drorzel | May 23, 2008A few years ago, my father retired from public school teaching, and decided to get a dog to keep him company. He purchased a yellow Labrador Retreiver puppy, who was dubbed "RD" for "Ron's Dog." He started out small, but quickly grew into a barrel-chested lunkhead, who panted like a freight train whenever he saw a person who might give him food or attention, which is to say any person at all.
A week or so ago, he started acting a bit off, and wouldn't eat. For this dog, that was a major crisis, so they took him to the vet. Yesterday, they found out that he was riddled with tumors, and they…
drorzel | May 22, 2008
Thoughts from Kansas : Hurray for the primaries!
"Good Lord, they've all gone crazy. It isn't just Lanny Davis any more."
(tags: US politics video youtube silly)
Astronomers watch as star dies - physicsworld.com
"The source, now identified as SN 2008D, marks the first time a star has been caught turning into a "type-Ib" supernova"
(tags: astronomy science news space)
slacktivist: Look at their shoes
"No one smart enough to be capable of tying their own shoelaces is stupid enough to really believe what they're saying when they invoke [Neville Chamberlain]."
(tags: politics religion…
drorzel | May 22, 2008The pinhead filling in for Colin Cowherd (himself a pinhead of epic proportions) yesterday on ESPN radio was unduly proud of himself for coming up with the following hypothetical (paraphrased from memory):
Suppose that you had a choice between having your favorite candidate win the presidential election, or having your favorite sports team win a championship. Which would you pick?
Even by the standards of hypotheticals on sports call-in shows, this is pretty stupid. After all, it's not really a fair comparison-- whatever psychological boost it may provide, your favorite sports team winning a…
drorzel | May 22, 2008Kate's doctor called back after the ultrasound Tuesday, and this time the news was all good-- FutureBaby appears very healthy, and everything is as it should be.
There was one interesting little quirk, though, having to do with the weight. Kate mentioned last night that FutureBaby's estimated weight is in the 70th percentile for babies at this stage of development.
My immediate reaction was "That's all? What's wrong?"
Needless to say, this is not what Kate was thinking...
The difference is that the only place I'm used to encountering percentile ranks is with regard to standardized test scores…
drorzel | May 21, 2008
Izzle! Izzle pfaff!
"In the Name of the King is neither good nor bad, and yet it is both at once. In the Name of the King is the Schrodinger's Cat of garbage movies; until watched, it remains in a state of quantum superposition, and then when it is watched, the waveform coll
(tags: movies review stupid)
Your Review is Hereby Summarily Rejected « nOnoscience
"It is with extreme poignancy I write to inform you that the authors, after sitting on your review for an year, have summarily rejected your review report for want of better content worthy of publishing consideration with us."
(tags:…
drorzel | May 21, 2008It's a simple question:
Who do you prefer, Lorentz or Lorenz?
Chaos butterflies, or time dilation. Choose only one.
drorzel | May 21, 2008The Female Science Professor is musing about thank-yous at thesis defenses:
When I was in grad school, a prominent faculty member (who was department chair near the end of my grad years) made it known that he hated the "thank you" part of the thesis defense and strongly discouraged students from including any sort of personal thank you in their talk. If someone really wanted to, they could have a very brief and professional acknowledgment at the end of their talk (not the beginning). His reasoning was that the defense is an exam, and it is not the place for a long acknowledgment of the…
drorzel | May 21, 2008Fred Clark of Slacktivist points to the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and specifically their Banners Across America project:
NRCAT is making June the month for Banners Across America! We are asking congregations of all sizes, from every state, and all faiths, to join in a public witness against torture by displaying a banner outside their place of worship during Torture Awareness Month (June 2008).
Our goal is to have banners displayed by NRCAT member congregations in all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico.
(Update: Note that the map is deceptive-- they have a list of 200-ish…
drorzel | May 20, 2008
FemaleScienceProfessor: The Five Stages of Proposal Writing
Six, if you live in a trailer park.
(tags: academia science economics)
slacktivist: Bacchanal
"I haven't seen Prince Caspian yet, but since it was the "No. 1 Movie" this weekend, let's revisit what that wonderful little book was about: Prince Caspian is about beer."
(tags: books movies literature religion politics food)
Phoenix Lander Is Ready for Risky Descent to Mars - New York Times
"Although the Phoenix lander, a conglomeration of parts from two earlier failed missions, has been tested and rechecked to correct all known…
drorzel | May 20, 2008Welcome to today's exciting episode of "How Big a Dork Am I?" Today, we'll be discussing the making of unnecessary models:
In this graph, the blue points represent the average mass in grams of a fetus at a given week of gestation, while the red line is the mass predicted by a simple model treating the fetus as a sphere of uniform density with a linearly increasing radius.
