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When the Road is Your Workplace

The scene was an icy morning in western Maryland, along the Garrett County and Allegany County lines.  Mr. Dwight Samuel Colmer, 41, a truck driver with Western Maryland Lumber Company was hauling a load of coal just before 11:00 AM when his truck began to slide.  The State of Maryland's "Motor Vehicle Accident Report" says: "...hit guard rail, and overturned to the passenger side.  Driver was ejected and crushed under the dump truck and died from the injuries." The report indicates the incident occurred on a public road called Bartlett Street.  Is this a work-related fatality?  Well, it…

So much to blog, so little time...

It's one of the curses of blogging - there's no way to control when good stories to blog about pop up. It would be great if we could regulate the flow in some way, and get the stories to show up at nice, regular intervals. Give me one good story a day, and one really good story every second or third day, and I'm a happy blogger. It would be so nice if life worked that way. Anyway . . . Today, there are way too many good stories to write about. We've got (in no particular order) mammal evolution in the news, a philosopher questioning the usefulness of lab courses, a good reminder of why…

Donors Choose - SEED charity match

SEED is doing a $10,000 match to charity donations to the "Donors Choose" educational charity. Sounds like a good cause, and a lot of the Sb bloggers jumped in. If you want to chip in, go for it, can I ask that you go to Uncertain Principles and click through there, I'm not in a place where I can tinker with html button codes. Chad is all set up.

Eight Generous Readers

So eight of you, besides me, so far, think that Donors Choose is a worthy cause. The generous eight have had an impact on 305 students! (See the Leaderboard for details.) Anybody else? Also, remember the cool prizes available if you donate. Chad at Uncertain Principles has harangued his readers but I certainly wouldn't do that to you. I merely direct you to his harangue.

Optimists: We become ambidextrous as we age; Pessimists: We lose skill in dominant hand as we age

However you spin it, handedness changes with aging. How Sapir-Whorf may still have life (via Mind Hacks). But see this analysis of the same data set. How labels help us learn. How computers help writers. How you can get a job like Greta's -- or Chad's. How neurons communicate with each other. How computers might someday communicate with neurons.

The importance of labs?

Steve Gimbel has a post up where he expresses skepticism of the utility of lab sections. Janet, Chad & Chad and RPM all offered responses. All that needs to be said from the various angles that I would have touched upon has been said, so I won't add much more, except to recall my discussion over at the literary blog The Valve about the testimony of Steve Fuller during the Dover trial. For those of you who don't know, Fuller is a scholar of science (that is, he studies science as opposed to being a scientist) who has suggested that Intelligent Design is a worthy research program, and is…

How to Teach Physics to Your Japanese Dog

The vanity search this morning turned up something I hadn't seen before: That's the Japanese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I knew one was in the works, but hadn't heard when it would be out. Of course, I can't read any of it other than my own name (rightmost column of the cover text, from top to bottom). So I turn to Google Translate, which does wonders with the product description: Dogs have been collected by Professor Chad Emmy physics, quantum physics interested in all of the owner. Amazing ideas of quantum physics, every day, "honoring" significant useless wanted to apply…

Cash and Community College Football . . . and Academics

If you thought American colleges and universities were all about thugging it up and diagramming the Z-scheme, you'd be surprised to learn how big of a deal football is. Heck, if you were to visit some universities on Saturday afternoon in autumn, you'd be surprised to learn that you were on the grounds of an institute of higher learning. And it's not just the four year colleges and universities that can be called Football-U. California has the best public university system of any state in the US. Multiple University of California schools are ranked as top national universities. On top of that…

One last update (for now) on the youth who "cured himself" of melanoma, Chad Jessop

I hadn't intended to write about this again, at least not for a while, but curiosity got the better of me. About a month and a half ago, I discussed a highly dubious story that was going around by e-mail about a 17-year-old boy with melanoma whose mother supposedly "cured" him with "natural" treatments. As you might imagine, the story was riddled with incorrect-sounding medical information and inconsistencies. Earlier this week, through a highly credulous blogger going by the 'nym the Angry Scientist, I became aware of an update to the story, in which the names of the mother and child (Laurie…

No more science on CNN!

