drorzel | January 24, 2007Some news for those interested in open-source publishing and "Open Science": Dave Bacon is announcing the debut of scirate.com, a sort of social-networking site for physics preprints:
The idea came from the observation that while the arxiv is a amazing tool, one of the problems was that the volume of papers was high and, to put it bluntly, the quality of these papers was not necessarily so great. So the question became, how do I do something to filter out the arxiv? Now, of course, everyone will want a slightly different filter. One person's noise might be indeed another persons operatic…
drorzel | January 24, 2007We've been running a search to fill a tenure-track faculty position for next year, and I've spent more time than I care to recall reading folders and interviewing candidates. Now that the process is nearing completion, I'd like to do a quick post offering advice for those thinking about applying for a tenure-track position at a small liberal arts college. Yes, this is too late to do any good for people thinking of applying for the current job, but then, we wouldn't want anybody to get an unfair advantage by reading my blog.
The following statements are entirely my own opinion, and should not…
drorzel | January 24, 2007An article came through my RSS feeds yesterday that looked for all the world like the New York Times was copying our Basic Concepts idea. Labelled as "Basics," it promised to provide a general discussion of the concept of time. "You bastards!" I thought.
The actual article by Natalie Angier isn't all that similar to what you'll get from Basic Concepts posts on ScienceBlogs, taking much more of a humanities-major kind of approach, and giving a wide and fluffy survey of different concepts of time. It's still an interesting read, though.
drorzel | January 23, 2007Earlier today, I posted two "Dorky Poll" entries, one asking for people to nominate their favorite science textbook in comments, the other asking for their least favorite science textbook. As of 7:15, a bit less than nine hours after the posts went live, the comment totals are:
Dorky Poll: Least Favorite Textbook: 32 comments
Dorky Poll: Favorite Textbook: 12 comments
Negative preferences lead positive ones by almost a factor of three.
This isn't surprising, or shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows actual human beings, but it's kind of striking.
drorzel | January 23, 2007It's going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you'll need to entertain yourselves. Here's a question for the science-minded:
What's your least favorite science textbook of all time?
It could be a book that you loathed when you were a student, or it could be a dreadful book that you were forced to teach out of, but if you've got a least favorite textbook, leave the name in the comments. Obviously, my expertise in dealing with textbooks is mostly in physics, but I'll throw this open to all sciences, so go ahead and nominate that…
drorzel | January 23, 2007It's going to be a very busy day, in ways that will keep me away from the Internet for most of the day, so you'll need to entertain yourselves. Here's a question for the science-minded:
What's your favorite science textbook of all time?
It could be your favorite book from when you were a student, or it could be your favorite book to teach out of, but if you've got a favorite textbook, leave the name in the comments. Obviously, my expertise in dealing with textbooks is mostly in physics, but I'll throw this open to all sciences, so go ahead and nominate that biology book you can't get enough…
drorzel | January 23, 2007Inside Higher Ed has a report on a new frontier in administrative idiocy:
After passing a new online test on ethics required of all state employees, [a] tenured professor in the English department at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale received a notice from his university ethics officer and from the state inspector general that he was not in compliance with state ethics regulations, a failure that state officials said could result in punishment that included dismissal. The reason? He had completed the test too quickly.
Yes, that's right. Professors were asked to read a bunch of…
drorzel | January 22, 2007A little while ago, John Lynch asked what really draws readers to ScienceBlogs, and listed his top twenty posts. In a similar vein, here are the top twelve Uncertain Principles posts of the past year, ranked by number of pageviews:
SAT Challenge: Bloggers Dumber Than High-School Kids
Local Realism, Loopholes, and The God Delusion
SAT Challenge: They Sound Like... Bloggers
Bugs Aren't Features
How to Score Well Without Really Writing
SAT Challenge: My Entry
All That I Want
How to Tell a True Lab Story
Top Eleven: Time to Vote
How to Do a Good PowerPoint Lecture
Dawkins and Theology
Deep…
drorzel | January 22, 2007In the initial "Basic Concepts" post, I discussed the concept of Force in physics. This time out, I'll be talking about fields, which is a much dicier proposition. Not only are fields considerably more abstract than forces, but I've never lectured on fields in general (specific instances of fields, yes, but not fields as abstract objects). For that matter, I've never taken a real field theory class. The chances of my saying something stupid about fields are exponentially greater than the chances of my saying something stupid about forces.
In a certain sense, though, "Fields" is a good topic…
drorzel | January 22, 2007The last booklog post was about an author who made a name writing urban fantasy, who is trying to write in a different subgenre, so it seems somewhat appropriate to have this post be about an urban fantasy by an author who made a name writing something else. OK, Charlie Huston might object to having No Dominion called "urban fantasy," as that carries some connotation of woo, but the science babble underlying his explanation of vampires is so dopey, it might as well be magic.
