drorzel | March 25, 2007"Richard Stark," is, of course, the name that Donald E. Westlake uses when he wants to write books tat aren't funny. Ask the Parrot is the umpteenth Parker novel, picking up mere minutes after the previous volume, Nobody Runs Forever.
In that volume, Parker and a crew of other guys robbed a bank in western Massachusetts, and the job, as always, went a little bit wrong. At the end of the book, the cops are hot on Parker's tail-- trailing him with dogs as he flees up a hill into the woods. As this book opens, he reaches the top of the hill, and find a man there who offers to help him escape, if…
drorzel | March 24, 2007I stopped by the library the other day, just to see if they had anything new, and I happened across the graphic novel section, which actually had a fairly decent selection of collected comics. As I've said before, I balk at paying $20 for soemthing that will take me an hour to read, particularly if I don't know whetehr I'll like it. You can't beat free, though, so I checked a bunch of stuff out of the library to see what it's like. I'll collect them together here so as not to swamp the blog with separate comic posts.
100 Bullets I originally picked up just the first volume of this, and then…
drorzel | March 23, 2007Via Bookslut, there's an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about whether reading is really important:
Is it always a good thing to read an entire book? When I was a graduate student, it dawned on me that I often had the most intelligent things to say about books I'd only half- or quarter-read. I was surprised by my observation -- it didn't seem to make sense. But it just seemed to work out that professors preferred my insightful and trenchant comments on, say, the first part of Tristram Shandy than on the whole wandering thing.
In that way, a little knowledge can be a practical…
drorzel | March 23, 2007The case of Purdue's Rusi Taleyarkhan, cleared by the university of charges of misconduct in a murky process, has taken another turn. Congress is getting involved, with the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee requesting more details from the university.
On the one hand, I'm not enthusiastic about Congress getting into this (aren't there some drug-using professional athletes that they could investigate?), but then again, Purdue brought it on themselves with their ridiculously cryptic statements about the case. If they hadn't acted like they…
drorzel | March 23, 2007One of the unfortunate elements about the NCAA basketball tournament is that in addition to some great basketball, it brings around a few reminders of what an unpleasant organization the NCAA can be:
During the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament last weekend, John Goodman -- a freshman who wears a steer costume to cheer for the Texas Longhorns -- did what comes naturally to mascots: He patted a referee on the back.
This usually brings applause, laughter or good-natured booing from fans. But in the postseason tournament, when rules are stricter, N.C.A.A. supervisors "actually kind of…
drorzel | March 23, 2007There are two Presidential election campaigns underway at the moment. Both feature establishment / incumbent parties that are pretty much in disarrary, wracked by missteps and accusations of corruption. They're opposed by candidates who are somewhat unexpected.
One of these campaigns is unquestionably Important, and will affect my life and the lives of everyone in the world in the future. The other is, well, not terribly important to me, or 99.999999% of the world's population.
Am I a Bad Person, then, for being absolutely captivated by the train wreck that is the SFWA presidential election (…
drorzel | March 23, 2007I'm going to be away from the computer for much of the weekend (I may schedule some posts, so the site doesn't go completely dark, depending on how much time I have this morning), so I'm not able to do a really thorough discussion of this. And, honestly, I'm kind of getting sick of the subject.
But for those who aren't sick of reading about school vouchers, let me note this solid piece of voucher wonkery from the Quick and the Ed (via Brad DeLong).
Less wonky, but also worth noting is this Slacktivist post, that somehow slipped through my last links dump. Which means it's two weeks old, and…
drorzel | March 22, 2007There's an article in Inside Higher Ed today on the problem of college readiness:
We must come together in postsecondary education on many of these points if we are to prepare far greater numbers of students for college. ACT Inc. estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of its test takers are not well-prepared for college study. Considering that only about half of students who enroll in college actually earn a degree or certificate, we must find ways to confront this problem. Research shows that most future job opportunities in the U.S. will require some level of college study or career…
drorzel | March 22, 2007This is actually Klosterman's first book, but the fourth one that I've read. As previously noted, I'm dangerously fond of his writing, so when I saw copies of a new printing of Fargo Rock City on a display in Borders, well, I had to pick it up.
To be perfectly honest, though, I was slightly apprehensive about this. It's packaged in a way that makes it sound like it will be a standard autobiography about his childhood in rural North Dakota, but while there are plenty of autobiographical elements, it's mostly a book of his usual slightly skewed pop-culture criticism, applied to 1980's vintage…
drorzel | March 22, 2007Via Rachel Manija Brown, a Wikipedia page on misheard lyrics in Japan:
From Sean Paul's "Fire Links Intro":
Mayday! [...] Sean Paul! This one is hot!
ç®çã! [...] ã·ã£ã³ãã¼! ãªã³ã¹ã¯ç¡ãã!
Me itai! [...] Shanpū! Rinsu wa nai sa!
My eyes hurt! [...] Shampoo! There is no hair conditioner!
