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Questioning Scientific Literacy Questions

Every other year, the National Science Board publishes its Science and Engineering Indicators report: data points from various aspects of academia, industry, and public life that aspire to gauge the nation's scientific strengths and weaknesses. One of the more interesting indicators is a survey given to adults and students about basic scientific questions, i.e. does the Earth circle the Sun or vice versa. This year, however, the questions about evolution and the big bang were dropped at the last minute, under the reasoning that many respondents know the correct answers but give the incorrect…

The trouble with science journalism

Janet Stemwedel and Chad Orzel have each written excellent posts on the necessity of improving science journalism. Janet argues that what's needed is to improve science education: If there were an actual clamor for science reporting that was detailed, informative, and grounded in fact -- a clamor not just from scientists but from the people, speaking in large numbers -- then news organizations would have no choice but to provide it, lest they lose their audience (and ad revenue) to someone who would. Right? Right! Of course we need a more educated public. Then journalists would be forced to…

Chad Orzel on Science Blogging

Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Principles, has a nice article today in Inside Higher Ed about the value of science blogging, both in his own career and in the scientific process in general. This is a view that I of course agree with and think is important, and Chad brings a unique perspective on the issue. Go check out his article, but here's a taste: As essential as this [communication] step is, it is in many ways the weakest link in the scientific process today. While there are more scientific papers published today than ever before, a combination of technical sophistication and scientific…

The Friday Fermentable: ScienceBlogs.com Good, Cheap Wine

A back alley conversation among several ScienceBloggers is the impetus for this week's post. A couple of weeks ago, Dave Munger over at Cognitive Daily asked all of us about our favorite cheap wine deals. So, with the permission of my SciBlings, I thought I'd let the readership in on the discussion and suggestions: From the Mungers: 1. Jaja de Jau (nice Cotes de Roussillon, with great bite) 2. Goats do Roam (Grenache/Syrah from South Africa) 3. Antica Corte Valpolicella A couple that used to be good but have fallen off in recent years. If you're still drinking these, you can find better: 1…

The SAT Challenge: The essays have been graded; now it's your turn

Two weeks ago, after reading the New York Times Article which judged the best high school writers harshly, Chad Orzel came up with an idea that was so good it just had to be tried: Somebody ought to get a bunch of bloggers together, and give them the writing SAT under timed conditions, and see what they come up with. I took Chad up on the challenge, and together we created the Blogger SAT Challenge, giving writers from across the blogosphere the chance to show that they can do better than high school students. How did they do? Well, 500 people looked at the essay question, but just 109 were…

Talking Sense

Chad Orzel, responding to Sean Carroll, is absolutely right. The question is whether a panel at the World Science Festival (funded by Templeton, ZOMG!) should include incompatibilist atheists in a discussion about science and religion. Chad argues that doing so would derail the discussion: In the end, I'm not convinced you need anyone on the panel to make the case that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. That idea is out there, coming from both sides of the science-religion split (and you'll notice they don't have any young-earth creationists on the panel, either). The…

Weekend Diversion: Science Book Reviews for the Holidays

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." -Henry David Thoreau Every day that we have free or leisure time, there's this great conflict as to how we spend it: working to better ourselves and improve our knowledge, and taking the time to enjoy our lives in whatever way we see fit. Sometimes, this goes horribly awry, as the B-52s would attest in their (relatively) new song, Funplex. But there's often no better way to combine these two pursuits than by reading a good book.…

Some Sunday Links

Lotsa links. First, the science: Senator Brownback is a moron. But you probably already knew that... I argue that the reason global warming hasn't caught fire (so to speak) is that problems without clear solutions aren't popular, although here's one thing we shouldn't be doing to combat global warming. Five new species of sea slugs have been discovered. Revere reports that when children get influenza-associated bacterial infections, they're usually staph, not strep. Instead of using antibiotics as growth promoters in agriculture, European farmers are using other methods. Revere has an…