Oh, there was before? Anyway, the story that everyone on science blogs is talking about these days is that CNN has ditched their science and tech team. I was going to comment on it, but Chad puts it the best and there is no way I can best it. So go on over and add your 2c to the interesting ongoing discussion in the comments. [Possibly related....]

Dangeral Professors 2: A Crooked Style

Chad has news of newbies at Crooked Timber Béreubé is back! More Dangeral Than Ever. Cool. As long as he doesn't start blathering on and on about hockey again. As is well known, that is a game for girls, in skirts, on grass. And I can say that since I am approximately 2600 miles from downtown State College and almost as far from the Canadian border. So Phbt.

strange things with which I will forever be associated

Chad, some time ago, did the parlor game of "what google phrase is uniquely associated with you(r blog)." Just by virtue of sheer repetition, "Whoosh goes the randomizer" is definitely one of my most strongly google-linked phrases. However, now I have "Aes Sedai of Orange County" inextricably linked to me, for as long as the net.archives live. I must rein in my subconscious sometimes.

Friday Night Dog-Blogging

Chad's put up a dog blogging post, so here's Silas in Centennial Park with a bunch of other dogs. (Silas is the one whose butt is closest to us.) The pavilion in the background marks the site where the six colonies joined together and created the Commonwealth of Australia. Just so you know that Sydney's winters aren't just tee shirt weather, here's a cold, rainy day at UNSW.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

The college bookstore has set up a display table right at the front of the store with a bunch of copies of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which is kind of a kick. Some of my students asked me about it in lab yesterday. The big news, though, is that the Associated Press review ran Monday. I've known they were working on one for a while, now, but didn't see it before it went live. It's not a great review-- it ends "For people who are smarter than the average mixed-breed dog, this might be a good way to learn about the nature of microscopic particles. But I'm waiting for Orzel to write…

another good deedy

There's this thing, where you can donate money to a good cause - funding for K-12 teachers looking for specific items, mostly in rural areas. There's matching funds from SEED! This has been bouncing around the sciblogs for a week, and I'm afraid I have not been keeping up with the details: so.... read all about it at Chad's place and, for maximum leverage make him write some more dog fyzzix entries

Stupid Math Tricks

One of the things Chad didn't mention about me in his introduction is that in addition to being a physics major as an undergraduate, I also majored in mathematics. My research interests these days tend towards the exciting confluence of mathematics and high energy physics. So, in honor of that (but really completely unrelated), I give you: 60499999499 / 490050000000 If you like, consider it an easy puzzle to understand the significance of this number.

Not a mealtime image:

Via a National Geographic research team, we learn that there is still a thriving market for ivory - protection laws and biodiversity be damned. The pictures below the fold, taken from the National Geographic website, are for any of you who might be considering buying something made of ivory in the near future. Be warned: it's not a mealtime image. It's good to know just how ineffective anti-poaching measures really are in Chad, I guess.

It's Never Really About Civility

Here's Rod Dreher giving lectures about civility: What is it with science-oriented advocates who consider contempt a virtue? Who, exactly, do they think they are going to persuade? (You could say the same thing about sneering political bloggers, sneering religious bloggers, and, well, sneerers in all forms of public discourse, inasmuch as sneering seems to be a popular pose these days.) Most of us are tempted to sneer every now and then (I certainly am guilty of this), but some of these people adopt sneering as a basic intellectual stance to the world. Here's Rod Dreher hectoring Anne Rice…

Fear and loathing in the academy.

