drorzel | June 21, 2006Over at the Examining Room of Dr. Charles, one of the newer ScienceBlogs, there's a post reminding me that I want nothing to do with medical research. I mean, how do you sort out what's a cause, and what's an effect in data like this:
Another recent study, published in Diabetes Care this past March, looked at the relationship between hours slept and the risk of developing diabetes. Researchers followed 1,100 middle age men starting in 1987 up through 2004. The men who slept 6 hours or less per night had double the risk of developing diabetes as compared to those who slept 7-8 hours per night…
drorzel | June 21, 2006That's the inevitable conclusion to be drawn by anyone looking at the DonorsChoose Leaderboard at the moment. So far, we've had ten donations to my challenge, raising a total of $395 for deserving school teachers and students, which is good, and I thank those who have contributed.
But, man, we're getting our clocks cleaned in both absolute and per-capita terms. I mean, it's one thing for PZ Myers and his billions of tentacled minions to be beating us in absolute dollars, but even in average-donation terms, we're getting housed. Math nerds have ponied up an average of $110/donation, the squid…
drorzel | June 21, 2006The Miami Heat won the NBA title last night, led by young superstar Dwyane Wade, and obtained championship rings for a bunch of guys who have been around for years without winning, like Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning. It's alo another title for Shaquille O'Neal, which probably gives him a conclusive victory over Kobe Bryant in their post-Laker competition.
I'm fairly happy to see them win-- I hated Mourning as a college player, but he's had a hard life since, and I like Shaq. I didn't care enough to watch the second half, though-- the game was on way too late, and it's methadone basketball…
drorzel | June 20, 2006From Lara Beaton:
Some people are like Slinkies - They serve no useful purpose, but they do give you a smile when you push them down a flight of stairs.
(Of course, anybody in physics education would probably quibble with the statement that Slinkies are useless, but I'm willing to overlook that for a well-turned phrase...)
drorzel | June 20, 2006I'm a little ragged today because Kate and I went up to SPAC last night to see Bruce Springsteen, who is currently touring behind his album of Pete Seeger songs. This was a short-notice concert-- I only got the tickets (as a birthday present) on Sunday-- so this review will be pretty much it as far as blogging today, because I didn't have time to set other posts up for today, and I'm a little tired this morning.
I didn't really know what to expect from this show, because the album itself is sort of odd-- Pete Seeger songs and folk standards, done by a huge mob of studio musicians. It's good,…
drorzel | June 20, 2006For those interested in keeping abreast of the latest stuff on string theory and its discontents, some links:
Jonathan Shock is based in Beijing, and blogging about the Strings 2006 meeting. He's got a first-day recap including descriptions of several of the talks, and incident events.
Victor Rivelles is also blogging from Beijing, and has recaps of day one and day two.
The Paper of Record loves Stephen Hawking, and writes about his visit to China for the conference.
Christine Dantas has re-posted her top ten lists (which were taken down in part due to some unpleasant comment behavior). The…
drorzel | June 19, 2006This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question deals with blogging itself, and not so much with science:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?
I have a slightly more serious response to this than many of my co-bloggers, simply because I half expect the issue to come up at my tenure review in the fall.
I don't make any real effort to hide my blog (obviousy), but I also don't advertise it on campus. I know a few of my students are aware of its existence, and a few…
drorzel | June 19, 2006The big event of the moment in physics, at least on the high energy/ theory side, is the Strings 2006 meeting in Beijing, which will feature the usual suspects talking about the usual topics in string theory. This comes on the heels of the SUSY06 meeting, which was extensively blogged by Clifford and others.
This would probably be a good time to post a long entry about how string theory is all a bunch of crap, as that's been a reliable way to generate traffic in the past, but I just don't really have the heart for it. From my outsider's perspective, the big issues seem to be exactly the same…
drorzel | June 19, 2006Inside Higher Ed has an article today on a study of career tracks that found markedly different results for different ethnic groups. This ought to be interesting data for the endless debates about diersity in science hiring, especially this tidbit:
Asian doctorates - 51 percent of them - are far and away the most likely to be employed in industry. White doctorates are the next closest at 29 percent, and blacks are the lowest at 19 percent.
Honestly, though, I don't have the foggiest idea what it means. That's a really big gap, though, and I'm sure somebody will come up with a theory of why…
drorzel | June 19, 2006I'm really not going to keep flogging the DonorsChoose fundraiser in an active way for the next two weeks (it runs through July 1), so you don't have to worry about that. I will continue to include the donation button/ link in my posts, though:
and occasional updates will follow as events warrant. Collectively, we're probably past the $10,000 match that Seed promised, which means that school teachers will have gotten at least $20,000 in funding as a result of this drive, which is pretty cool. And more is always better.
