Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle is a nominee for a $10,000 blogging scholarship (that is, a scholarship given to someone who blogs, not a scholarship for studying blogging). The winner will be determined by popular vote. Of course, the responsible thing to do here would be to go read the blogs of all the nominees, and then vote for the one you like the best. Or you could mindlessly go punch the radio button for Shelley, just because she has the support of ScienceBlogs. Or, I suppose, some linear combination of those two. Up to you.

From email, a silly fake commercial from CollegeHumor: Why do I care? Look at 1:35. That's our wedding picture that flashes up on screen. I don't think I know the people responsible-- I think they probably wound up with our picture because our wedding pictures page was in the first page of Google results for "wedding picture" for a while. The ways of the Internet are very mysterious. But there's another second or so chipped away from our fifteen minutes of fame. I just wish it had been used in the service of a better joke.

Physics 2007 Fert and Grunberg, for Giant Magnetoresistance. People have been calling for this for years. (tags: physics news science)

Here's another post to highlight a worthy proposal with a good science connection. "Little Scientists" is looking to bring marine habitats to pre-kindergarten students in Buffalo: Animals and life sciences are of particular interest to young children, so we try to discover a lot about animals and habitats. We are also very lucky to have a partnership with the local science museum and students get a chance to visit at least once a year. I am requesting science materials that will be housed in our classroom and not in the museum. For example, I would like my students to be able to handle books…

I'm going to be in Boston all day, visiting MIT with a bunch of students, so here's a Dorky Poll to keep you entertained while I'm gone: Which E-name mathematician do you prefer: Leonhard Euler or Paul Erdös? They're both famous, they both have Numbers, and they're both dead. You almost literally can't do physics without Euler's number, but then you can't have a geeksize war without Erdös numbers coming into it (I think mine is 6). Which is better?

We're one week into the DonorsChoose challenge for this year, and readers of this blog have already contributed over $2,000 to help school teachers and students. Those of you who have contributed, thank you very much for your generosity. We've still got $4,000 to go to reach the goal for the challenge, though, so there will be more than a few posts coming up to try to solicit new contributions. Today, I thought I would try to highlight a couple of the proposals in the challenge, to suggest some more concrete giving opportunities. We'll start close to (my) home, with "Cruise the Forest", a…

Having gotten that silly Medicine business out of the way, the Swedish Academy has moved on to the important Award, with the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics going to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. This is one that people have been calling for for a while, now. I'll try to give a more complete explanation of what this is and why it's important later, but I'm going to Boston with a student group today, and I need to run to catch the bus. I'll just note quickly that this should be applauded by blog readers, because GMR is an enabling technology for…

The Booze News Because the world needs another web site dedicated to drunk college students (tags: academia stupid) Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: The Educrats' Attack on Teaching Hugo Schwyzer goes to a workshop on "improving student learning outcomes," then gets snarky about it. (tags: academia education) YouTube - "Dog" An anti-drug ad from people on drugs (tags: silly drugs dog) Taming tiny, unruly waves for nano optics Fairly garbled press release about light propagation at nanometer scales. (tags: physics news science) Confessions of a…

In the "You Learn Something New Every Day" file, I was double-checking some dates for the Many Worlds chapter, when I ran across the following at the end of the Wikipedia page for Hugh Everett III: Everett's son, Mark Oliver Everett, is also known as "E", the lead singer and songwriter for the band Eels. Huh. I did not know that. But it's on Wikipedia, so it must be true... Anyway, I don't really have anything substantive to say about this, so here's a fan video for my favorite Eels song: I couldn't find an official version of that. Here's an official video for another song off Shootenanny…

It's a public holiday here in the US, which means it's an Open House day on campus, as Admissions brings in a whole herd of high-schoolers to try to convince them to apply and enroll. This messes up the parking even more than usual, and also requires a bit of extra faculty effort to chat with students and parents, and give lab tours and the like. There's no rest for the wicked. Anyway, in honor of the holiday that I'm not getting (Kate has the day off), here's a totally non-controversial question to discuss: Who is your favorite "discoverer" of North and South America? Today is Columbus day…

