I was just tagging this for the Links Dump, but I thought it deserved better. Fred Clark, blogdom's best writer on politics and religion, is putting together a book-like thing from his blog, and has posted the introduction to the section on creationism: The oldest book in our Bible contains a hymn of praise to the Creator that rambles on for chapter after chapter. It's the longest such hymn in the Bible, skipping about through all the earth and all the universe with the wide-eyed, giddy enthusiasm of a kind in a candy shop, marveling at all the wondrous things that God has made. But this isn'…

Over Twitter, somebody pointed to this article on astronomy outreach (free PDF from that link), which argues that everybody else should stop trying to be Brian Cox: I've known Brian for years and worked with him before his celebrity status went supernova. I would love to say "I told you so" to all the TV commissioning editors who rejected my suggestions to use him as a presenter. I suspect Brian fnds it as ironic as I do that TV companies now regularly put out adverts looking for "the next Brian Cox". As much as I love Brian's work, I don't think we need any more like him at the moment.…

The Virtuosi: Physics in Sports: The Fosbury Flop "Physics has greatly influenced the progress of most sports. There have been continual improvements in equipment for safety or performance as well as improvements in technique. I'd like to talk about some physics in sports over a series of posts. Here I'll talk about a technique improvement in High Jumping, the Fosbury Flop. The Fosbury Flop came into the High Jumping scene in the 1968 Olympics, where Dick Fosbury used the technique to win the gold medal. The biggest difference between the Flop and previous methods is that the jumper goes…

When I came up for my reappointment review three years into my professorial career, I was given a list of required materials to submit, which included a "statement of teaching philosophy." The same thing had been required for my job application, and at that time, I wrote about techniques and methods that had seemed particularly useful to me as a student (I had basically no teaching experience when I was hired), so for my reappointment, I wrote a statement looking back at what I wrote when I applied and talking about how I tried to incorporate those things into my teaching. I passed the review…

As previously mentioned, I'm watching a little bit of Fringe in order to be able to talk sensibly about it later this week. I watch the Season 1 finale last night, and its treatment of parallel universes is about what I'd expect for tv, but being the obsessive dork I am, I got distracted from the big picture by a silly side issue. There's a running joke for the first bit of the episodes about Walter trying to find various pieces of scientific equipment, only to find that Peter has appropriated them for some sort of personal project. One of these items is an electron microscope (presumably an…

(The semi-automatic method I've been using to post Links Dumps has broken, so here's a hand-edited version of what I've tagged for the last few days. Suggestions of alternative automated ways to post tagged links are welcome in comments.) Text Editors in The Lord of the Rings -- Crooked Timber "vi: Moria Like Fangorn, ancient and deep, with hints of the long labor of a great people. There is, supposedly, a monumental city of stone down here somewhere but it's so dark I can't see a damn thing. No, wait! A shaft of light illuminates some runes! They read as follows…

One of the problems with a long-running series is that it accretes backstory as you go (unless, of course, you go the Rex Stout route and just pretend that time doesn't pass for the characters, even when you have the client in a later book being the son of a character from one of the earlier volumes...). This is particularly troublesome for the sort of series in which the characters become more experienced and powerful as they go along. After several books, it starts to become difficult to find credible threats for your protagonist to face. For the 13th volume of the Dresden Files, Jim…

SteelyKid's third birthday is next week, but we're going to Kate's mother's for the day itself, so we're having a birthday party today for her and her friends from day care. So, even though all the news is depressing, it's a day to be happy. So here's a happy song: (OK, I don't quite know what to make of the final bit with the flower, but the tune is relentlessly cheery, and never fails to raise a smile when it comes up on iTunes. It's the signature Friday tune of one of the DJ's on KEXP, otherwise I wouldn't ever have heard of it.)

I'm going to be talking to someone about treatments of parallel worlds in popular media next week, and as the only going mass media concern with a parallel-worlds plot seems to be the show Fringe, it would be helpful for me to be able to talk sensibly about it. Thus, two questions: 1) Where is the best place to look for an explanation of the show's mythology, particularly in the parallel worlds area? 2) Can you suggest a smallish (ideally single digits) number of episodes to watch to get the idea of how this plays out in the show? I am aware that, the Internet being what it is, there will be…

I'm not a huge Mieville fan, but the descriptions I read of Kraken sounded like good fun. As I like fun books, and a fun book written by China Mieville seemed sufficiently improbable that I just had to see it, I picked it up a little while ago, and read it over the last week or so while biking to nowhere or waiting for SteelyKid to go to sleep. The book follows the adventures of Billy Harrow, a biologist working for the Darwin Center in London, who was responsible for preserving the giant squid they have on display there. It's the pride of the collection and a big tourist draw, so when Billy…

We're having a birthday party for SteelyKid tomorrow, so I have a ton of stuff to do today. I may have something more substantive later, but for the moment, here are a couple of videos to enjoy. First, from the Minute Physics set of videos at YouTube, an explanation of why you have quantum physics to thank for sunny days: There's a bunch of good stuff in the Minute Physics channel, so if you're looking for a way to kill time in small chunks, have at it. And if you prefer your physics to be classical, this demo from Harvard has been making the rounds: Isn't physics awesome? Of course it is.

