drorzel | October 1, 2008
Nina Katchadourian
Short stories told through pictures of book spines
(tags: books literature pictures art stories language)
Cognitive Daily: Do TV, movie and game ratings actually do any good?
A good rule of thumb is that when a paper title asks a question the answer is "no."
(tags: games social-science psychology articles science society culture television movies)
Presidential Election 2008 FAQ
A wealth of information on the US Presidential election.
(tags: US politics statistics society)
Improving measurements of space and time - physicsworld.com
"Physicists in France have proposed…
drorzel | October 1, 2008As you may or may not recall, last year's DonorsChoose fundraiser featured a few... unusual offers. At one point late in the proceedings, I offered to read and review a New Atheist screed for $1000 in new donations. And, since I had previously said that I would rather stab myself with a fork than read The God Delusion, I said I would stab myself with a fork for $750 in new donations.
I'm already offering a couple of aspirational incentives-- custom dog dialogues or a copy of the book-in-progress-- but I feel like I ought to have something to offer for passing the big milestones in this year's…
drorzel | October 1, 2008I signed up for the Adopt-a-Physicist program run by the APS, and I've been "adopted" by three high school classes. The program pairs professional physicists with high school classes, and provides a web forum both groups can access. The students ask questions, and I answer them.
I'd love to be able to link directly to the forums, but they're password-protected, so you can't get in. The questions so far have been really good, though, and I'm enjoying providing answers.
Some of my answers have included pointers to the blog, so I thought I'd give a shout-out here to the classes that have "…
drorzel | October 1, 2008As we have the past few years, the folks here at ScienceBlogs will be running a fundraiser for the educational charity DonorsChoose. If you haven't been around for the past versions, the way it works is you go to their site via my challenge page, and review proposals submitted by teachers asking for funds to buy materials or put on programs that would benefit their students. If you find one you like, you give them money, and that money goes directly to the teacher making the request, to fund the proposed items.
Because everything's more fun when it's competitive, there's a challenge aspect to…
drorzel | September 30, 2008
Dr. Rivka -
How many US Supreme Court decisions can you name off the top of your head?
(tags: law US politics)
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Bloat: threat or menace?
A defense of long books.
(tags: books writing literature SF blogs)
Dynamics of Cats : why are grades confidential?
"FERPA" is not a sufficient answer. Why do we have FERPA?
(tags: academia education law US)
Physics, guitars and pitch harmonics « Skulls in the Stars
Guitars and laser beams
(tags: physics optics science blogs music)
PHD Comics: The Economic Meltdown
An economic guide for perplexed…
drorzel | September 30, 2008Via FriendFeed, I came across an article by Deepak Singh on attention and science, which spins off a long rant by Kevin Kelly on the idea that Where ever attention flows, money will follow. Deepak writes:
Attention can be driven by many mechanisms, marketing being the most effective one. The key is gaining sufficient mindshare, which is often accompanies by a flow of capital. In science, the money follows topics of research that have mindshare. Similarly people fund companies in areas that generate mindshare for whatever reason.
The question I often ask myself, both from my time as a marketer…
drorzel | September 30, 2008The House Republicans blame their failure to pass the bailout bill on Mean Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank lets them have it:
The key bit, for those who don't want to watch YouTube: "[T]hink about this. 'Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country.' That's hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America, but not if anybody insulted them. I'll make an offer. Give me those 12 people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they'll now…
drorzel | September 30, 2008Sometime last week, I was directed to Chris Wilson's article in Slate, which comes with the provocative subtitle "Why can't science journalists just tell it like it is when it comes to particle physics?" I flagged this as a good jumping-off point for a blog post about how hard it is to communicate science to the general public, and set it aside for later, because I had a lot on my plate at the time.
Now that I read it carefully, though, I honestly don't see the point. It's not about the challenges of communicating difficult concepts, it's a lengthy complaint about "purple" prose in science…
drorzel | September 30, 2008The New York Times today has an article on scientific studies of "alternative" medicine. Quack-bashing isn't my usual line, but it seemed to me like there was a good bit of stuff that will torque Orac off. I couldn't help laughing at the final paragraph, though:
"In tight funding times, that's going to get worse," said Dr. Khalsa of Harvard, who is doing a clinical trial on whether yoga can fight insomnia. "It's a big problem. These grants are still very hard to get and the emphasis is still on conventional medicine, on the magic pill or procedure that's going to take away all these diseases…
drorzel | September 29, 2008
A Tribute to Paul Newman | Popdose
"What the world will miss most about Paul Newman isn't his artistry as an actor and a director, both of stage and film, but it is his kindness and all-around stature as a good man."
