drorzel | November 13, 2007
Children's early academic and attention skills best predict later school success
"Behavior problems, lack of social skills not linked with later achievement." This is described as "surprising," and I can't for the life of me see why.
(tags: academia education news)
Cocktail Party Physics: the photon has two faces
Particle-wave duality, with bonus Paris Hilton
(tags: physics education quantum optics)
Overheard in New York | And Apply to Cornell
This explains a lot about non-honors chemists
(tags: silly science chemistry)
A Lineman in My Bed: Notes on Teeth Grinding - New York Times
A…
drorzel | November 13, 2007 Jennifer Ouellette meantions it as the jumping-off point for her particle-wave duality post, but I want to spend a little time talking about this paper on single-electron interference (Science 318, 949 (2007)), because it's a very nice piece of work. There's also a Physics World news article about the experiment, which is pretty good, but slightly understates the coolness of the experiment.
The experiment here is extremely simple: They take a jet of molecular hydrogen, and hit it with extremely high-energy photons from the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. These…
drorzel | November 13, 2007The indefatigable Bora Zivkovic is soliciting contributions for the science blogging anthology The Open Laboratory. He's titled the post "Last Call for Submissions," but the actual deadline is December 20th. On or about December 19th, I expect a post title along the lines of "Wolf! Wooooolllllfffff!!! Oh My God, a Wolf!" but that's neither here nor there.
Being a commmitted advocate of Open Science, Bora has posted the full list of submissions to date. Looking it over, my main reaction is "Where's the Physics?" It's not just that this blog isn't nominated, but a general lack of physics posts…
drorzel | November 13, 2007ScienceBlogs is now available in a German version.If you sprechen the Deutsch, update your blogroll accordingly.
Me, I don't get more than the occasional word. I am, however, amused to see that the pull-quote on the front page is in English, and from one of my posts...
drorzel | November 12, 2007
Matthew Yglesias (November 11, 2007) - Journalism as Sadism (Media)
Why "Meet the Press" is well-nigh unwatchable.
(tags: news politics journalism television US blogs)
The Daily Politics
John Sweeney continues to show the fine grasp of political calculation that led him to be photographed at a local frat party...
(tags: politics US stupid)
Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » FaceBOOK
A call for a social networking site for academic books.
(tags: academia books computing silly)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: What Kind of Grader Are You?
The pros and cons of having your…
drorzel | November 12, 2007John Scalzi visits the Creation Museum.
Did you know, for example, that Adam is responsible not only for the fall of man, but also for the creation of venom? It didn't exist in the Garden of Eden, because, well. Why would it? Weeds? Adam's fault. Carnivorous animals (and, one assumes, the occasional carnivorous plant)? Adam again. Entropy? You guessed it: Adam. Think about that, won't you; eat one piece of fruit and suddenly you're responsible for the inevitable heat death of the universe. God's kind of mean.
I was away for the weekend, visiting the in-laws, so I haven't had time for…
drorzel | November 11, 2007
ESPN Page 2 - The Sports Guy: Sore winner
Comparing the Pats to the Allied POWs in Victory isn't over-the-top, is it?
(tags: football sports silly movies)
The Associated Press: Donors Bid Millions NOT to Rename School
The proper way to fend off unappealing naming rights problems
(tags: sports academia economics)
drorzel | November 11, 2007As any NFL fan is aware, the game of the week is my Giants against the hated Dallas Cowboys, who stand for everything that is evil and blighted in the league, no matter what Gregg Easterbrook says about the Patriots. All the talking head shows on ESPN this morning have talked about the game, and none of them have missed a chance to slag Eli Manning
Of course, this is foolish. Not that Eli is suddenly Tom Brady, or anything; but it reflects a deep ignorance of the first same this season.Yeah, the Giants lost to the Cowboys earlier this season, but it wasn't Eli's fault. Not by a mile.
In…
drorzel | November 10, 2007Because I'm a bad person, there follows a list of all the notable people I talked to at the World Fantasy Convention. You can feel free to assume that they all thought that I was brilliant, and offered to co-author important publications with me.
Kate and I had dinner with Sarah Monette Thursday night.
I chatted briefly with Scott Westerfeld at the Australian party Thursday night.
Kate and I went to the Zombies Need Brains party Friday, hosted by Joshua Palmatier, Patricia Bray, S.C. Butler, Barbara Campbell, Jennifer Dunne, and C.E. Murphy. I helped hand out door prize tickets briefly, and…
drorzel | November 10, 2007Matthew Fisher buys a blog topic:
I thought I'd throw in a request for another post on Steven Erikson. Specifically how his Malazan books either conform to, or subvert standard epic fantasy tropes. I've been a fan of his for quite awhile, and I'd like to think his stuff is different from Goodkind/Jordan/Eddings stuff (but that might just be elitism).
I held off on this one for a little while because Erikson was at World Fantasy Con last weekend, and I figured there was a chance that he might say something relevant in the panel on "Taboos in Fantasy," which Kate just wrote up. He did say…
drorzel | November 9, 2007
The Associated Press: Judge Rules on What Makes a Poem
"Keenan's 79-page decision included legal and literary history. He offered a brief description of Parker -- "the famous writer who was a member of the Algonquin Round Table" -- and a detailed summary of what constitutes a poem."