Global pop culture is Difficult. Still, this is probably fair payback for the word salad of the Hellsing theme music, which puts absolute gibberish over one of the coolest theme tunes around.
drorzel | March 22, 2007The term is over, and I've handed in my grades, about which the less said the better. Which means a minor vacation of sorts, as I clean up a last few things before making a push to get some research lab stuff done during our paltry one-week spring break next week, before the start of the next term's classes.
One of those clean-up tasks involves picking up my student course comments for the term, which ought to be interesting. I just hope I fare better than Professor Socrates, though:
Socrates is a real drag, I don't know how in hell he ever got tenure. He makes students feel bad by…
drorzel | March 21, 2007There was an interesting collision of articles about college admissions in my RSS feeds the other day. Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily had a post about a proposal to make college admissions random. The idea is that we could reduce stress on students and parents by having colleges identify those students who meet their academic standards, and then select randomly from among them, rather than trying to find perfect matches.
At around the same time, Inside Higher Ed had an article about Davidson College's decision to eliminate student loans from their financial aid packages. Students who qualify…
drorzel | March 21, 2007In addition to watching and reading about college basketball, I play a fair amount of pick-up basketball these days-- I try to play three days a week at lunchtime, and most weeks I manage two. Often, the noon hoops game is the highlight of the day, and I suspect I don't want to think too deeply about what that means... Given that I'm currently spending a lot of time thinking about other people playing basketball, it's inevitable that I end up thinking about weird stuff that goes on when playing. Since I have a blog, this means that you're treated to some scattered thoughts on things that get…
drorzel | March 21, 2007Some guys on a mailing list that I'm on were talking about a game they were playing during breaks in the NCAA tournamnent last weekend, trying to come up with appropriate alternate mascots for colleges and universities. The idea is to pick mascot names that fit with the school name to make an amusing phrase.
My favorites from the list discussion were:
The Creighton Barrel (Singular, like the Harvard Crimson or Stanford Cardinal).
The Seton Hall Monitors (A Komodo dragon that checks late passes).
The Iona Spheres (A team with real balls).
I'm sure ScienceBlogs readers can come up with some…
drorzel | March 21, 2007Obviously, it depends on the type of philosopher:
Empiricist: We can't know how to change a lightbulb, but we can make lists of how big it is, the wattage, the thickness of the glass, the composition of the filiment...
Skeptic: We can't know if we're changing the lightbulb. We can't know if changing the lightbulb is an improvement. In fact, we can't really know if it's dark. Especially with the lights out.
drorzel | March 21, 2007The latest news in the private space flight game is, well, let's call it mixed:
The second test flight of the privately-built Falcon 1 rocket failed to reach its intended orbit late Tuesday, nearly one year to the day of the booster's ill-fated spaceflight debut.
The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket shot spaceward [image] from its Pacific island launch site at 9:10 p.m. EDT (0110 March 21 GMT), but suffered a roll control malfunction 186 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth before completing its flight plan, its Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) builders said. The rocket was intended to end its…
drorzel | March 20, 2007One of the top players in college basketball this year was Texas freshman Kevin Durant, whose team lost over the weekend. Durant is 6'10", and averaged something like 30 points a game from January on, so the automatic assumption is that he's going to enter the NBA draft, where he would be one of the top couple of picks. Durant has made some comments that suggest he's thinking about coming back next year for another run at the NCAA's.
This has prompted the usual discussion about whether he should stay or go, with the usual suspects taking the usual sides. Some people speak of the wonders of…
drorzel | March 20, 2007Over at Backreaction, Sabine has posted a lengthy essay on the problems of treating scientific research in economic terms:
I vividly recall the first thing my supervisor told me when I was an undergrad: "You have to learn how to sell yourself." Since then I have repeatedly been given well meant career advises how to survive on the scientific marketplace (most of which I ignored, but I'm still around, so I guess I'm not doing too badly).
Many of my friends and colleagues in physics regard these marketplace tactics as an annoying but necessary part of the job. To begin with, this concerns me…
drorzel | March 20, 2007There have been a few good posts recently on topics that I've discussed here a fair bit. I don't really have anything new to say on either topic, though, nor do I have the energy to repeat myself, so I'll just post the links:
- Gordon Watts on the collapse of corporate research labs, based on this article from The Economist. The original article is fairly positive about the triumph of D over R, but Gordon is a little more skeptical, and I am as well.
- Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias on vouchers as union busting. Kevin also provides an illustrative example. It's rare to see things laid out so…
drorzel | March 20, 2007In a weekend wrap-up post, Dave makes a passing reference to one of the more uncomfortable aspects of basketball:
Early in the day, I happened upon an NIT game on TV, where Mississippi State was playing someone. While I was watching, I saw a quick, aggressive Bulldog guard drive through the defense for an impressive layup. The kid was Ben Hansbrough, Tyler's little brother. That got me thinking. It's one thing to be 6'9" and play college basketball. Sure, you have to be somewhat athletic, really how many people are you beating out for that spot? But to be 6'3" or so and play college ball, you…