drorzel | April 27, 2008
Crooked Timber » » Maybe Baby
In which Maria makes a dubious choice of date movies. Then again, the first movie Kate and I went to was "Hrad Rain," so who am I to judge?
(tags: movies nostalgia blogs)
Physics and Physicists: Physics In Action at Theme Parks
On student trips to learn "Like how the gravity and force relates with the loops and stuff."
(tags: physics education science academia)
Physicists quantify the 'coefficient of inefficiency' - physicsworld.com
"Parkinson found that committees with more than about 20 members are much more ineffectual at making decisions than smaller…
drorzel | April 27, 2008From the tablet today:
Yes, oh, yes it was...
The problem here, from my perspective, is that when the tablet is plugged into a power supply, it does not go to sleep properly. I can put it to sleep, and then connect it to charge the battery, but a few hours later, it will just be off, and when I turn it back on, I get the "Resuming Windows" screen, and it takes much longer to re-start than when it wakes up from being in sleep mode.
I've sort of grown resigned to this. every now and then, though, it pops up an actual error message (generally "Windows Host Process experienced an error and had…
drorzel | April 27, 2008Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled:
You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…
drorzel | April 27, 2008The big science-and-religion issue of the week has been Expelled, which The AV Club gave an F, writing:
Perhaps what Bruce Chapman of ID advocacy group The Discovery Institute says about Darwinists applies best to Expelled: "People who don't have an argument are reduced to throwing sand in your eyes." If only this movie could be washed away as easily.
I'm amazed at the number of otherwise sensible people who have paid to see this cinematic turd. Not only does it sound about as appealing as oral surgery, but I'm not willing to see one nickel of my beer money go to the dishonest swine who made…
drorzel | April 26, 2008
Seed: "So"
A look at the most common verbal tic of scientists.
(tags: science language academia education)
drorzel | April 26, 2008Every Friday (more or less) there's a "Faculty Social Hour" on campus. They have cheese and crackers, a fairly random assortment of beer, and a couple of bottles of wine, and various faculty come by to wind down a bit at the end of the week. It's a chance to socialize a little with people from different departments, talk about our students, and go into the weekend on a happy note.
Yesterday's social hour was designated as a "Multi-cultural Happy Hour," to coincide with the annual International Festival thrown by students from other countries. They had brought in much better food than usual,…
drorzel | April 26, 2008I went for a bike ride this morning, the first real bike ride of the year (I've biked to and from work a couple of times, but this was the first real ride just for the sake of riding). There was some pissy drizzle at the start, but by the time I got on the bike path headed for Lock 8, the sun came out, and it was a cool, pleasant, calm spring morning.
As I was tooling down the path, I realized that I had the bike one gear higher than I usually do on that stretch of path, but I didn't feel like I was working any harder than normal. "Gee, I guess I'm in better shape than I thought..." I said to…
drorzel | April 25, 2008
Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » What's Wrong With "Social Justice"?
"If you really mean it, however, you have to seriously leave room for, even encourage, someone to answer the question, "Should we pursue social justice or be socially responsible" by saying, "No"."
(tags: academia education society culture ethics politics)
Dynamics of Cats : string theology
Strategic choice of heresy is critical to education.
(tags: physics theory silly religion education academia astronomy)
Cognitive Daily: Casual Fridays: What does it take to be rich -- and can we change your opinion?
What do…
drorzel | April 25, 2008The organizers of the Science in the 21st Century conference at the Perimeter Institute have started to collect talk abstracts for the meeting. Actually, they started a couple of weeks ago, but I'm a Bad Person and haven't gotten around to writing anything for them yet.
It doesn't help that this sort of thing is outside my normal range of talks, which has been strictly physics-based. This broader public intellectual stuff isn't something I have a great deal of experience speaking about. I do write in that vein here, though, and since blogging is my obvious subject for this, I might as well…
drorzel | April 25, 2008Given the amount of time I've spent writing about academic issues this week, it's only fitting that the science story getting the most play is about math education. Ed Yong provides a detailed explanation, and Kenneth Chang summarizes the work in the New York Times. Here's Ed's introduction:
Except they don't really work. A new study shows that far from easily grasping mathematical concepts, students who are fed a diet of real-world problems fail to apply their knowledge to new situations. Instead, and against all expectations, they were much more likely to transfer their skills if they were…
drorzel | April 25, 2008I'm kicking myself for not using this as a filler post a couple of weeks back when it was Easter:
This is from one of the shrines at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto-- the temple with the gigantic wooden platform looking out over the city. The sign at the lower right identifies it:
This stuatue is called "okuninushino-mikoto."
A Japanese god who is in charge of love and good matches
The rabbit beside him is a messenger of the god.
