We took SteelyKid to the playground at one of the local elementary schools on Sunday morning. this one includes an odd sort of slide, made of dozens of rollers that are 1-2 inches in diameter (they're all the same size-- the range is just because I didn't measure them carefully). They're on really good bearings, and while it's kind of noisy, it's a reasonably smooth ride. There is, however, one slightly mysterious aspect to this slide, clearly visible in this video that Kate was good enough to shoot for me: SteelyKid takes something like 6 seconds to go down the slide, while it only takes me…

Thoughts on Cheating « Cooperative Catalyst "Don't tell teachers, "whatever it takes," and then act surprised when they follow that advice to its logical extreme.  Don't tell the principal, "you'll lose your job and we'll shut down the school if it doesn't make AYP," and then act surprised when the leadership finds ways to cheat. When politicians set ultimatums like job security, institutional safety and student retention on kill-and-drill tests, cheating will occur.  True, the teachers in Atlanta were unethical.  In many cases, their students would have performed well on the tests if the…

This morning, via Twitter, I ran across one of the most spectacular examples of deceptive data presentation that I've ever seen. The graph in question is reproduced in this blog post by Bryan Caplan, and comes from this econ paper about benefits of education. The plot looks like this: This is one panel clipped out of a four-part graph, showing the percentage of survey respondents reporting that they are satisfied with their current job. The horizontal axis is the years of schooling for different categories of respondents. So, I looked at that, and said "Wow, people with more education are…

Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls ""Maya," I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, "very nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you too," she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice. "Hey, what are you reading?" I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love books. I'm nuts for them. I let that show. Her eyes got bigger, and the practiced, polite facial expression gave way to genuine excitement over this topic. She paused, though, a little shy of me, a stranger. "I LOVE books," I said. "Do you?" Most kids do. "YES," she said. "And I can read them all by…

A little while back, I bought The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Abraham is the author of the highly-regarded but not all that highly sold Long Price Quartet. I've heard nothing but good things about this, but I couldn't get through the first book, for reasons that are entirely personal and no reflection on the quality of the book(*). Since this is the start of a new and unrelated series, I figured it was a good way to give him a shot, so I picked up the ebook. A little more recently, I picked up Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, a new space opera that's gotten some good reviews. "James…

Ironic Effects of Anti-Prejudice Messages The authors conducted two experiments which looked at the effect of two different types of motivational intervention - a controlled form (telling people what they should do) and a more personal form (explaining why being non-prejudiced is enjoyable and personally valuable).In experiment one; participants were randomly assigned one of two brochures to read: an autonomy brochure or a controlling brochure. These brochures discussed a new campus initiative to reduce prejudice. A third group was offered no motivational instructions to reduce prejudice.…

The final content area from my DAMOP overview is Precision Measurement. This is also the smallest area, with only one invited session on the topic on Fundamental Symmetry Tests, though two of the "Hot Topics" talks (by Zheng-Tian Lu and Ed Hinds) were precision measurement talks. You might be able to make an argument that this doesn't really deserve its own category, but I was the one giving the talk, and I love this stuff (though I absolutely do not have the temperament necessary to do it), so it gets its own category. I also think there is a fairly distinct culture to precision measurement…

The topic sucking up all blogospheric oxygen at the moment is the great elevator incident. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find lots of good summaries and explanations, including from Phil Plait and Josh Rosenau. The core of the story is that Rebecca Watson was propositioned in an elevator by a skeevy guy at a convention, and said "Guys, don't do this." Leading Nü Atheist Richard Dawkins scoffed at this because "nothing happened," and basically said Watson was overreacting, and has dug in his heels in the face of numerous people telling him he's wrong. I'm not going to…

Evil and Riddles: The Grey King | Tor.com I don't need to re-read this, really I don't. And yet... (tags: books sf review blogs tor nostalgia literature) Cheryl's Mewsings » Blog Archive » Anthologies: Some Data "On Saturday I mentioned that I had been sent some data about gender splits in anthologies. I have since been taking a close look at it and want to present some of the data. I am doing this: Because I think it is better to be talking about lots of data than about individual books; Because I'm a bit tired of being told there's no evidence for gender bias; and Because I think…

This week's Toddler Blogging is a cell-phone picture in slightly dim light, but it's too cute not to use: This is particularly noteworthy because the fire truck was bought by Grandma and Grandpa last year, while the fire hat was bought by Grandma and Grandpa before they were grandparents. In 1974 or thereabouts, I would guess, because it was originally mine, when I was little. And that's really all I've got today, as I'm still tired from travel.