1-2-3, the Goosed/Book meme

Oh-oh, it seems it's a meme season again! I'll dutifully do them, one at a time. Today - the good old 123 book meme, which memeticized over time into being called "Goosed meme". I was tagged by Lance Mannion who was hoping that the book closest to me is the OpenLab07. Sorry. It's not. It was until earlier today. Tough luck, Lance, you'll just have to buy it. Anyway, the rules first: ⢠look up page 123 in the nearest book ⢠look for the fifth sentence ⢠then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123. The nearest book is the one which arrived in the mail…

Worldcon Talk: How to Effectively Talk About Science to Non-Scientists

My talk was Friday morning at 10am, on the title given above. This wasn't my choice-- when I volunteered to be on programming, I said some general areas that I'd be willing to talk about, and left it at that. Somebody else made up the title and description for the talk, which made it very slightly like PowerPoint Karaoke. Happily, this is a topic I can easily discourse about, but I think in the future I'll try to remember to suggest more specific talk titles... I've posted the slides for the talk on SlideShare, and will attempt embedding them below: Worldcon09 View more presentations from…

Congratulations, Terra Sig Readers!

Okay, here's one final update on our drive to raise DonorsChoose.org funds for K-12 teachers to conduct projects in their classrooms. An e-mail came in today from Charles Best, the Bronx schoolteacher who established DonorsChoose: Thanks in great part to the attention ScienceBlogs generated, we made Internet history! During the month of October, readers of more than a hundred blogs gave $420,000 to classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org, benefiting 75,000 students. To put that in perspective, it took four months for the hugely successful Facebook causes application--with millions of users--…

On PZ, Don Imus Atheism, and "Atheistblogs.com"?

Myers with Richard Dawkins: Does his atheist punditry damage the scienceblogs.com brand? Call me agnostic on the controversy that has erupted over the Catholic wafer incident in Florida. On the one hand I see the outcry from conservative groups as opportunistic and ridiculous. The reported death threats are outrageous, should be condemned by all parties, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The calls for expelling the student or the firing of PZ Myers are equally ridiculous. Yet I also recognize that the Communion wafer has deep symbolic importance to the Catholic community and in…

Blogger Book Explosion

This year has seen an explosion of books written by science bloggers, and it looks like the trend is going to continue well into 2010. Jason Rosenhouse recently published The Monty Hall Problem and is hard at work on a new title about what goes on at creationist conferences. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum released Unscientific America, and Kirshenbaum is nearing completion on a new book, The Science of Kissing. The ever-popular Carl Zimmer brought us two new gems, Microcosm and the soon-to-be-released The Tangled Bank. I can't wait to see what's next. Rebecca Skloot's long-…

Everyone else on the internet is wrong

I'm crabby. Normally I'm a pretty easy-going dude, but right now I'm crabby and some of the stuff I'm reading on the internet lately is so stultifyingly stupid, I just can't contain myself any longer. It's not unexpected for Dr. Communication-is-My-Field to belie his title with every word he writes, but last week's post of his is truly a new level of dumbassery. Nisbet, who revels in telling the rest of the world how poorly they communicate, lobbed a shit-bomb into the blogosphere when he declared: Much of the incivility online can be attributed to anonymity. And with a rare few exceptions…

Ask A ScienceBlogger (Round Two): the Results are In!

For this week, ScienceBlogs editorial asked its cabal of bloggers to answer, if the spirit moved them, the following question: Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years? More consensus this week than last -- but that is the nature of a yes/no question. Luckily, there was some fine exposition along the way. The good news: at least 7 out of 10 ScienceBloggers expect humanity as such to endure for at least ten more fun-filled decades. Their answers, glossed and linked, below the fold. At Cognitive Daily, the Mungers answer: yes, but.... In 100 or, more likely, 1000 years, advances in…

Friday Blog Roundup

In advance of Super-Duper Tuesday voting, bloggers have some thoughts about the Republican presidential hopefuls: Tula Connell at AFL-CIO Weblog reports that the investment firm founded by Mitt Romney is supporting a system that keeps Florida tomato workers impoverished. Michael Millenson at Health Affairs examines Mike Huckabeeâs belief that tackling obesity and smoking can control health care costs. Chris Mooney at DeSmogBlog wonders if we should trust John McCain on global warming. On the Democratic side, Van Jones at Gristmill explains what those âgreen-collar jobsâ the candidates…