Emmy grumbles that the divine rabbit has a certain Donnie Darko quality to it, but I think she's just jealous that she doesn't have a four-foot-high bunny to play with.
drorzel | April 24, 2008
Princeton scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter
"Writing in the April 24 issue of Nature, the scientists report that they have recorded [the quantum Hall effect] in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any external magnetic field being present."
(tags: physics experiment materials news science)
'Buckypaper' stretches in a strange way - physicsworld.com
"[R]esearchers in the US have discovered that some types of buckypaper -- sheets made of woven carbon nanotubes -- increase in width when they are stretched"
(tags: physics materials science experiment news)
immlass:…
drorzel | April 24, 2008We had a great time on our visit to Japan last summer, but we had one incredibly frustrating experience, on our first day in Yokohama. We couldn't bring three full weeks' worth of clothing with us, so we brought a bit more than one week's worth, and planned to get things cleaned there. The hotel laundry rates were outlandish, so we loaded up a suitcase with dirty laundry, and when we got to Yokohama, we asked directions to a local laundromat (Japanese word: "ko-in ran-da-ri," or "coin laundry"). The nice lady at the hotel desk gave us a tourist map, with a route indicated on it.
This created…
drorzel | April 24, 2008Monday
9:00-10:15 am Grade exams from last week.
10:15-10:30 am Prepare for lecture
10:30-11:35 am Lecture about magnetic field of current loop, in-class activity on field of solenoid
11:35-12:45 pm Gasp, pant, eat lunch.
12:45-2:45 pm Tweak up apparatus for laser spectroscopy of rubidium lab
3:00-5:00 pm Test and set up lab on finding Earth's magnetic field
5:30 pm Go home and collapse.
Tuesday
9:00-10:00 am Run errands (bank, drugstore, etc.)
10:00-11:00 am Tweak up rubidium spectroscopy lab, fix balky laser
11:00-11:45 am Meet with student about last week's lab.
12:00-12:30 pm Lunch with…
drorzel | April 24, 2008Lest you think that people in the US are uniquely alarmist about threats to Chiiiiillllllldrruuuun, a picture from last summer's trip to Japan:
I have absolutely no idea what that says, but it sure is lurid.
drorzel | April 23, 2008
Acephalous: Interview with a Candidate for Many Jobs (but Winner of None)
"So your advice to candidates is to take consolation in the fact that the entire planet isn't being devoured by The Eater of Worlds?"
(tags: academia jobs blogs silly)
nanoscale views: Career comments
There's really no end to the number of people willing to give sensible advice to tenure-track faculty.
(tags: academia jobs physics science)
Cocktail Party Physics: let me explain
"When I mis-speak, it's usually assumed I am ignorant. Or sloppy. Or both. At least by men. "
(tags: gender science physics society…
drorzel | April 23, 2008We've asked not to be told the sex of FutureBaby, even though Kate's doctors know it, having done an amniocentesis to screen for genetic defects. So far, they've been very good about not hinting at anything. We may have cause to reconsider this decision, though, as we get deeper into the issue of names.
There's really nothing for exposing latent class prejudices like thinking about baby names. Not only do I cringe at names that have a hillbilly sort of ring to them, I also reflexively shy away from names that are too "Yuppie." This is somewhat ironic, because in social class terms, I'm…
drorzel | April 23, 2008At Inside Higher Ed this morning, there's an article with the headline At U. of Georgia, Furor Over Clarence Thomas. As always when I see such things (or, say, complaints about having Mike Huckabee speak on campus here), my first thought was "Curse you, Georgia, for making me think, even for a nanosecond, that David Horowitz might have a point."
This turns out not to be the expected contorversy over Thomas's politics. Instead, it's about his past:
Rather than sparking debates about Thomas's jurisprudence or his politics, though, the announcement has led to a flurry of criticisms drawing…
drorzel | April 23, 2008As I may have mentioned in the past, we at Chateau Steelypips have benefitted greatly from Yale Law School's loan forgiveness program for graduates taking public service jobs. Since Kate shattered my dreams of a self-funded basement lab by deciding to use her pricey law degree for good rather than racking up billions as Evil Corporate Scum, the funds they provided to help pay off her loans were a crucial element of our finances for the first few years of our marriage. In fact, you could argue that they're the reason there's a physical Chateau Steelypips in the first place-- even in 2002, I…
drorzel | April 22, 2008
james_nicoll: Welcome to the Harlan Ellison Memorial Personal Boundaries Club
The title is really all the commentary you need on the "Open-Source Boob Project."
(tags: SF stupid gender ethics society culture)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: The Pre-Ninja Program
"75 percent of the graduates we contacted indicated satisfaction with the program, though many threatened to kill us in our sleep for daring to call them at home."
(tags: academia education silly)
Ecstatic Days » Blog Archive » Evil Monkey's Guide to Kosher Imaginary Animals
"Horses are not kosher, no matter how…