drorzel | July 27, 2008Having admitted that I know noting about fine art, here's an opportunity to prove it...
A week or so ago, I was in the Schenectady library looking for something else, and noticed a book called Categories: On the Beauty of Physics, which is packaged in such a way as to make it difficult to attribute, but appears to be the work of Emiliano Sefusatti, John Morse, and Hilary Thayer Hamann, a science writer, artist, and art expert, respectively. It's subtitled "Essential Physics Concepts and their Companions in Art & Literature," which sounded very Clifford Johnson, so I figured I'd give it a…
drorzel | July 27, 2008Over at bloggingheads, they've posted a video conversation between Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong and Sabine Hossenfelder of Backreaction. They talk about string theory a bit, as you might imagine, but also about a wide range of issues in math and physics, and math- and physics-blogging.
Sabine evidently had some difficulty getting a connection to work out, so the video quality is low. The video doesn't add all that much value, though, and it's a fairly interesting conversation.
The whole bloggingheads.tv thing is kind of an odd format, and I can't help wondering what it would be like. Maybe I…
drorzel | July 26, 2008
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Blog
As you would expect, they have cool pictures. via Steinn.
(tags: astronomy space science blogs)
Freezing images in an atomic vapor! « Skulls in the Stars
An introduction to Electromagnetically Induced Transparency and how to use it to store information.
(tags: physics quantum optics experiment science news blogs)
Crimes and Misdemeanors - By Emily Bazelon, Kara Hadge, Dahlia Lithwick, and Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine
An interactive Venn diagram of Bush administration scandals
(tags: politics history law US)
drorzel | July 26, 2008It was a lovely afternoon at Chateau Steelypips. I sat in the back yard reading a biography of Ernest Rutherford (about which more tomorrow), while Emmy guarded against intrusions of various sorts: squirrels, inferior dogs out for walks, the next-door neighbors' kids.
There comes a time, though, when no matter how nice it may be outside, you just want to go inside and take a nap:
It's so hard to be the Queen of Niskayuna.
drorzel | July 26, 2008I know nothing about art or music.
OK, that's not entirely true-- I know a little bit here and there. I just have no systematic knowledge of art or music (by which I mean fine art and classical music). I don't know Beethoven from Bach, Renaissance from Romantics. I'm not even sure those are both art terms.
Despite the sterling reputation of the department, I never took an Art History class when I was at Williams, nor did I take any music classes. They weren't specifically required, and I was a physics major-- my schedule was full of math and science classes, and between that and the boozing,…
drorzel | July 25, 2008
Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
A classic, having no relevance whatsoever to recent events.
(tags: silly internet music)
Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm: Women's basketball star returns to action--at 50!
" Lieberman has taken old lady hoops to the next level. Whether you care about women's basketball or not, this story is an inspiration."
(tags: sports basketball blogs)
What obligation? Maximise what? -- Crooked Timber
"I have a real bee in my bonnet about the claim made by Richard Posner that " The…
drorzel | July 25, 2008I was just saying at dinner that I didn't think there was anything interesting to say in response to the whole "cracker" kerfuffle. Then I got home, and saw Daniel Davies's post, which is too good not to link. My hat's off to him.
No, I'm not going to quote what he said-- it's short, you can go over there and read it yourself.
drorzel | July 25, 2008I've hit a point in the book-writing where I'm sort of spinning my wheels: waiting for beta-reader comments, fiddling with figures, looking at dog pictures for potential illustrations (my contract calls for me to provide some number of reproduction-quality pictures of the dog). This would be the perfect time to do some blogging.
The problem is, there's nothing jumping out saying "Blog me! Blog me!" at the moment. I've got some longer-term ideas, and I may start those over the weekend, but there's nothing coming to mind for immediate blogging.
So, let's throw this open to the wisdom of crowds…
drorzel | July 25, 2008There's a piece at Inside Higher Ed today about everybody's favorite topic, gender bias in science, that opens with an anecdote about a student who showed up to every office hour, and brought her friends. This is familiar to every faculty member, though the author apparently thinks it isn't:
I wonder if Tahnee, as much as she was a leader, would have parked outside my office if she attended a co-ed college. In the single-sex environment, women (students, faculty and staff) have high expectations for each other and help each other live up to those expectations.
I can answer the question in…
drorzel | July 24, 2008
Study: No gender differences in math performance
"Whether they looked at average performance, the scores of the most gifted children or students' ability to solve complex math problems, girls measured up to boys."
(tags: gender math education social-science news society)
Kids Say The Darndest Things To Evil Spirits | The A.V. Club
"[T]here comes a point when we as a society have to ask ourselves where we went wrong. Why do our movie-children insist on being conduits for evil?"