The "model" was set up by taking the 40-week length reported at BabyCenter, and dividing by two to get an approximate radius for the spherical baby. Then I assumed that the actual radius increased linearly from zero to the…
drorzel | May 20, 2008
I think it's the bright thing right in the middle of this ultrasound image. Because, of course, in the Future we'll all have personal jet packs, even the babies...
A somewhat more recognizable picture:
That's a profile shot of FutureBaby's head. The other is a wider shot, showing some of the body. These are even less baby-like than the last set, because FutureBaby is now large enough to extend past the field of view of the ultrasound gizmo.
Estimated weight at the moment is 4lbs, which is a little big for 30 weeks. It's a little scary to think that FutureBaby will almost double in mass…
drorzel | May 20, 2008The new Death Cab for Cutie album was released last week, and I've been intermittently earwormed with the first single, "I Will Possess Your Heart." And, wow, is that one of the creepiest songs ever-- you get the sense that he's not entirely sure whether he needs to possess the rest of her, or if her heart in a jar in the basement would suffice.
You don't see many pop songs that are quite that unabashedly creepy. Which makes this seem like a good topic for a Non-Dorky Poll, in multiple-choice format:
The creepiest pop song ever is:
A) "Every Breath You Take" by the Police
B) "Creep" by…
drorzel | May 20, 2008Matt Nisbet has a post up talking about McCain's environment ad, and linking to a Media Curves study tracking people's reactions to the spot.
What's interesting from the results, is that in the beginning of the ad, Democrats respond positively to the opening pandora's box frame focusing on hurricanes, all three partisan groups decline in reaction to the discussion of two gridlocked polar extremes on the issue, and then Republicans spike favorably to the frame focus on national security and moral duty respectively.
Actually, I thought that the most interesting part of the ad was that all…
drorzel | May 19, 2008
New family of quaternary iron-based compounds superconducts at tens of kelvin - Physics Today May 2008
"Last year it looked as though high-Tc superconductivity takes place only in CuO2 planes. Now that LaOFeAs has broken the cuprates' monopoly, what other superconductors wait to be discovered?"
(tags: physics materials energy science news)
The Twin Paradox
A collection of explanations
(tags: physics relativity science education)
Wired Science . Education | PBS
The semi-finalists in Wired's contest for student videos explaining science.
(tags: science education internet video)
Cocktail…
drorzel | May 19, 2008Kevin Drum wades into a discussion over a claim that religion leads to happiness (started by Will Wilkinson and picked up by Ross Douthat), and offers an alternate theory for why religious people are happier in America by unhappier in Europe:
This is way outside my wheelhouse, but here's another possibility: Europe has suffered through centuries of devastating religious wars that didn't end until fairly recently. If you live in Western Europe, there's a pretty good chance that you associate strong religiosity with death, destruction, and massive societal grief, not with church bake sales. So…
drorzel | May 19, 2008
We're just starting out on a walk, and no sooner do I open the gate from the back yard than the dog takes off at a run, hitting the end of the leash and nearly pulling my arm out of the socket.
"Whoa, there," I say. "Take it easy."
"Come on," she says, "We need to go fast! Let's go, let's go, letsgo!"
"What's the hurry? It's a nice day, there's no rush."
"We need to go fast. If we go fast, I'll be younger than that annoying dog out back."
"You know, I'm all in favor of exercise, but I think you're overstating the benefits."
"No, silly, it's not about exercise. It's physics. When I go fast,…
drorzel | May 19, 2008Mike Hoye rides the Tokyo subway and takes a picture of it:
Here's my view of the same scene (from this Flickr set):
I really hope he was sitting down when he took that.
drorzel | May 19, 2008Over at Inside Higher Ed they've got a piece titled "Massachusetts Should Tax Harvard" taking the position that most of the arguments against taxing extremely wealthy institutions of higher education are nonsense. You have to read all the way to the last paragraph to get to the one really interesting suggestion, though:
Although I support taxing rich colleges, I believe there are better ways of doing it than through imposing a wealth tax on endowments. As Mankiw wrote to me, many economists believe it inefficient for governments to tax savings. I would prefer if Massachusetts imposed a sales…
drorzel | May 18, 2008
ruhlman.com: Flour, egg, milk
Really simple popovers.
(tags: food blogs)
Dynamics of Cats : grade inflation
"I had been worrying that my "curve" was tipping too far, too many As and Bs, but [threats are] not why - in fact student whingeing, if anything, would tip me towards harsher grading."
(tags: academia education society)
Grits for Breakfast: Are crime lab reports "testimonial" documents? SCOTUS will decide
"Considering lab reports anything but written expert testimony seriously misunderstands modern forensic science, which is not "objective" science but a results oriented,…