Huston made a splash with his dark and bloody noir series of crime novels featuring Henry Thompson (Caught Stealing,…
drorzel | January 22, 2007Scott Aaronson lists his favorite foods, and says that he expects to weigh 3000 pounds by the time he gets tenure.
Jenn Fallis explains his mistake: he's a theorist. Experimental physics can provide a built-in exercise problem as you haul bits of apparatus from one place to another. Theory's sitting-at-a-desk-staring-into-space program just can't compete...
drorzel | January 21, 2007Via Neil Gaiman, I learn that:
John Crowley (author of Little, Big)has a LiveJournal...
... where he's collecting suggestions for reference works for people seeking to invent interesting fantasy worlds...
...and he's come up with a great class exercise/ party game for the results:
Can't do it for the upcoming class, but for a class in fantasy fiction what could be done is to print out these titles and others similar on separate cards,,and have each student pick two at random, and combine the central elements of each. North Korea under the Kims combined with voodoo and zombies. Or Indian…
drorzel | January 21, 2007The discussion of Charles Murray continues in comments to my earlier post, and some interesting things have been said there. Also, some fairly loathesome things-- you take the bad with the good.
For those who can't get enough Murray-bashing, let me also point to a few other people:
Dave's collecting suggestions of things that Murray ought to read.
Brad DeLong helps Dave out.
Ezra Klein has a comprehensive round-up of links discussing Murray's various failures.
I'm closing comments on this post, not because I want to suppress discussion, but because I'd like to consolidate it in one thread.…
drorzel | January 21, 2007Jim Butcher's last few Dresden Files books (coming soon to a tv series near you...) have included little afterwords in which he tells the story of how he started reading SF, and urges readers to check out his new epic fantasy series (the "Codex Alera"). He explains that he's always wanted to write that sort of thing, since discovering Tolkien at age seven:
My first love as a fan is swords-and-horses fantasy. After Tolkien I went after C.S. Lewis. After Lewis, it was Lloyd Alexander. After them came Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Robert Howard, John Norman, Poul Anderson, David Eddings, Weis and…
drorzel | January 20, 2007I'm going to be on a few program items at Boskone again this year. The highly preliminary schedule I received a couple of days ago includes a Saturday afternoon talk on "Spooky Action at a Distance," which will be a sort of popular-audience explanation of the EPR Paradox and Bell's Theorem. "Weird Quantum Phenomena" was a hit last year, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Also on the list is "SF and the History of Science," described thusly:
Let's look at SF (or historical fantasy) involving the development of science: something that's interested writers in our genre from DeCamp to…
drorzel | January 19, 2007My Giants are done for the year, but Kate's Patriots are still in it, so there will be football-watching this weekend (well, actually, I'll be playing in an intramural basketball game for a good chunk of the Pats game, but Kate will be watching). In honor of the Pats, then, here's a video for Kate, which good taste demands that I place below the fold:
(They played a small clip of the song on a sports radio show I was listening to yesterday, so of course I had to go look up the video...)
drorzel | January 19, 2007Charles "The Bell Curve" Murray is back with a three-part essay series on edcuation, published in The Wall Street Journal:
Part I: The world is full of stupid people.
Part II: Too many stupid people go to college.
Part III: We should spend more money on the tiny fraction of people who are smart.
(You can also find them on the American Enterprise Institute site, if the WSJ links rot.)
Charles Murray bugs me, because he makes my life more difficult. Not because he's a bold iconoclast challenging the hidebound educational establishment, but because his writing on these topics has a smugly…
drorzel | January 19, 2007As I said previously, I get a lot of emails from people looking to promote their sites, and I do try to look at most of them. Yesterday's batch included ePrep, a site offering college preparation advice, and while I can't speak for the quality of their services, they get a link for pointing me to these SAT prep shower curtains. From the Amazon page, you get the chirpy description:
A simple, effective, and stress free learning tool for your children taking the SATs, allowing them to learn the basic SAT math concepts while taking a shower. Concepts include fractions, geometry, probability, and…
drorzel | January 18, 2007A couple of bloggers have issued a challenge: a week of blogging about Just Science. I like RPM's description better than what's on the official site:
It boils down to this:
One week of science blogging and only science blogging.
At least one post a day of pure science content.
No blogging about anti-science -- no creationism, no anti-vaccination, no global warming denialists.
Just Science from February 5 through February 11.
I have two problems with this:
The first problem is that I don't know if I could go a whole week without blogging about academic issues, pop culture, or just general…
drorzel | January 18, 2007I'm giving an exam this morning, and there's yet another job talk at lunch, followed by an afternoon of trying to finish all the stuff that's been pushed aside by candidate talks and interviews, so I'm a little too busy for detailed blogging. Sounds like time for a couple of audience participation entries...
I'm running out of good Dorky Poll topics, having already done fundamental forces, fundamental particles, and the like. This one may be too arcane, but what the hell:
What's your favorite example of an elision in a textbook or paper?
That is, what's the best trick you've seen for…