Today Chad has an interesting post about attitudes among academics toward math and science versus the humanities and arts. The general attitude Chad sees on display in his academic milieu is that a gappy knowledge of art history or music or literature is something to be embarrassed about, but when it comes to innumeracy or scientific ignorance, intellectuals have no shame. Chad writes: Intellectuals and academics are just assumed to have some background knowledge of the arts, and not knowing those things can count against you. Ignorance of math and science is no obstacle, though. I have…

random reads

some random links for your reading pleasure Free SF Online - indexed, mostly shorts and audio podcasts. Excellent way to get an intro to some new reads. Then go out and buy the books. eg Ted Chiang David Brin Greg Egan On a different note: "5 things you should know before dating a scientist" Chad has some good stuff going: Shameless Innumeracy Grumpy About Education I have several hundred AAS press releases in my inbox, may get to reading some

I am, Spiderman...

Your results:You are Spider-Man Spider-Man 70% Hulk 65% Green Lantern 55% Robin 52% Superman 50% Batman 40% Iron Man 40% The Flash 35% Supergirl 30% Catwoman 30% Wonder Woman 20% You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility. Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz... I am flattered, I think. Seen on Oliver Willis Hey, if it works for Chad... My traffic is up, but more never hurts, eh?

Computing Issues

Nice article by MarkCC on why C sucksis not efficient for numerically intensive applications - looks like that's an even better way to get comments and readers than the old "dis String Theory" trick. Chad has a pointer to a beautiful entry by Aaronson on nifty theoretical things in computer science So, like, read 'em. If he writes a book - pop-sci or for "peeple hoo no calculus reel good" I'll read it. Hell, I'll review it! (Hint)

economic meltdown for academics

graphically explained PhD Comics illustrate h/t Chad it is a good point actually, read the depression era literature - after the few rich who got their trust funds out, the tenured academics rode out the depression relatively well in fact my entire neighbourhood is mostly depression era houses, built for faculty, who were pretty much the only people with an hundred miles or so who could afford to pay construction workers and architects hmmm, it really could all be relative...

Physics. Also maybe computer games!

News from around the world of physics: Near and dear to my heart is any clever experiment involving lasers. And via Swans on Tea, this one's a doozy. It's paddleball, but instead of a rubber ball you have a single atom. And instead of a paddle you have a beam of laser pulses. No string, so it's an extra challenge. Of all the esoteric ways people have devised to measure g, I think this one is the best. Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad discusses science writing. Lots of it isn't very good, but he gives some excellent examples of the cream of the crop. Very, very far down my list of…

linkedy links VII

another selection of random snippets from the intertoobz We are Number One! - and 8! Wait, didn't I blog this one already? Ah well, truth can never be told too often... Forget PowerPoint: It turns out the secret to improving productivity at your job might be puppieskittens! Win friends and influence people to boost research productivity One Reason Horrible People Gain Power - Atrios comments Chad has opened the Sb Nobel Prize betting pool Announcement of Opportunity: get the UK Infrared Telescope...cheap Save the GBT!

linkedy links ii

assorted linkedy links for your amusement Geoff Marcy to do optical SETI? How to tell if you live in a simulation The REAL Reason for the Uncertainty Principle! Sabine's take on hologram tests using baby laser interferometers Astrophysicist's Phrasebook David Grinspoon awarded Baruch Blumberg NASA-Library of Congress Chair JJ on grad admissions on astrobites Planetary Resources is looking for a few good asteroid miners - more on this later, methinks. Talking of which ~ 5kT fireball over the Sierras Gender Issues - Chad rant

Thursday Baby Blogging 052109, Substitute Blogger Edition

Kate here, reporting that SteelyKid says, "Being sick is fun! I get to take baths at 10 o'clock at night, and play on nice soft towels, and have Mommy's undivided attention all day long . . . " (She's fine, was sick last night but is rapidly improving over the day—her appetite is almost completely back to normal and she's in a good mood, as you can see (she looks a little bleary because she just woke up). Nevertheless, we both look forward to Chad coming home . . . )

links for 2007-10-22

Encephalon 34 is ready to go at Distributed Neuron N Skills Every Scientist Should Have Help Chad come up with a list of the most important skills for scientists Some tips for putting together a Behavioral Science grant proposal The relationship between money and happiness Key conclusions: Money doesn't make you happy, but happy people end up making more money If you don't like laughing, don't watch this video A brilliantly executed brain-themed spoof of educational programming. "Learn" how to conduct your own neuroscience experiments!

