drorzel | January 15, 2008Steroid scandals in sports, most particularly baseball, have been dominating sports media for a couple of years now. I thought that there really wasn't anything I could possibly care less about, but the New York Times proved me wrong with an article on steroid use among hip-hop artists.
Actually, the Times story is a report on an investigation by my local paper (I'm so proud), but I read the Times first in the mornings. The Albany Times Union does come through with a handy guide to hip-hop artists accused of using steroids. Look quickly before it goes behind the paywall.
What these stories…
drorzel | January 14, 2008
Overheard in New York | The United Nations, Encapsulated
"They have been underestimating my power for quite some time now."
(tags: silly blogs)
SFFWorld 2007 Best Reads Review (Part 1)
A discussion of the best in fantasy last year.
(tags: books literature SF review)
SFFWorld Best Reads 2007 (Part II) - Page 1 of 4
A discussion of the best science fiction of the year.
(tags: books literature SF review)
NASA - Messenger Spacecraft - Mercury - Space - New York Times
Messenger visits Mercury, but it will be a few days before we get cool pictures.
(tags: science space news planets…
drorzel | January 14, 2008Steinn offers an excellent suggestion, after noticing that CNN is soliciting debate questions from random people on the Internet:
Keith over at NASAwatch suggested his reader swamp it with NASA policy questions to try to get one into the actual debate. Scienceblog readers could do the same - send in a lot of good, coherent, concise question on science policy and closely related issues. Lots of questions.
Just do it. Don't talk about it, don't dither.
Pick a question that you think is important and interesting, on science, for this debate, and send it in.
They can still ignore the science…
drorzel | January 14, 2008Yo, E! (Do you mind if I call you E?)
I'd like to draw your attention to an item on your web page: NY Giants 21, Dallas Cowboys 17. Yeah, shocking as it may seem, the Giants won that game. Go figure. Hey, it surprised me, and I'm a Giants fan!
Still, in light of that item, doesn't it seem odd that 90% of your coverage of the game has been about Dallas? Which is to say, about the loser Cowboys? D'you think you could, I don't know, run some items about the New York Football Giants who, after all, won the game? (And why do we play? That's right, Mr. Edwards, we play to win the game. A gold star…
drorzel | January 14, 2008I've seen a lot of people linking to this exhaustive recounting of Chris Matthews's unhealthy fixation on Hillary Clinton, which leads off with a great quote from this firedoglake post:
I do not care which person is your candidate. I don't care what you think of Hillary Clinton as a potential president. What is being done in the press is akin to a pack of rabid 7th graders trying to haze the nerdy girl in school simply because they can. It has nothing to do with her qualifications -- it has to do with gender, and these lemming pundits think that it's perfectly acceptable because everyone…
drorzel | January 14, 2008Well, OK, not really. You can, however, hear what I sound like by listening to a couple of official Tor podcasts made from the panel I did at Worldcon with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Adam Rakunas, Paul Cornell and Yoshio Kobayashi.
The panel was back in September, but I haven't seen the files on Tor's web page until just now. You can access them directly, if they move off the index page, using these links:
Part 1/2
Part 2/2
It's a pretty wide-ranging discussion, and a couple of funny things get said. The sound quality is pretty good, especially given that it was recorded by a single Tor…
drorzel | January 13, 2008
Just Science 2008 » Just Science 2008
People blogging about nothing but science, Feb. 4-8.
(tags: blogs science)
Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fiction
A Nebula-nominated story, available online. Yet another thing I'll read in my copious free time.
(tags: space stories books)
Prisoner's lawsuit says it was too easy to escape - Los Angeles Times
""Defendants . . . did next to nothing to ensure that the jail was secure and the plaintiff could not escape," says Gomez's lawsuit"
(tags: stupid news)
drorzel | January 13, 2008The New York Giants, who played all their starters in a "meaningless" game against the Patriots in the final week of the season are now 2-0 in the playoffs.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Indianapolis Colts, and Dallas Cowboys, who played their starters only sparingly at the end of the regular season to "rest up for the playoffs" are now 0-3.
I'm pleasantly stunned by the Giants victory. Though it might be better to call it a total meltdown by the Cowboys, who committed a bunch of stupid penalties in the fourth quarter to bail out the Giants' patchwork defense and preserve the victory. Though,…
drorzel | January 13, 2008I'm sitting on the couch, watching tv, when the dog comes in. "Hey, dude, what ever happened with that book, anyway?"
"What book?" I ask, distractedly.
"The one about me. What other book would I be asking about?"
"Oh, yeah. I sent the first draft off to my editor and a bunch of other people, and I'm waiting for their comments."
"Oh. That must suck, huh?"
"What?"
"Waiting. I don't like waiting."
"I've noticed that." She's good for ten seconds or so, but more than that, and she starts creeping forward. "It's not so bad, though. I've already gotten some comments, which have been very positive…
drorzel | January 13, 2008So, how much does it suck to be David Garrard? He was 22-for-33 for 278 yards, with two touchdowns and only one interception, an excellent performance by any normal standard, but he was the second-best quarterback in the game. Tom Brady was 26-for-28, 262 yards, three TD's, no interceptions. And one of the incompletions was a flat-out drop by Wes Welker, who took his eye off the ball at the last second.
That's just outlandish.
Jacksonville made a good showing of it, but after the first drive, I never really had any doubt that the Patriots would end up winning. For most of the game, there was…
drorzel | January 12, 2008
Copernicus' Secret - Jack Repcheck - Book Review - New York Times
Copernicus, you dog!