There are a great many reasons to hate David Horowitz, but near the top of the list has to be the fact that his constant harping on "liberal bias" in academia has spawned a thousand studies of the politics of academics, complete with chin-stroking analysis peices about What It All Means. The latest, from Neil Gross at Harvard, and Solon Simmons at George Mason University, is written up in Inside Higher Ed today The 72-page study -- "The Social and Political Views of American Professors" -- was produced with the goal of moving analysis of the political views of faculty members out of the…

I somehow managed to lose track of time for a bit, and forgot that it was Nobel season until I saw this morning's announcement that the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine hase just been announced, going to Mario R. Capecchi, Sir Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies, for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells Good thing they got the Nobel, because that sounds like the sort of icky, un-Godly work we wouldn't want to actually, you know, fund. Anyway, the announcement of this prize means that the rest of the Nobels will be…

BBC SPORT | Rugby Union | Laws & Equipment | Rugby union positions guide A guide to accompany the World Cup (tags: sports rugby) Particle-physics detector warms to forest fires - Physics World - physicsworld.com New spin-off technology from CERN. Clearly, we must build the ILC! (tags: physics experiment gadgets science) Tom Baker Says... Via bassfingers on LiveJournal (tags: silly)

"Books? I like books!" Here's the next occasional book progress update: Introduction Current Revision: 1 Total Words: 422 (dialogue only) Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality Current Revision: 5a Total Words: 5,279 Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle Current Revision: 7 Total Words: 4,499 Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation Current Revision: 2 Total Words: 4,801 The Introduction dialogue isn't exactly new-- I wrote it a while back-- but it was part of the stuff that I sent to my agent to get feedback on, so I'll throw it in here. Chapter 2 has been rather comprehensively revised, and the…

The title sounds like the opening to a really odd joke, but in fact it was the concert bill last night in Albany. Bob Dylan is touring as always, and Elvis Costello is along doing a solo set, with Amos Lee opening for both. Kate and I went to the show, and it was... unusual. I'll put most of the review comments below the fold, just to avoid cluttering the front page more than it already is. I think the key realization of the evening, though, was that at age 66, Dylan has decided that he wants to be Johnny Cash circa 1968. What with one thing and another, we were a little late getting there,…

Cognitive Daily: Casual Fridays: Most citizens don't pass the citizenship test I aced it, how about you? (tags: politics science US) james_nicoll: Where are the collapsed world-states of SF "Isn't it a little odd,..., how few SF settings ever seem to have an Earth where a world-government has collapsed into contending states?" (tags: SF) Red Squirrels - Gray Squirrels - Great Britain - Animals - Pests - Invasive Species - New York Times Emmy is available to help... (tags: animals dog biology) ZIPskinny - Get the Skinny on that ZIP Demographic information by ZIP code, and comparisons…

It's as good an explanation as any for this: I'm not sure what this particular bit of Engrish is advertising, but I like the poster. It was hanging on a wall in Kamakura when we visited there in the pouring rain. The original image, and 140 other pictures from Kamakura, can be found in this Flickr photoset.

As noted here in the past, I had horrible stomach problems for a good chunk of last year. This was diagnosed as "Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease" or "GERD," which basically amounts to "Your stomach hurts." After a number of deeply unsatisfactory appointments with a gastroenterologist, and some tests about which the less said the better, it eventually got better, and I haven't had serious problems with it for a while now. Wednesday, I aggravated an old shoulder injury playing basketball. I separated both shoulders (at different times) playing rugby, back in the day, and every now and then I…

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Early (Encouraging) Data on Early Colleges If you offer college courses to good high-school students, they do better in college. Also, grass tends to be green. (tags: education academia) Improbable Research The 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded. (tags: science silly news) Off the Kuff: On nominating judges Comments from someone who knows the process from the inside (tags: politics news) OpinionJournal - Leisure & Arts The good news that only the WSJ will bring you... (tags: Iraq war politics news)…

I picked up three new albums from iTunes last weekend (yes, I know, you can buy DRM-free MP3's from Amazon now, but I have some iTunes credit to use up, and I haven't steeled myself to download and install the necessary application yet, which I just know is going to irritate me). The three were: Reunion Tour by the Weakerthans Under the Blacklight by Rilo Kiley Challengers by the New Pornographers I have to say, I was at least a little disappointed in all of these. Reunion Tour probably fared the best of the lot, as my reaction is basically "Well, it's no Reconstruction Site..." But…