The PepsiGate linkfest

I will not be saying anything about PepsiCo thing myself yet. I do have opinions (and decisions that come from them), but I am not revealing anything until I am ready (and it may end up being one of those horribly long posts, who knows). But in the meantime I can put together this linkfest, so you can have a one-spot-shopping place for all the key posts about the event. I don't think this is a complete collection, and I could not order them in a chronological order (too much work, so the order is random) but close enough - the key posts/articles are here, and the comment sections are very…

Choose Your Own Con Panel

Kate and I will once again be attending Boskone in a couple of weeks, and for the second year running, I'll be on a handful of panels. I had a great time as a panelist last year, so I volunteered again, and I've been looking forward to finding out what I'll be on. I got the preliminary schedule yesterday, and it seems I'm moderating a panel with the slightly alarming title "Is Science Fiction Necessary?" (There's no further description, other than a list of panelists (Tobias Buckell, Rosemary Kirstein, Karl Schroeder, Charles Stross), though that's apparently an oversight, and some more…

Saturday Goofing Off

A quick Olympic question: How would a native of China pronounce the j in Beijing? All the commentators pronounce it like the J in the French je suis, but I've heard that in China the pronunciation would be closer to the J in jingle. I have no idea if this is true, and I'm not at the university now so I can't just ask one of my Chinese friends. Anyone know? Now how about some short items from around the web, which I particularly enjoyed. Here's Swans on Tea and our own Chad Orzel on the (lack of) menace of radioactive bananas and granite countertops. Here's Cocktail Party Physics on the age…

Framing Science Moves to Big Think, Relaunches as the Age of Engagement Examining Communication, Culture, and Public Affairs

Today I move to my new home at Big Think http://bigthink.com/blogs/age-of-engagement [Follow the blog via its RSS feed, on Twitter, and on Facebook.] Over the past four years at Scienceblogs, I have had the wonderful opportunity to be part of a blogging network that includes dozens of talented writers and thinkers. Current and former Sciblings such as Deb Blum, Ed Brayton, Benjamin Cohen, Bora, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Jonah Lehrer, Chris Mooney, David Ng, Randy Olson, Chad Orzel, Jessica Palmer, Christina Pikas, Janet Stemwedel, and Carl Zimmer have inspired my writing and introduced me to…

ScienceBlogs Must Read: How to Make a PowerPoint

Bad teaching is one of my pet peeves, but I go back and forth on PowerPoint. I think its egregious abuse most of its users shouldn't necessarily bring a cloud on the whole program -- sometimes it is used effectively. Still most people are not using it correctly, in a way that facilitates good teaching rather than is a crutch for bad teaching. Chad Orzel from Uncertain Principles has an excellent guide to using PowerPoint for good rather than evil: 2) Limit Your Material. I tend to view one slide per minute as an absolute upper bound on any given talk, and I rarely reach that. The most…

String Theory Kerfuffle

It's nice to see scientific fighting discourse from the outside. I say this as a spectator wanting to see a fight, but as a scientist it makes me worried. Yesterday I mentioned the John Hogan/George Johnson vlog about the Greene/Krauss debate on string theory on Bloggingheads.tv ... well there are quite a few commentaries about the whole recent episode. Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variances is upset. I do agree with his view that public debate is good, but I have to say that he utters outrageous statements that as a scientist make me cringe. I have a long-percolating post that I hope to finish…

Regardless of the specialty, they're all geeks.

Alex Palazzo at The Daily Transcript has posted his lighthearted take on the disciplines within the life sciences. Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers notes some important omissions while pointing out that the categories are more porous in real life. Meanwhile, Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles sets out a taxonomy of physics specialties. If you think I'm going to give you the geek chart for chemistry or philosophy of science, you must be daft. There are good reasons for this. Even though chemists are generally pretty good at sorting themselves and others into the broad categories (organic…

Ask A ScienceBlogger, Round Five: All the Answers.

Ask a Big Question, get...fewer answers. But really well-considered, provocative ones. This week, the ScienceBloggers mulled: "Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?" Read on for their relplies. Most of the bloggers pointed out the question isn't asking about a "brain drain" as it's most commonly defined -- rather, it's asking whether the influx of foreign…

Peer review and science.