One final bit of active enticement, and then I'll shut up about it for a…
drorzel | June 18, 2006ScienceBlogs Charity Liason Janet Stemwedel provides an update of the first two days of the ScienceBlogs fundraiser for DonorsChoose: over $8,000 in direct contributions, with our Corporate Masters at Seed agreeing to match up to $10,000. Not bad for two days, on a weekend no less.
As for the local update, the Uncertain Principles challenge drive stands at $310, of which $100 is my personal contribution (I actually gave them $200, but didn't get the second $100 contribution recorded as part of my challenge). That's not bad, but we're getting our clocks cleaned by the bio nerds-- come on,…
drorzel | June 18, 2006I was awakened rather too early yesterday by the dog, so wound up dozing on the couch for a lot of the Portugal-Iran game. Which was pretty doze-worthy, actually-- Portugal approached the game sort of like an NBA team, and played eleven loosely connected games of one-on-one, and while Iran was game, they just didn't quite have the players to keep up.
We had a bunch of shopping to do in the middle part of the day, so I missed Ghana's stunning upset of the Czech Republic, but we did make it home in time to see the entire USA-Italy game. The US team played with a lot more energy than they showed…
drorzel | June 17, 2006Via coturnix, the tremendously depressing resignation letter of a public school teacher in North Carolina. It's a rotten note on which to discover what looks like a pretty good blog.
The racist comments and inappropriate sexual remarks desribed in the letter are really pretty disturbing. I wish I could say it was surprising, but sadly, it's not.
Anyway, if you want to know some of the reasons why they have a hard time getting good people to go into teaching, take a look. No school pays well enough to put up with that sort of crap.
drorzel | June 17, 2006It's been a while since I looked at the search engine keywords on Goggle Analytics for this site. It's a little depressing to find that PZ Myers turns up three times ("pharyngula," "Pharyngula," and "PZ Myers") before my own name. Worse yet, Aaron Bergman, who doesn't even have a blog any more, also shows up three times before I do. Aaron, start blogging again. Or get a LiveJournal account, given that "aaron bergman livejournal" is the fifth most popular search term on this site. Give the people what they want, already.
There are also lots of people wanting to know how many substitutions you…
drorzel | June 16, 2006Why is this dog sad?
Because people aren't donating enough to the ScienceBlogs fundraiser... Isn't it worth a few bucks to cheer her up?
(Actually, that's not true-- donations thus far are in excess of $3,000, and Seed has promised some additional matching funds. But how could I resist the opportunity for a shameless appeal, and some Friday dog-blogging?)
(She's really very easy to cheer up, as you can see after the cut:)
All it takes is some smelly gym clothes for her to roll on:
(If you really want the full effect, there's a movie of her ecstatic rolling at my old blog. The one linked in…
drorzel | June 16, 2006The Dean Dad has some interesting comments regarding this depressing New York Times article about the departure of young adults from Upstate New York:
From 1990 to 2004, the number of 25-to-34-year-old residents in the 52 counties north of Rockland and Putnam declined by more than 25 percent. In 13 counties that include cities like Buffalo, Syracuse and Binghamton, the population of young adults fell by more than 30 percent. In Tioga County, part of Appalachia in New York's Southern Tier, 42 percent fewer young adults were counted in 2004 than in 1990.
This echoes the article about the…
drorzel | June 16, 2006Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say "Amen!", this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release):
Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn't, we wouldn't bother doing simulations. This has been true for a long time. With experiments, we are limited to the resolution and capabilities of our detectors. In astronomy, for example, we don't have the hundreds of millions of years necessary to watch the collision of a pair of galaxies unfold. All we can look at…
drorzel | June 15, 2006Via James Nicoll, a new SF Webzine, Helix. Because you don't have enough things to read on the Interweb.
drorzel | June 15, 2006At the suggestion of our resident ethicist, we've decided to try to use the power of ScienceBlogs to do some good. Thus, we present the first-ever ScienceBlogs Charity Fundraiser.
Here's the deal: An organization called Donors Choose solicits proposals from school teachers who want equipment that their districts can't provide. They then accept donations toward the purchase of those items, and give the money to the districts and teachers who need it. The proposals range from requests for money to buy computers and other tech gadgets (LCD projectors are a popular request) to books for use in…
drorzel | June 15, 2006Weight and weight loss has turned out to be more popular than I would've expected as a blog topic-- I get a remarkable number of search engine hits looking for some sort of diet information. Given that, I would be remiss if I failed to note an ongoing series of posts on "fat acceptance" at Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge, one of the new ScienceBlogs members:
Part one
Part two
Part three
(The promised parts four and five will undoubtedly show up soon.)
The basic thesis is that being overweight is Bad, and that "fat acceptance" advocates are Bad People. This has resulted in suprisingly…