(tags: movies society culture)
Study of Standardized Admissions Tests Is Big Draw at College Conference - NYTimes.com
"[William] Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions at Harvard, led a commission of college admissions officials who drafted the study, which challenges colleges and universities to examine their use of the SAT and ACT and to consider whether the benefits outweigh…
drorzel | September 29, 2008In the comments to last week's science majors follow-up post, commenter Jim G calls me out:
OK, I agree with that 100%, and I'm sure everyone who reads this post has observed the phenomena you mention dozens of times or more. But I wonder whether you have a proposal, or if you're just pointing out the problem. With no snarkiness intended, to change this we need something a bit more concrete than "it's the fault of the kids/parents/media/poverty," or "someone needs to spend more money" to fix it.
Really, I'm curious. I don't want to clutter up your blog with my own theories; but this is your…
drorzel | September 29, 2008October is almost upon us, which means that the winners of the 2008 Nobel Prizes will be announced soon. Very soon-- the first announcement (for Medicine) is next Monday. The most important announcement-- the Nobel in Physics-- is next Tuesday, October 7.
This is a good excuse for a contest, so:
Leave a comment on this post predicting the winner(s) of one of this year's Nobel Prizes. Anyone who correctly picks both the field and the laureate will win a guest-post spot on this blog.
Ground rules and fine print:
- Comments must clearly state both the field and the name of the winner(s) being…
drorzel | September 29, 2008Congratulations to SpaceX for successfully launching a payload into orbit after three failed attempts:
The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) lifted off at about 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT) from the U.S. Army's Ronald Reagan Ballistic Defense Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the about 2,500 miles (4,023 km) southwest of Hawaii. The successful space shot came less than a month after an engine timing error during stage separation doomed SpaceX's third Falcon 1 test.
"As the saying goes, the fourth time's the charm," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told an elated…
drorzel | September 28, 2008
Cocktail Party Physics: prime time science
Why you should stop worrying and learn to love science-themed tv shows.
(tags: television science culture society)
blarg? » I'm Sorry, Are You From The Past?
Standards-compliant Web design, Microsoft style.
(tags: computing internet stupid)
drorzel | September 28, 2008I'm currently reading David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Brief History of ∞, because his recent death made me want to read some of his stuff, and I haven't read this (which turns up on best-science-books lists) before, so it seemed like a good way to go. Reading Wallace does tend to affect my writing in a manner not necessarily to the advantage of my prose style, particularly at a time when I'm awaiting manuscript comments from my editor, whose email telling me that the comments were coming included strict instructions to break up my more complex sentences, so this may not be the…
drorzel | September 28, 2008There's an interesting exchange over at the Reality-Based Community around the topic of "earmarks" for science, like the grizzly bear DNA study McCain keeps mocking. Michael O'Hare argues that science should not be funded by earmarks:
Almost any piece of scientific research, especially in biology, that isn't called "Cure cancer!" is liable to the kind of ignorant ridicule lobbed at these. Sure, some research is deeply silly and some is not worth doing. But that non-specialists can make fun of something from its title means nothing, and these japes indicate only the smug ignorance of the…
drorzel | September 28, 2008SteelyKid has a new friend, courtesy of my sister:
It's a shlumpy google-eyed dragon, stuffed with pure awesome. I'm dubbing this guy "Wellington," for family-historical reasons. A side shot (with extra bonus baby in the mirror) is below the fold:
In case I didn't mention it before, he's awesome. Thanks, Erin.
drorzel | September 27, 2008
Editors for Obama : Editors for Obama
Change in which we can believe.
(tags: language education silly internet)
drorzel | September 27, 2008Here's an update to the SteelyKid feeding pattern, with almost twice as much data as the previous graph:
Still no solid pattern to the feedings, time-wise, but there has been some change, in that the individual feedings have gotten more distinct. They tend to be longer, and the intervals between feeding are somewhat longer.
It's tough to say whether this is due to a developmental change in SteelyKid, or just acclimation on our part. It's possible that the short-period 9-minute feedings have faded out just because we've gotten better at recognizing when she's actually hungry, and not fussy…
drorzel | September 27, 2008As I said last night, I wound up watching all of the presidential debate. I turned it on expecting to get disgusted and flip away in half an hour or so, but it was remarkably better than the last two elections' worth of debates. Almost as if both participants were qualified to be President.
I'm not going to attempt blow-by-blow commentary, or to assess trivialities about whose digs were sharper, whose smarmy anecdotes were more effective, or whose demeanor was more Presidential. If you want that stuff, turn you tv on and choose a news channel at random-- it's all basically the same.
The only…