Chad Orzel takes a commenter to task for fetishizing peer review: Saying that only peer-reviewed articles (or peer-reviewable articles) count as science only reinforces the already pervasive notion that science is something beyond the reach of "normal" people. In essence, it's saying that only scientists can do science, and that science is the exclusive province of geeks and nerds. That attitude is, I think, actively harmful to our society. It's part of why we have a hard time getting students to study math and science, and finding people to teach math and science. We shouldn't be…

Links for 2011-04-05

Surviving the World - Lesson 921 - Offense I'm offended. (tags: comics surviving-world pictures culture silly) The birth of electromagnetism (1820) | Skulls in the Stars "It is oddly fitting that the birth of electromagnetism, and an entirely new direction in physics, started with the tiniest twitch of a compass needle.  In the year 1820, Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) observed the twitch of said compass needle in the presence of an electric current, providing the first definite evidence of a link between electricity and magnetism that would set the tone for much of…

Tell Us a Story

Have a story to tell from the 2010 World Science Festival? Maybe it was something you learned? (Like, for instance, if the Earth were to be a black hole it would have to collapse to the size of a grain of sand.) Perhaps it was a serendipitous chat you had when bumping into your favorite scientist, artist, or author over the weekend's festivities? (I had a charming chat with Dr. John Mather and his wife about the crude pocket telescopes he used as a child that ultimately inspired him to take a closer look at the cosmos.) Or maybe it was a conversation you had with friends inspired by one of…

Blast From the Past: Letter to and From Luis Alvarez

I have mentioned before that when I was a kid, I wrote a letter to Luis Alvarez, the 1968 Nobel laureate in Physics, asking some questions about his theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, which had been featured in a NOVA special. I got a very nice letter back from him, very graciously correcting the dumber questions I asked. This made a very favorable impression, which in turn played a role in getting me to include him in the work-in-progress. Since I was thinking about Alvarez for the book, I asked my parents if they still had a copy of the letter, which for many years I had…

Ask A ScienceBlogger, Round Three: the Results are In!

This week, the ScienceBloggers lined up to take a crack at this fine question: "If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?" Below the fold, in their own words, twelve ScienceBloggers name the ideas they'd be happier if we all grasped firmly. But first, an above-the-fold reminder to send your Ask A ScienceBlogger questions to askablogger@seedmediagroup.com. Razib at Gene Expression would have the public understand that the essence of science isn't findings, but process: "my reply is that the public needs to know that the most important idea…

Education and Politics Weekly Channel Update 10-1-08

In this post: the large versions of the Education and Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education and Careers. Math class in Penang, Malaysia. From Flickr, by cleong Politics. Massachusetts state capitol building. From Flickr, by redjar Reader comments of the week: This week in the Education and Careers Channel Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles took some time out to fantasize about Fixing Science Education. Given unlimited, nigh-Godlike powers, what would need fixing? Chad explained: The key to fixing science education,…

Education and Medicine Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Medicine & Health channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week. Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Duchamp Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by jurvetson Reader comments of the week: In Don't Go to Grad School (in the Humanities), Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles dipenses some sage advice for prospective grad students: "If they're not offering to pay you, don't go." For physics students but even more for humanities students, the potential payoffs are not enough, in Chad's opinion, to…

Applying science to art

Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel's hosting a discussion on who should be on a hypothetical Mount Rushmore of science. There's a fairly broad consensus that Darwin, Einstein, and Newton make the cut, but rather heated debate on who should be the fourth member. Many of Chad's readers suggest Sigmund Freud. I found that surprising, since the field of psychology has largely moved away from the work of Freud. Freud is still very influential in literary and cultural studies, but not so much in the world of science. Indeed, one of Freud's lasting influences was the attempt to undertake a…

Environment and Humanities & Social Science Channel Weekly Update 10/28/08

Hello again, ScienceBlogs enthusiasts. Today we will be taking a look at this week's hot posts in the Environment and Humanities & Social Science channels. I'm Arikia Millikan, your ScienceBlogs intern, and I'll be your guide. Environment channel photo. The PPL-owned nuclear cooling towers in Conyngham and Salem Townships, Luzerne County. As seen from the Council Cup scenic overlook. From Flickr, by Nicholas T Environment October 27, 2008—There is perhaps no image more awesome and terrifying than that of the atomic bomb. It is the one thing (that we know of... LHC black hole dragons…