Design View / Andy Rutledge - News Redux "Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days." (tags: journalism internet technology design blogs culture society) Richard Dansky » Six Things You Don't Want To Do At A Genre Writing Convention "3-…

Shhh! There's an Artist at work: That's SteelyKid hard at work on something. I think she was writing my name, though it might've been writing Emmy's name. It's a little tough to tell from the photographs. Of course, the real purpose of making art is to be able to discuss it: This led to my new favorite SteelyKid conversation: SteelyKid: That's a car. Kate: Is the car going somewhere? SteelyKid: No. It just stays on the paper. She went on to explain that the car had been inside the marker, but then she took the top off the marker, and put it on the paper, and the car came out. Which is…

Unlike the previous post, this is not a rhetorical question that I will ask and then answer. I genuinely do not know the answer. I could Google it, of course, but I'd like to see if somebody reading this is able to deduce the correct answer from the available evidence. So, here's the deal: as an attempt to recover from a rather sedentary couple of months due to computer-based work and some plantar fascitis kind of problem in my foot that's keeping me from playing hoops as much as I'd like, I'm spending a while each day on the exercise bike we have upstairs. While I do a bunch of reading of…

A while back, I explained how polarized sunglasses work, the short version of which is that light reflected off the ground in front of you tends to be polarized, and by blocking that light, they reduce the effects of glare. This is why fishermen wear polarized sunglasses (they make it easier to see through the surface of water) and why they're good for driving (they cut down on glare off the road ahead). I almost exclusively buy polarized sunglasses, because I like this feature. But let's say you have a pair of polarized sunglasses that broke, because they were cheap to begin with (such as…

How to turn the GOP into a party of liberals - War Room - Salon.com "July 28, 2011: Barack Obama announces he's had second thoughts, now fully endorses Boehner debt ceiling plan, "Cut, Cap and Balance," and Reid plan. His new bottom line? He'll accept anything Congress can pass, as long as it isn't just a short-term clean debt limit extension. July 28 (20 minutes later): House passes clean debt limit extension through 2013." (tags: politics us economics silly blogs) Ravings of a Feral Genius: The Feral Genius Applies For A Government Job "Ridiculous as these examples sound, I still…

There's a lot of stuff in the news lately about asteroids, what with the Dawn mission orbiting Vesta, and the talk of a manned asteroid mission as a possible future step for NASA. Prompted by this, I'm going to dip into the territory usually occupied by Matt and Rhett, and ask a somewhat silly question: What size asteroid would you be able to throw a baseball into orbit, a la Bugs Bunny? (Sadly, probably for copyright reasons, I couldn't quickly find a YouTube video of the cartoon where Bugs throws a baseball all the way around the world. But you can probably picture it, even if you're too…

Kevin Drum is puzzled by default panic: If we run out of money, the federal government will stop paying some of its bills. That's bad, and it will quite likely have a negative effect on the economy. Corporations are right to be apprehensive about this. But that's all that will happen. Treasury bonds will continue to roll over and interest payments will continue to be made. That means there's no reason to sell Treasurys; no reason they can't continue to be used as collateral; no reason that access to capital should dry up; and no reason that companies will need more cash. At least, that's how…

For the past few years, astronomer and SF author Mike Brotherton has been running the Launch Pad Workshop, a program bringing interested SF authors to Wyoming (where he's on the faculty) to learn about modern astronomy. The idea is to teach writers the real facts about the weird and wonderful things going on in astronomy these days, so they can write better stories about astronomical objects and ideas, and reach a wider audience through fiction. This year's workshop just ended, and Brotherton has links to some of the presentations, and blogs about it from the attendees. I really like this…

Workers of the world unite | slacktivist "So the NFL lockout has ended in some kind of deal that I would summarize here except that the details of professional sports contract negotiations make my eyes glaze over and, since I'm no longer getting paid to edit NFL labor stories for a daily paper, I've reverted back to ignoring all those details. My frustration with this long saga isn't just with the tediousness of the dispute, it's based more on the perpetual missed opportunity that professional athletes' unions largely ignore to build connections with other workers in other unions." (tags:…