(tags: movies silly)
Backreaction: Liquid Helium
A tribute in honor of the 100th anniversary of the…
drorzel | July 24, 2008I think there were ads running on ScienceBlogs for PBS's new science "magazine" show NOVA ScienceNOW, which premiered a while back. I never got around to watching it until last night when I caught the start of it completely by accident (quite literally-- I dropped a book on top of the tv remote, and it changed the channel to PBS...).
Neil deGrasse Tyson acts as the host of the show, introducing 10-15 minute pieces about reasonably topical issues in science. Some of these are original to the show-- in the first, Tyson squelches around a swamp looking for leeches with a colleague from the AMNH…
drorzel | July 23, 2008
A Priest Walks Into Qatar and . . . - washingtonpost.com
"Talking with Americans about faith and religion... is like having coffee with Forrest Gump: pleasant enough, but not of much substance."
(tags: religion politics society culture academia education)
How are we coming on Phoenix mission success? - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
Pretty darn well, actually.
(tags: astronomy planets space science blogs mars)
drorzel | July 23, 2008Via Tom, a big long list of books with which to showcase either my broad cultural background or pathetic cultural ignorance. As Tom's original source notes, the claim that most Americans have only read six of these is kind of hard to credit, given that I was assigned more than six of them by the time I finished high school.
As always with Top N lists, I have to wonder where this mess came from. I mean, I like Bill Bryson, but Notes From a Small Island doesn't fit in this. And The Wasp Factory?
It'd probably be more fun to get hundreds of people to go through this list and mark which books…
drorzel | July 23, 2008There's a classic paper on the Quantum Zeno Effect that I discuss in Chapter 5 of the book. The paper does two tests of the effect, and presents the results in two bar graphs. They also provide the data in tabular form.
My question is this:
If I copy the data from the table, and make my own version of the graph, am I obliged to contact them and ask permission to duplicate their results in my book?
If I were copying their graphs directly, I would definitely contact them and ask permission, but I'm not as certain about using their data to make my own version of their graphs.
Complicating…
drorzel | July 22, 2008
'Theology in Life' :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"Benedictine's new "Theology in Life" certificate program includes one class each in the theology of freedom, justice, love, and science, respectively. Majors will go on to take upper-level courses in areas including sacramental theology, the New Te
(tags: academia religion humanities social-science science education)
Brigham And Women's Hospital - Press Releases
"researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) designed a pre-clinical course for Harvard Medical School students to enhance…
drorzel | July 22, 2008I've been somewhat decoupled from blogdom in general recently, as I've been busy working on the book and getting ready for FutureBaby. It's also been a useful mental health break, though, as I'm a little less worked up about stupid stuff than I was a few months ago.
Every now and then, I catch the edges of some kerfuffle-of-the-moment, though, and it reminds me that continuing the decoupling is probably a Good Thing. The latest is the ongoing squabbling over Sizzle, which is the new "framing" fracas. This has been dragging on for a week, now, with the latest entries to catch my eye coming…
drorzel | July 22, 2008Via Will Wilkinson, James Pethokoukis at US News considers the state of the economy, and draws the same conclusions I did, for exactly the opposite reasons:
My theory is that the amazing resilience of the American economy through this slowdown--as well as the lack of a bad recession in a generation--is indirect proof that the 25-year economic expansion that started in 1982 made us far richer as a nation than the economic numbers suggest. I have continually offered that the inflation numbers used by the government have for years overstated how much prices have risen. Plus, the wage numbers put…
drorzel | July 22, 2008I finally manage to get my pants buttoned on the fourth try. I've had to dig out a pair from before I lost weight, because the splint on my left hand won't let me grip the fabric enough to button pants that fit properly. Even with the extra slack, it's difficult.
"God damn it, I hate this," I say out loud.
"Yeah, cry me a river, monkey boy."
I turn around, and the dog is lying in the hall outside the door, looking faintly reproachful. "I beg your pardon?"
"Boo, hoo, hoo," she says. "Your thumb doesn't work. Welcome to my world."
"Well excuse me for complaining, but it's kind of hard for me…
drorzel | July 21, 2008
Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal - Religion and World-Building
Notes for people thinking about inventing a religion for a fantasy story.
(tags: SF religion writing history humanities culture)
How to blog, get tenure and prosper: Starting the blog | john hawks weblog
Part one of four, from a recently-tenured academic who knows.
(tags: blogs academia jobs internet culture society)
Bloggasm » The ethics of hate mail: Should bloggers post email correspondence without permission?
The connection between "Crackergate" and William "Sheethead" Sanders. You…
drorzel | July 21, 2008I've finished a first pass through the second draft of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book, doing revisions on all of the chapters to make it a little more comprehensible. I'm still waiting for beta-reader comments on the re-written Chapter 8 (hint, hint), but other than that, I'm going through doing consistency checks ("Didn't I say the same exact thing in Chapter 3?"), tightening up occasional sentences (I have a tendency to overuse phrases like "because of the fact that," which is four words too long), and identifying a few issues with figures.
The clunky splint on my left hand makes this oh…