Friday Blog Roundup

Did you know that Wednesday was World Malaria Day? Farzaneh and Aman at Technology, Health & Development marked the occasion with posts about initiatives that are tackling the disease, while Merrill Goozner at GoozNews wonders why the World Banks seems to lack a sense of urgency on the issue. Regular ScienceBlogs readers probably noticed that bloggersâ use of charts from scientific journals, and the larger issue of open scientific discourse, was a hot topic this week. It all started when Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle put up an informative post about a study recently published in the…

Chad Orzel on ESPN

Fellow scienceblogger Chad Orzel has a post about ESPN, which is itself a reaction to this post from another blog. I can't say I disagree with some of the reasons from the original post: You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to a screaming clown who is nothing less than a thug wannabe... I remember Sunday nights with Patrick and Olberman being a smart, funny, hip program. There is nothing left on your networks that fits that description. Allowing Bonds on Bonds to air on your network (Barry owned a piece of the production…

Hey to Uganda

One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn't recognize it, but it's somewhere around here). He's there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come back to campus next spring and talk about their experiences. As part of this, he's keeping a blog, because it's all about blogs these days. Steve's a great guy, and from all reports appears to be doing well and doing good. His most recent post calls me out, though: I love the…

Technology & Middle Earth

Chad Orzel's got a great post up about the physics of Lord of the Rings. It's about Legolas the elf and his excellent eyesight. His eyes are so good that in fact they're probably operating well beyond the physical diffraction limits of any optical device with a human-sized pupil. Some speculation was discussed about how his eyes might plausibly be so good without magic: maybe he can see in the short-wavelength UV, maybe he can do interferometry(!), maybe elf pupils are bigger than we think, maybe the Middle Earth "league" is shorter than our identically-named unit of distance, along with a…

Why Biologists' Career Problems Are Unique: Life Outside of Academia

So my post about why biomedical scientists suffer more than others in STEM fields seems to have received some attention. ScienceBlogling Chad Orzel writes: That's true, but here's the thing: it's not unique to biomedical science. The same problem afflicts physics-- every time I post something about wanting to attract more students into physics, I'm guaranteed to get a few hectoring comments about how irresponsible it is to try to recruit students to a field with too many Ph.D.'s and not enough jobs. And it's not like being on the tenure track in physics is all hugs and flowers and adorable…

Worldcon wrapup

And speaking of reading, a couple of the books on the summer reading list I posted yesterday were actually purchased at the World Science Fiction Convention dealers' room! We were lucky that this year the con was in Montreal, my home town and very near Ste-Agathe, where we spent most of our vacation time. The whole family came down to Montreal for the Friday of the con, while I stayed for Saturday and Sunday as well. Overall, the con was a blast. I had a fantastic time! Of course, since I lived in Montreal for 38 years and was quite involved in Montreal sf fandom for a few years (I was on…

A Global Slant On Nobel Prizes

So far this week, my blogging had a distinctly local slant on Nobel Prizes, so now I want to do something different. Quite a lot of people have noticed how many science prizes this year went to Europeans. Read the excellent treatments by Katherine Sharpe, Abel Pharmboy, Steinn Sigurosson, Chad Orzel and PZ Myers to see the range of ideas and opinions on this. I want to add just a couple of brief points... If you look at the list of winners of Nobels for Literature, you will notice that they come from all over the world. If you look at the Peace Prizes, they are also from all over, though…

The Best Life Science Blogs in The Scientist

The good folks at The Scientist asked a few of us to recommend some of the best and most interesting life science blogs. We have done so and the article is now online: So, we at The Scientist are asking you to help compile the first list of the best life science blogs. Tell us what your favorite life science blogs are and why by clicking the button and leaving a comment, and we will publish a list of the most popular choices across the different areas of life sciences. With your help we hope to provide a list of who is currently hot in the science blogosphere, and why you should be reading…

