Children's friendships matter in the scramble for secondary schools "Until now, work in this area has had little emphasis on children's own experiences." Everything that's wrong with education research, in one short sentence. (tags: education psychology society) Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: New Numbers on Underrepresented Faculty Members Data! (tags: gender race academia politics science) Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: A Satisfied Full-Time Faculty We love our jobs (tags: academia) UK scientists working…

The inescapable sports story of the week has been Alex Rodriguez's decision to opt out of his contract with the Yankees and pursue more money on the free-agent market. While it amuses me to see an off-season story about the Yankees eclipsing the Red Sox winning the World Series, I find this incredibly tedious. It's tedious not just because it's about baseball, but because the discussion is so ridiculously overheated. To listen to your average sports radio jackass tell it, Rodriguez's decision is emblematic of everything that's wrong with American culture. It's a greedy "me-first" move that's…

Well, so are all the other Presidential hopefuls-- not one of them has responded to my offer to endorse any candidate who will play me in basketball-- but I particularly want to address Colbert. After all, he's supposed to be the unconventional maverick candidate here, tooling around in a bus stolen from John McCain... Now, you might say, "Why does Stephen Colbert need your endorsement? After all, his fan group on Facebook has 1.3 million members, and he's got a tv show (admittedly, on basic cable), while you're just a jackass with a web page. He's got the power to break the DonorsChoose…

Neanderthal Bones Make a Case for Redheads - New York Times Make up your own Irish joke. (tags: science news biology) Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Teaching Professors to Be More Effective Teachers Targeted efforts to teach how to read scholarly texts pay of (tags: academia education news science) In Students' Eyes, Look-Alike Lawyers Don't Make the Grade - New York Times Stanford law students grade major firms on diversity. Via Facebook, of all places. (tags: law academia gender diversity society) The trouble with indie rock. - By Carl Wilson…

I ordered a tablet PC a little while back (Lenovo X61, with all the options maxed out, because, well, book advance). It shipped a couple of days ago, so I've been tracking it via UPS, where it has experience some odd delays. The strangest by far is this message from today: LOUISVILLE, KY, US 10/31/2007 6:04 P.M. BROKERAGE RELEASED SHIPMENT. SHIPMENT IS SUBMITTED TO CLEARING AGENCY FOR FURTHER CLEARANCE 10/31/2007 6:04 P.M. A SPECIAL CUSTOMS DELAY IS REQUIRED FOR THIS LIVE ENTRY "Live entry?" I realize it's coming from China, but what can they possibly be making these things out of? Can I…

The phenomenon is familiar to anybody who plays pick-up basketball. (It might be unique to pick-up hoops-- none of the other sports I play regularly involve multiple discrete games.) You get a bunch of players together, and you play a game to 15. Then a second game to 15. And, hey, that's a pretty good run right there, and lunch hour is almost over, and maybe you should get back to work... "One more game," somebody says. The justification is always different. If the teams split the first two games, it's a rubber match. If one team won both, it's a chance for the other team to get redemption.…

There are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed today talking about college graduation rates. One is a passing mention that the NCAA has released complete graduation rate data for Division I schools through its impressively awful web site (the statistics are available as a series of one-page PDF files, one for each institution, which you can select from a set of 26 pull-down menus, one from each letter...). They also have sport-by-sport data, though these files are so full of gaps and omissions as to be essentially useless. The other article is a longer piece about lagging graduation rates…

If you've been putting off donating for some reason, today is your last chance to contribute to the ScienceBlogs DonorsChoose fundraiser, and my challenge entry in particular. Their server appears to be getting whacked at the moment, so you might have trouble getting through to donate-- charity delayed is charity made annoying. If you've been waiting and hoping for the dunning blog posts to just for God's sakes stop already, this is the last one you'll see this year. How about a donation to celebrate?

Overheard in New York | The Giant Ones Who Live in the Sewers Are Especially Nasty A little something for the atheists. (tags: silly religion) Pure Pedantry : The Moral Problem of New Atheism vs. Religion -or- The Majesty of Creation ScienceBlogs' best writer on science and religion and politics. (tags: religion politics science) D-squared Digest -- FOR bigger pies and shorter hours and AGAINST more or less everything else "Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101" (tags: economics politics Iraq war) What is Statistically Significant? Bet you didn't think you could give a non-…

In today's New York Times Natalie Angier has a nice story about increased interest in physics: Many people wring their hands over the state of science education and point to the appalling performance of America's students in international science and math competitions. Yet some of the direst noises about our nation's scientific prospects may be premature. Far from rejecting challenging science courses, students seem to be embracing them. This year, for example, the American Institute of Physics said that the percentage of high school students taking physics courses was at an all-time high,…