(tags: history science astronomy books review)
Libraries Digging Deep for Geothermal Savings - New York Times
They're doing this for the high school near our house.
(tags: environment energy science gadgets)
The Little Professor: The Academic Olympics
It would probably get better ratings.
(tags: academia silly)
When a Mountaintop Might as Well Have Been the Moon - New York Times
A tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary.
(tags: history news nostalgia)
drorzel | January 12, 2008Looking at the traffic stats for the week, we see the following pageview totals:
The Funding Issue: 688
Unions and Sour Grapes: 777
Teacher Compensation: 946
Sheep!: 1,261
So, to recap:
Ranty blogging about serious issues of science funding and public outreach = Nobody cares.
Ranty blogging about teachers and unions = Good for traffic.
Cartoon sheep = Pure blogging gold.
In the immortal words of David St. Hubbins, "Too much fucking perspective."
drorzel | January 12, 2008Taking my time to copy a meme from Dave, here's the list of cities where I spent at least one night in 2007:
Niskayuna, NY (duh)
Whitney Point, NY
Tewksbury, MA
Mineola, NY
Boston, MA
New York, NY
Holland, MI
San Rafael, CA
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Cruz Bay, St. John, USVI
Kyoto, Japan
Yokohama, Japan
Takayama, Japan
Osaka, Japan
We also spent sigificant time visiting Tokyo, Nikko, and Himeji, but didn't spend a night in any of them.
2007 was a pretty busy year. 2008 hasn't really taken shape yet, but I confidently expect to spend time in State College, PA and Lewisburg, PA, along with the…
drorzel | January 11, 2008
YouTube - Svezia, Inferno E Paradiso (1968)
The origin of everybody's favorite Muppet earworm, via the AV Club.
(tags: music video youtube silly movies television)
YouTube - Muppets - Mahna Mahna
The Muppet version. You can thank me later.
(tags: music silly television youtube)
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Maybe He Shouldn't Have Spoken His Mind
Valdosta State student expelled for protesting a parking garage. Don't mess with parking in academia.
(tags: academia stupid news)
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed…
drorzel | January 11, 2008It's been a while since I did one of these (see "How to Tell a True Lab Story" for an explanation), but yesterday's laser tech story reminded me of one.
The lab next to mine in grad school also used an argon ion laser to pump another laser, but they were much more cramped for table space than we were. Instead of putting the argon ion laser (which was about 6' long) on top of the table, they put it on a bench that slid under the optical table, then used mirrors to direct the beam up onto the table top. Since the ion laser is pretty much a black box, this worked great, and they could drag it…
drorzel | January 11, 2008An example of what academics do to blow off steam:
This is a detail of a long whiteboard hanging in the basement hallway near my research lab. Sometime this fall, a colleague divided part of the board into a grid, and wrote "Sheep drawing contest! Rules: Draw a sheep" at the top. Students and other faculty did the rest (this image includes three of my own contributions-- see if you can guess which ones).
Since this was taken, the department technician has added first, second, and third-place prize ribbons on magnets, so people can judge the drawings. We're easily amused.
More pictures below…
drorzel | January 11, 2008From Inside Higher Ed:
Data drawn from the National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual survey of graduation rates, analyzed by Inside Higher Ed, show that scholarship athletes make up at least 20 percent of the full-time black male undergraduates at 96 of the nearly 330 colleges that play sports in Division I, the NCAA's top competitive level. At 46 of those colleges, according to the data, which are from 2005-6, at least a third of the black male population play a sport. And at 31 one of them, football players alone make up at least a quarter of the black undergraduate men.
All told,…
drorzel | January 10, 2008
Why don't we drop medical waste and nuclear waste into active volcanoes? - By Daniel Engber - Slate Magazine
The Question of the Year. I was rooting for "Is it possible I have the softest cat in the world?"
(tags: environment science silly)
Hubble finds double Einstein ring
Three galaxies, all in a row.
(tags: astronomy science news pictures)
A.V. Club Taste Test Special: The Bowl At The Howling Rim Of Famous-Ity | The A.V. Club
Patton Oswalt taste-tests the KFC Famous Bowl
(tags: food review silly)
YouTube - Murder Unscripted
Writers, who needs 'em?
(tags: video youtube television…
drorzel | January 10, 2008Kate and I got our Hugo nomination ballots in the mail yesterday (as members of the 2007 Worldcon, we get the right to nominate works for the 2008 Hugo Awards). The nomination deadline isn't until March 1st, but this still seems like a good time to ask:
What should I be nominating for the 2008 Hugo Awards?
I usually use the Locus Recommended Reading issue as a template to remind myself what's eligible, but that won't be out for a while, and I've got this blog just sitting here, begging to be used. So, leave your suggestions in the comments.
Given last year's kerfuffle over the lack of female…
drorzel | January 10, 2008As I mentioned a few days ago, a colleague asked me if I'd be interested in doing a guest lecture for a class on science fiction. She suggested that a good way to go might be to pick one story to have the class read, and talk about that.
Kicking ideas around with Kate, I latched onto the Ted Chiang story "Story of Your Life," from the Starlight 2 anthology (and also his collection Stories of Your Life and Others), because it's got a lot of great stuff in it-- linguistics, physics, math, really alien aliens, and fantastic human characters and interactions. If you haven't read it, it's a great…