Effect of Night-Shift Nap on ER Residents and Nurses

This is another one of those studies that shows pretty much what you would expect.  There are some surprises, though: href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/EmergencyMedicine/EmergencyMedicine/tb/4434">Night-Shift Nap Awakens ER Residents and Nurses By Judith Groch, Senior Writer, MedPage Today November 03, 2006 STANFORD, Calif., Nov. 3 -- Allowed a 40-minute nap midway through 12-hour night shifts, emergency room residents and nurses responded with more vigilance and vigor, found researchers here. Nevertheless, the randomized study that compared nappers with non-nappers working the…

My Boskone Schedule

The usual "This is the stuff that looks interesting to me" post, based on the preliminary online program. Subject to change if they move things around, or if I discover something I overlooked that sounds more interesting, or if I decide I'm hungry, and opt to blow off panels in favor of food. This year's program is lighter on panels, but includes both a signing and a reading. Which will be a very different experience than years past... Friday 7pm Harbor 1: The Singularity: An Appraisal Arguably the idea of the Singularity -- a period where change happens so quickly that life afterwards is…

About those unhappy biology students

Wow - my post about unhappy bio grad students is getting massive traffic. (Hi SlashDotters and StumbleUpon-ers!) Mike the Mad Biologist, my original inspiration, has responded here and here to all the buzz. I pretty much said everything I wanted to say in the original post, and I don't pretend to have an explanation or cure for this problem. But I see that there's been some snarkiness on the intertubez (shocking!!!) while I was away watching the developments in the Myriad appeal. So I want to clarify two points. First, let me emphasize that I'm not saying graduate students in other fields don…

Ask A ScienceBlogger: the Results are In!

Last week, we at the Seed mother-ship taxed the collective brain-power of the ScienceBloggers with the following question: If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why? Their responses have swooped from the sublime to the ridiculous...and back again. ScienceBloggers' picks for most despicable invention, below the fold. Janet Stemwedel, of Adventres in Ethics and Science, fingered "embedded advertising", like product placements in TV shows and movies, after toying with nominating cell phones and realizing she's mostly…

Experimental Physics for Morons, #47

I spent the bulk of yesterday afternoon doing vacuum system work, specifically working on the system to feed gas into the atomic beam source. My feelings about this can be inferred from the Facebook status message I set at the time: "Chad Orzel abhors a vacuum." The apparatus I'm building uses laser cooling to decelerate an atomic beam of krypton atoms in a particular metastable state. This works brilliantly to slow metastable krypton atoms down, but the only atoms affected by the laser are krypton atoms-- everything else continues along unimpeded. As a result, the entire experiment needs to…

Learning to write like a scientist: factors worth noting.

I'm following up on yesterday's post on where scientists learn how to write (and please, keep those comments coming). First, Chad Orzel has a nice post about how he learned to write like a scientist. It involves torturing drafts on the rack, and you owe it to yourself to read it. Second, I'll be putting up a post tonight about the best scientific writing assignment ever, at least in my graduate school experience. It's one more professors teaching graduate students might consider adapting. In the meantime, I want to throw out a set of factors that probably make a difference in the process of…

What Does it Mean to "Learn Science"?

One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects. Draft date: June 30, 2008 I just checked my watch, and apparently it's time for another science blogging meta wankfest! This time, Blake Stacey is complaining that we don't teach science with our blogs: My thesis is that it's not yet…

Teaching Carnival #13

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the Teaching Carnival where we discuss all things academic, from teaching to college life, from HigherEd policy to graduate school research. Last time, I separated the Two Cultures in a way. This time I want to keep them mixed - both sides of campus often deal with the same issues anyway. There are tons of links, so let's start right away... SATs and getting into college Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles commented on the top SAT essays published by the NYTimes. He argued that writing a decent essay in 25 minutes with a prompt not known in advance is…

Bloggers making a vas deferens

I am very deeply touched (as I was literally yesterday) by the outpouring of support and best wishes from fellow bloggers on the liveblogging of my vasectomy. For all of the dark humor and puns, you have each been instrumental in supporting my aim of telling men relatively quick and painless the procedure is, or at least getting them to think about this as a contraceptive alternative to having their wives undergo a more involved tubal ligation. I'll still never understand what makes things fly in the blogosphere as I spend hours writing what I think are thoughtful posts about drug safety…