You may start seeing these little icons showing up on your favorite science blogs. So, what's the deal? Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has been marking posts that discuss published articles in detail for quite a while now, but there was mroe general interest in having a service to tag and vet such articles. So, Dave and some other people have launched BPR3.org, Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting, and produced these little icons. The idea is that these icons will be used to mark posts reporting on peer-reviewed publications, and discussing them in detail. Not just throwing in a…

I've never been one for costumes, but if you lean that way, and still don't know what you're going as tomorrow, Jennifer Ouellette offers some physics-themed Halloween costumes: Schrödinger's Cat, Maxwell's Demon, and BEC: If you're looking for something a bit less mainstream, how about dressing up as a Bose-Einstein condensate this Halloween? That's what happens when a cloud of atoms in a gas get so cold -- practically down to Absolute Zero -- that they behave like one giant superatom. I'm not entirely sure how this would work; a bit of creativity is required. But it'd be a great idea for a…

Aspie-quiz Do you have an autism-spectrum disorder, or are you neurotypical and just kind of an asshole? (via Scalzi) (tags: science psychology society blogs) The Dragaeran Cycle of Houses by ~Silversaff on deviantART So... A lyorn is a Labrador Retriever with a horn? (tags: books art SF) Laelaps : The good, the bad, and the blurry: Wildlife Photography Lots of cute animal pictures, and instructions on how to take your own (tags: animals pictures blogs) Researchers show evidence of 'memory' in cells and molecules Not to be mistaken for homeopathy (tags: chemistry biology science news…

An anonymous donor asks a tricky question, namely: how apparently successful research faculty ... can best make the transition to a small teaching/research institution? This is a tricky question not only because anything relating to academic jobs is tough, but also because I don't have a great deal of experience with it. I've been in on a bunch of job searches, but we've never hired anybody fitting this description. As a result, this is necessarily kind of hypothetical. I think the key bit of advice is the same for faculty looking to switch instituions as for people looking for thier first…

Hey, I just wanted to drop you all a note to say sorry about that football game yesterday. I know I've already admitted that rugby is a superior game, but honestly, the NFL can do better. You see, the thing is, the Miami Dolphins are a really bad team this year. And the New York Giants, much as I love them, have a long history of playing down to the level of their opponents. You match those two up anywhere, you're going to get pretty much what you got yesterday. I'm just sorry it had to happen in your fine city. (Though, honestly, the conditions of the field didn't help. You know, in American…

The ScienceBlogs DonorsChoose challenge event runs through the end of this month, which means we'll take new contributions through the end of Wednesday. The Uncertain Principles challenge stands at $3,412 at the moment, which is terrific-- more than I realistically expected to get (I set the challenge goal too high at the start). I'd love to say that I have a brilliant idea of something to offer to get even more contributions, but, frankly, I'm beat. I've gotten a few new donations in the last week, but not one entry for either of the incentive offers. I suspect we're pretty well tapped out,…

The Washington Monthly Paul Glastris goes on the Colbert Report: "[I]t's a bit disconcerting to be twelve inches away from a guy who's doing a very believable impression of a total lunatic." (tags: politics silly television) Whatever: Football With Jesus Why you shouldn't let Christ in your Pop Warner league. (tags: football religion silly blogs) GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF TECHNICAL SERVICES Librarian humor at its best (tags: silly books literature)

With my Giants having done their part to ensure that the NFL never catches on in Europe, here's a college football play that ought to appeal to the rugby fans out there. Trinity vs. Millsaps, two seconds to play, Trinity needs a touchdown to win, and has the ball on their own 39: All it needed was a band out on the field (look below the fold, if you don't get that reference, or the title.). (Via a mailing list...)

On Thursday last week, the Schenectady weather forecast I have in my Bloglines feed called for "Tons of Rain," which I thought was amusingly unprofessional. I mentioned this to Kate yesterday (after it had, in fact, rained quite a bit), and she said "I wonder how much rain you would need to make a ton?" Being a physics nerd, of course I had to try to come up with an answer. We know that one cubic centimeter of water has a mass of one gram, so a (metric) ton of water would be 1,000,000 cubic centimeters, or one cubic meter. Our yard is about 20m x 50m, so if rain covered our yard to a depth of…

Back in August, somebody from Night Shade Books contacted me and asked if I would like a review copy of the forthcoming book by Nathalie Mallet, The Princes of the Golden Cage. I almost never turn down free books, so I said yes (actually, both Kate and I were contacted, and she replied first, so we just got the one copy sent to her). I then proceeded to spend two months not gettingaround to reading it, despite carrying it to Japan and back. The book is a quasi-Arabian fantasy novel, set in the "Golden Cage," the palace where the adult sons of the Sultan of Telfar are kept in luxurious…