movin' on

Nah, not as serious as it sounds - the National Geographic Overlords are transitioning the Sb collective to newer blog platform: Transitional Technical Difficulties - Chad explains. It is why the Scienceblogs have been a bit subdued recently I promise I'll clean house after the move, including updating the blogroll, if the new digs have such quaint olde things as blogrolls Some linkedy links that need to be placemarked Asking the students Gender Issues Trickle Down Science Backreaction: Top Ten Dark Matter vs MOND: a Trialogue - Sean hosts a rational exchange

Blue Origin: fat clipper flies

Blue Origin has gone public with info about their first test flight which took place before christmas. space.com has more It is a rework of the old DC-X Delta Clipper concept. Looks kinda cool. Currently low powered peroxide thrusters, sounds like they want to try it with cryogenic LH2/LOX engines next. Hope it works, going to the high power density engines is non-trivial, and potential difficulties scale as the velocity squared or cubed, as so many have found. As Chad notes, they're hiring

#1 blog meme

From Chad, statements typed into Google which return this blog as the top hit Skyr Food for Fighting So You Want to Be an Astrophysicist WMAP for dummies King of Tambora Bird 'flu for theorists ok, three of these are for ye olde blogge on catdynamics.blogspot.com, but that's just 'cause I haven't updated the "highlights" link for a long time and couldn't be bothered to search a lot Other hits include: "strange but true pulsars" and "planet around a white dwarf" and of course "iPod iChing" (sorry Sean)

Once more passing the hat around.

Dave over at Cognitive Daily has posted a comparison of traffic (upper graph) with DonorsChoose donations (lower graph) so far in the drive. This blog is the third bar in from the left. Certainly we’re not doing too bad relative to others, however I fail to see how we can let Chad over at Uncertainty Principles (2nd bar on the left), who gets slightly less traffic, so greatly lead us in donations (approximately 4x!). I mean ... people, he’s a physicist! You know what to do ...

"I have seen the light! The Chad Jessop melanoma story happened. Really."

Yesterday's mega-post left me a bit drained; consequently I've throttled my ambitions back a notch today in order to leave some energy to put together the weekly installation of Your Friday Dose of Woo tomorrow. Fortunately, just the topic presented itself: A story that's interesting and instructive (hopefully) but that won't take as much of my time to deal with. But first, a brief recap. A couple of months ago, I discussed a highly dubious fundraising e-mail that was going around, apparently pushed by an organization known as Natural Solutions Foundation, about what seemed on first blush to…

The annual SciBlog Christmas Song Challenge

Chad wants seasonal songs that don't suck, he already knows about the Pogues. I keep tellin' ya: The definitive short song selection of Icelandic carols - youtube is blocking embedded links on this one - click through if you want to see what we had to grow up with. Hey, if my kids have to march in circles pretending to hold a walking stick, so should yours... Dubba, dubba, dum-dum. I'm tellin' ya. Ok, it is hard to beat... "Pabbi Komdu Heim..." might match it for pathos but not for grit.

Thursday Substitute Baby Blogging 031810

Kate here, with some outdoor baby blogging: I'd meant for this to be a comparison photo to this one from August. Unfortunately it's got neither Chad nor Appa for scale, and she's slouching, which diminishes the OMG HUGE effect—but not the killer cute. One more outdoor picture and one indoor picture below the fold: Here we have a somewhat crooked image of her joy at having her picture taken: And here we have a Kate's-eye view of a very common sight here at Chateau Steelypips: Yes, she's the cutest toddler in the universe, thank you for noticing.

