguing with the other, and that they're working at two very different kinds of institutions, they really staked out two very distinctive positions."
(tags: blogs economics academia society culture jobs)
Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » A Sale of Two Doorstops
Negative…
drorzel | December 16, 2008Via Tom, my go-to source for this sort of nonsense, the Benny Hillifier, which will add "Yackity Sax" to any YouTube video. Because any video is funnier with "Yackity Sax".
And since I know somebody will ask, it works on the Monkey Dance, too.
drorzel | December 16, 2008We're home again, at last.
Actually, the power came on not quite 24 hours ago, but by the time we learned it was back, we were settled in for the night at the hotel. And it would've taken several hours for the house to warm back up from its sub-40-Fahrenheit temperature to a temperature at which SteelyKid would be comfortable.
We've been back in the house since about 10 am, though. Of course, there was much too much to do to read blogs, let alone post anything-- spoiled food to throw out, replacement food to be obtained, more diapers to buy, a Christmas tree to acquire, etc., etc.
The…
drorzel | December 15, 2008
kast_sko
Throw a shoe at George Bush. In Norwegian.
(tags: politics silly games internet)
Kevin Drum - Mother Jones Blog: DC Charters
"Look: even your most novice educational researcher knows that comparing test scores is useless unless you control pretty carefully for things like parental involvement and expenditure levels. And most of the studies I've seen suggest that once you do that, charters perform about the same as traditional schools. At most, they perform only slightly better."
(tags: academia education blogs social-science politics US)
Online Introductory physics text | Dot…
drorzel | December 15, 2008Day four of the power outage, with the added angry-making twist that the people across the street from us have their power back. Staring across the road at their warm, shiny lights, I could feel the beginning of the sort of rage that fuels torch-and-pitchfork mobs storming medieval castles. Only, you know, there was just me, so I retreated back to the hotel room for another uncomfortable night.
I spent most of the day in my office on campus, which, mirabile dictu never lost power. This is a first-- normally, the power in our building goes out at the faintest hint of a power line falling…
drorzel | December 14, 2008We're into our third day without power at Chateau Steelypips, and as a result, the household has temporarily been relocated to a hotel near SUNY Albany. National Grid says probably Tuesday, but they really don't know when they'll get our electricity back.
This is, of course, deeply annoying, but it feels sort of churlish to complain too much, given how much worse it could be. After all, the only physical damage thus far has been the destruction of our back yard gate by a falling limb. That's not even worth a homeowner's insurance claim.
We're also luck to be in a position where we can afford…
drorzel | December 13, 2008
nanoscale views: Manhattan and Apollo project metaphors
"Relatively regularly these days there are calls for a Manhattan or Apollo style project to address our energy challenges. While this may sound good, it's worth considering what such a project would actually mean."
(tags: science economics energy environment US politics blogs)
Brandon Sanderson: Sanderson's First Law
"For a while now, I've been working on various theories regarding magic systems. There's a lot to consider here. As a writer, I want a system that is fun to write. As a reader, I want something that is something fun to…
drorzel | December 12, 2008
Introduction to conservation of momentum and collisions | Dot Physics
"This is an introduction to objects that interact. To describe this, I will need to pull several different ideas together (that you have probably already looked at)."
(tags: physics science blogs education)
Spot the math errors! « Skulls in the Stars
The ins and outs of some famous fake proofs
(tags: math blogs education silly)
Perimeter Scholars International | Welcome
A new Master's degree program for people who want to learn theoretical physics from the very best.
(tags: academia physics science education)
...My…
drorzel | December 12, 2008A big storm has coated everything in the vicinity of Chateau Steelypips with a quarter-inch of ice. Trees are coming down all over the place (a big limb smashed the gate to our back yard), and the power is out for God knows how long.
We've temporarily relocated to Kate's office, which has heat and power, but I'm going to be basically incommunicado until further notice. I won't be reading or replying to comments, so behave yourselves while I'm gone.
drorzel | December 12, 2008I subscribe to Scientific American, but I'm usually several weeks behind on reading it, so it was only Thursday that I noticed this surprising article about particles bouncing back from attractive forces:
This effect is the converse of the well-known (if no less astounding) phenomenon of quantum tunneling. If you kick a soccer ball up a hill too slowly, it will come back down. But if you kick a quantum particle up a hill at the same speed, it can make it up and over. The particle will have "tunneled" across (although no actual tunnel is involved). This process explains how particles can…
drorzel | December 11, 2008
Mike the Mad Biologist : Why Aren't U.S. Toyota Workers Paid Better?
"What has struck me throughout all of these discussions, however, is that Honda's and Toyota's current lower wages and benefits are seen as 'natural', while the Big Three's are seen as inflated. It's odd to hear progressives and liberals argue that the Big Three autoworkers really aren't getting paid that much more than Toyota's."
(tags: class-war economics politics US society blogs)
SDA Archive
A web interface to a lot of social-science survey data, if you want to kill time by making graphs.
(tags: statistics science…
drorzel | December 11, 2008Following last week's picture with Kate for scale, here's one with me holding SteelyKid and Appa:
And, just for kicks, here's last week's picture again:
This way, everybody can have a good laugh at the size mismatch between me and Kate...
This week's exciting development is that she had her four-month check-up, and we were given permission to start her on "solids." The scare quotes are there because what she's actually getting is a sort of thin gruel of "rice cereal." Still, she's getting food on a spoon now, and seems to enjoy the variety. And hopefully, the extra calories will help…
drorzel | December 11, 2008I'm beat, and I have a ton of stuff to do today, so here's some seasonally-appropriate filler. I spent a while in a big chain bookstore's cafe area yesterday, doing some edits on the book-in-progress (I can't do this effectively anywhere where I have Internet access), and was stuck listening to some sort of "quirky" piped-in Christmas music-- "O Holy Night" played on a banjo, or some such.
So, here, as a palette cleanser of sorts, is the official list of Christmas songs that don't suck, as determined by me. These are the four- and five-star rated songs from my iTunes Christmas playlist (there…