It is my fervent hope that at some point in the future, we will once again live in a society where all discussions of politics are not indescribably depressing. Really, that pretty much sums up my feelings about everything in the news right now, on-line and off. There are a bunch of things going on that I sorta-kinda feel I maybe ought to write something about, but I think I'd rather slam my fingers in my desk drawer repeatedly than type any of those posts. People with happy news are encouraged to post it in the comments.

The Slacktiverse: DragonRaid: moral teaching through roleplaying games? "In the mid-90's a friend and I became fascinated by the "Christian adventure game" (similar to a roleplaying game) called DragonRaid, published by Adventures in Christ. (Details can be found at the DragonRaid website.) We never managed to actually play it, largely because we were living in different countries, but we made characters, read through the initial adventure, and discussed it at length by email. [...] I have been thinking about DragonRaid lately in the context of the Slacktivist and Slacktiverse discussions…

Today's Links Dump came late because I was at the meeting of the APS's Committee on Informing the Public. We apologize for the inconvenience, but I was too busy acquiring this critically important scientific data: What is that, you ask? It's this: That's the Superman roller coaster at the Six Flags America park outside of DC, which is where we're meeting this time. Lots of amusement parks do Physics Days as outreach programs, so we did the Physics Day thing ourselves, wearing ugly blue vests holding accelerometers on the major rides. Of course, the vest-mounted accelerometer I was wearing…

As Shuttle Program Ends, Dreams of Space Linger - NYTimes.com Most of the scientists I know would be thrilled to see humans exploring space, landing on Mars, for example -- they just don't think that science should pick up the check. Many of them were suspicious of the shuttle, both because of the cost drain and because making instruments like the space telescope compatible with it would compromise the potential science, restricting them to low earth orbit, for example, and making them hostage to the exigencies of human spaceflight. But politically, if not technically, the shuttle and the…

Performance and Recording: "Everyone sing the chorus--including intellectuals!" -- Crooked Timber "I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy and Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music [...] Ong's book is a classic. Out of date in some ways (published in 1982), but still worth a read for the way it stakes out a para-McLuhanite position on the orality-literacy debate. Wald's book came out a couple years ago and is a real eye/ear-opener (I'll let my kids decide whether it's a classic, when…

The fourth content area from my whirlwind overview of DAMOP is "traditional" AMO physics. This was the hardest to talk about in my talk, because I know it the least well, but ironically, that makes it really easy to write up here, because I don't have much to say about it. Where the other areas were largely about using atomic, molecular, and optical physics to do stuff (simulating condensed matter systems, generating coherent x-rays, demonstrating cool quantum effects), this sub-sub-field is concerned with directly investigating the properties of atoms and molecules, usually by bouncing other…

I'm going to be at an amusement park tomorrow, for a meeting of the APS's Committee on Informing the Public, which oversees the APS outreach program. Why an amusement park? Because a common outreach-type program is to do a Physics Day at an amusement park and talk about the physics of roller coasters and the like. And why should we miss out on all that fun? we have a responsibility to make sure that the physics content of these programs is sound. As part of this, I'll be going on a bunch of rides-- for SCIENCE, mind you-- and it occurs to me that while the park or the APS may supply some sort…

The Virtuosi: Coriolis Effect on a Home Run "I like baseball.  Well, technically, I like laying on the couch for three hours half-awake eating potato chips and mumbling obscenities at the television.  But let's not split hairs here. Anyway, out of curiosity and in partial atonement for the sins of my past [1] I would now like to do a quick calculation to see how much effect the Coriolis force has on a home-run ball." (tags: sports science physics blogs virtusoi) Kravitz: College athletes need Bill of Rights | The Indianapolis Star | indystar.com "The latest math on the revenue breakdown…

Between the holiday weekend and finally getting to concentrate on book edits, there hasn't been much time for blogging recently. So here's another SteelyKid-at-the-Bronx-Zoo picture for filler: As I said when I posted this to google+, this practically demands a caption. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with anything better than "...same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the ZOO!" But I'm sure somebody reading this can do better in the comments. (Please keep in mind, though, that this is my daughter we're talking about. Anything excessively crass is subject to summary deletion.)

YouTube - âªSlightly less than two drinks (cut from That Mitchell and Webb Look S04E04)â¬â "You must never drink any more than slightly less than two drinks. Beyond that state of mildly intoxicated perfection lies drunken madness, 3rd pints, kebabs, and destruction." (tags: booze silly comedy video youtube culture) The Slacktiverse: Faith and Hope, 20% off! "There were three different bears, in all. Happy Bear, who was happy; Brave Bear, who wanted to be brave ("Dear God. Please make me BRAVE like a lion! RARRR!"); and Thankful Bear, who was thankful for everything that Happy Bear was…