Huzzah for Smoot and Mather!

Chad broke the story, at least in the ScienceBlogs galaxy, but I wanted to add my own "Woo-hoo!" for John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, who have won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics. I didn't want this one to go unnoted, as my mom worked to analyze piles of COBE data and, during this period of her life, made the acquaintance of George Smoot, who (from what I can gather) is not only a really smart scientist but also a good and decent human being. I'm hoping Mom will leave some good Smoot tidbits in the comments.

Academic Poll: Uniqueness

A recurring problem in academic science is trying to correctly identify a single author. For example, I was reviewing a grant that made reference to a group, but not a specific paper, and needed to sift through a few pages of search results in order to determine which of the people with that surname was the one I was looking for. I'm somewhat fortunate in that the combination of my last name and first initial is not common. The Harvard/ Smithsonian Astrophysics Data System turns up all of my papers and nothing else when searching for "Orzel, C." The INSPEC database comes up with one bogus…

Brain drain - the size of the cup matters

Chad's response to this week's Ask a Science Blogger pointed to two issues which I think need some clarification. First, that brain drain might be good for the species in that it distributes the "wealth" of human capital around. This is not a trivial or baseless argument, but, The World Bank has done a study, and it is important to note that the impact of the "brain drain" on "donor" nations differs as a function of size. In other words, nations like China and India lose a relatively small percentage of their intellectual capital, while nations like Guyana lose a lot. So the key is…

linkedy links xxi

more assorted linky goodness Astronomy Portraits (UK) - these are very good, take a look. From e-Astronomer XKCD - Pure Genius Wait, Chad wrote a book? Who knew... I now have this insane desire to explain lightcones in term of pet post-surgery collars... I know how to push peoples' buttons Carnival of Space: 128 at AARTScope, 129 at Tiny Manntras and 130 at Chandra Blog OMG, like so harsh - don't know if it is true, but it ought to be. we hates them, yes we do Real Estate Crash - An Engineering Analysis Ooops, almost forgot this classic from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis…

Choose Donors Choose

Cosmic Variance is doing a Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge This is one of those very good things that I keep thinking I ought to do, but am not organised enough to set up and walk through the paces and by the time I check the e-mail giving the info it is too late. The CV crowd has lined up a bunch of physics blogs sending things their way and they've raised a bunch. But, co SciBling Chad at Uncertain Principles is out raising them, so go donate or something. I actually don't care who you go through, it is a win-win.

Today in Science (1021)

Events 1983 - The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. 2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz. Births 1660 - Georg Ernst Stahl, German scientist 1833 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor and founder of the Nobel Prize 1957 - Wolfgang Ketterle, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Deaths 1872 - Jacques Babinet, French physicist

Friday ... ok so I don't have a better post title.

Ah, Friday. Supposedly the day I can devote to doing some research, but instead I’m attempting to distil six hours of lectures on Darwin’s life into one easy to digest three hour bolus. In short, I’m going to be busy for a while. Around the ScienceBlogs, I will note that Mark, PZ and John Wilkins offer some musings on reforming the Office of Technology Assessment. Tim mentions that a new survey puts the death toll in Iraq at over one million. Chad weighs in on the "scandal" regarding the NE Patriots, while Ed comments on a more substantive scandal at UC-Irvine’s law school.

Sweet, sweet memories

A few days back, I noted that January 5th 2006 marked my first post on Scienceblogs. And indeed it did. But I forgot that it was actually a back-dated post from my old blog. It was today - January 11th - one year ago that Sb launched with fifteen intrepid bloggers - Janet, Tara , Afarensis, Dave & Greta, Tim, Ed, RPM, Razib, Chris, GrrlScientist, Kevin, PZ, Chad, and myself - boldly going where no bloggers went before. For those of you who wish to feel nostalgic, the Wayback Machine has the front page from January 12th 2006 online. Oh, how far we have come!