(tags: culture literature books law)
Two-Proton Correlations in the Decay of [sup 45]Fe
The journal article mentioned in yesterday's links dump
(tags: physics experiment nuclear articles)
drorzel | November 9, 2007A question from the Corporate Masters:
Is there a 'typical ScienceBlogs reader'? Who are these people? Why do they read Sb? What do they get out of it?
So, well, who are you people? Other than, you know, physics nerds.
My vague impression, based on what I know of the people who comment regularly, is that my regular readers tend to be grad students or post-docs, with a scattering of college faculty and professional scientists/ engineers. But I could be way wrong, so you tell me. Leave a comment, or send me an email and tell me about who you are and what you get out of reading this blog.
drorzel | November 9, 2007Having done a giant weighty physics post, I feel like I should post something more frivolous, so here's something about music...
I recently purchased a bunch of stuff from iTunes (yeah, yeah, Amazon has DRM-free MP3's, blah blah, blah. 1) I had a gift card, and 2) I'm not Cory Doctorow), and there was a weird sort of theme to the purchases: new releases by guys whose previous bands I like:
Bill Janovitz and Crown Victoria, Fireworks on TV. The singer and guitarist from Buffalo Tom, playing with a bar band from Boston. This is the best of the lot, and sounds pretty much like a lost Buffalo…
drorzel | November 9, 2007 I have a bunch of science news sources in my RSS feeds, and every evening, I scan through the accumulated articles to try to figure out what physics-related stories there are to talk about. Sometimes, it's hard to find anything, but other days, you get stories that lead to four press releases at EurekAlert (one, two, three, four), a write-up at Backreaction, a Physics World news story, and a Dennis Overbye piece in the New York Times. I guess I really ought to say something about the new results from the Pierre Auger Observatory, published this week in Science (Science 318, 938 (2007), if…
drorzel | November 8, 2007
Robert Donoghue - Hunting Vegetarians with Ted Nugent
Anthony Bourdain rediscovers Furr's Law
(tags: food blogs computing society silly)
Dynamics of Cats : "Rocketeers" - a Review
This is exactly rocket science
(tags: space books review)
NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | PBS
We'll see if I remember to watch this
(tags: biology education law science television religion politics)
Universe could have a fifth less mass than current estimates - physicsworld.com
Of course, a 20% error is still precision measurement in astronomy...
(tags: astronomy news science mass)
Congressional…
drorzel | November 8, 2007There are a lot of high-tech tools that are absolutely essential to the functioning of my lab. The diode lasers I use are a couple hundred bucks each, and only available from a handful of companies. I've got a couple of digital oscilloscopes that are really impressive instruments, packing a huge amount of signal-processing power into a single smallish box. I have an infrared viewer that I use to see the beam, and the lab is literally just about shut down when a colleague needs to borrow it.
Something that people outside of experimental physics don't really appreciate, though, is that there…
drorzel | November 8, 2007There's been a bunch of talk in the blogosphere about the Democrats taking over the Virginia Senate. I've only really glanced at these, because I don't live in Virginia, but I got email today pointing out that I have a personal connection to one of the "Key Races." In District 34, J. C. "Chap" Petersen defeated the Republican incumbent, Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, 55-45 in what the Washington Post calls a "bitter and costly battle."
Chap was the president of the rugby club at Williams my freshman year, and the guy who stuck me with my nickname, back in the day. Go figure. He's run for office…
drorzel | November 8, 2007Ethan Zuckerman (who is on the Wikimedia Advisory Board) has a post discussing Wikipedia's recent fundraising drive, with some comparative numbers:
In the past 17 days, the [Wikimedia] Foundation has raised over $478,000 in online gifts. That's a pretty amazing number, on the one hand, and a concerning one, on the other hand. If Global Voices could raise that much money online in a month, I'd be out of a job, as our annual budget is not much higher than that sum, and I spend far too much of my time convincing generous individuals, corporations and foundations to support our efforts.
On the…
drorzel | November 8, 2007I got a thank-you email yesterday from the head of DonorsChoose, which I will quote here. Because, well, you're the ones who coughed up the cash, not me:
Thanks in great part to the attention you generated, we made Internet history! During the month of October, readers of more than a hundred blogs gave $420,000 to classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org, benefiting 75,000 students. To put that in perspective, it took four months for the hugely successful Facebook causes application--with millions of users--to generate that sum of donations across all causes.
We would not have helped so many…
drorzel | November 7, 2007
ABC News: Police: Students Used Cookies to Torture
"Ill. College Students Accused of Kidnapping, Battery With Freshly Baked Cookies" The world is a strange and disturbing place.
(tags: news stupid drugs)
mmcirvin: A strange map: UFO sightings in the US
Why don't people in the South see UFO's?
(tags: space science silly US)
The National Geographic Online Store - Remote-controlled Tarantulas
"Because their eight legs move separately, be prepared for screams when one scuttles realistically from beneath the table."
(tags: animals silly)
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education -…