ScienceBloggers Walk Down Memory Lane

I was born in 1984. My earliest memory of a computer is thumbing through a plastic box of black, square 5.25-inch floppy disks, trying to decide whether I wanted to play The Oregon Trail, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, or Word Munchers on the family Compaq 386. Since most of the ScienceBloggers have a few years on me, we thought it might be fun to have a stroll down their technological memory lanes. Here's what they remember about old-school computing. (Feel free to give them a hard time about their ages; they're all extremely sensitive.) Revere (b. A long time ago) "My first computer…

On Faculty Mentoring

One of the evergreen topics for academic magazines like Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education is faculty "mentoring." It's rare for a week to go by without at least one lengthy essay on the topic, many of which recirculate multiple times through my various social media channels. The latest batch of these (no links, because this isn't about the specific articles in question) prompted me to comment over in Twitter-land that: Articles about "mentoring" of faculty are great for reminding me of all the ways I'm atypical for an academic personality-wise. — Chad Orzel (@orzelc)…

Hugo Nominated Short Fiction: A Great Year for "No Award"

As previously noted, I'm going to the Wordlcon in London this August, and as such will be voting on this year's Hugo Awards. The publishers provided a packet with at least bits of all the fiction nominees, so I've been reading through them at bedtime, and over the weekend finished all the regular nominees-- I still have stuff that I may or may not read for the Campbell-that-is-not-a-Hugo-but-is-handed-out-at-the-same-time. I wouldn't really bother to say anything about them beyond the couple of comments I've already dropped on Twitter, but Kate quoted me in her recap of the Short Story…

Unscientific America

If you are a regular reader of ScienceBlogs you will have already stumbled upon several reviews of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. Janet Stemwedel of Ethnics & Science probably has the most thorough reviews, while P. Z. Myers' 'exchange' with the authors, Sheril Kirshenbaum & Chris Mooney, had the most 'spirit.' Chard Orzel of Uncertain Principles put up a short & sweet positive impression which covers the major points in Unscientific America very well, as well as the overall thrust of the book. Of course as Chad noted If you read Sheril…

A cornucopia of misconceptions

Instead of an update, I want to specifically point readers to Evolgen's extended post on the nearly neutral theory. He takes my 10 yard pass on genetic drift and jukes and jives all the way to the end zone (with a good block from John Hawks). The take home message is that science is about successively more accurate approximations of nature, with the caveat that in probabilistic field like much of genetics the "answer" is the most likely explanation (expectation), around which there will be exceptions to the rule galore (variance). Chad's initial post seems to have been a little epidemic in…

Seed's Daily Zeitgeist: 9/28/2006

Laser Challenge Game A Nobel Prize winner has invented the laser: Let's get this party started! Hey, if it's put out by the Nobel people, it's not just a computer game; it's science education. (via Chad) Three Lectures by Hans Bethe The Man teaches quantum. Watch his magic. (via fark) When crime-fighting tools go bad: Problems with the face-composite system The police are in cahoots with the criminals! That must be the reason they use this detrimental tool. For shame. Powers Of Ten by Charles & Ray Eames Scale: still mindblowing. How To Get People To Trust You Um, be trustworthy? Got…

Denialists' Deck of Cards: The Jack of Clubs, "You're A Ninny"

It's time to go on the offensive. Call your opponent a ninny! One of the best examples of this comes from--you guessed it--our friend Jack Abramoff. One of Jack Abramoff's teammembers, Dennis Stephens, once proposed to attack Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert because Ruskin's group was criticizing "Channel One:" From: Dennis Stephens To: Chad Cowan Cc: Abramoff, Jack "Have you guys ever looked into Gary Ruskin, a Nader protege who runs Commercial Alert (which is attacking Channel One, our client)...The guy is a weasel...Someone should consider doing an in depth piece on Ruskin and his…