Chatter
tfk | August 31, 2006Thanks to Grrlscientist for helping me learn that:
You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew
You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab.
And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician.
But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker!
"Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute."
The Muppet Personality Test
Click through for my secret soda identity.
You Are Coke
A true original and classic, you represent the best of…
tfk | August 30, 2006In response to this week's Ask a Scienceblogger and an essay from the National Review, I'm posting a guest response from Jim. Jim is currently being eaten by a bear. My only request is that you consider the possibility that bears, not pirates, are the cause of global warming. The data speak for themselves.
Every time a bear starts attacking me, people go crazy with talk about not building homes in the wilderness, and not smearing ourselves with honey. You would think they would get used to the phenomenon of bear attacks by now. But it makes great news footage, and since bear attacks are…
tfk | August 27, 2006Last week the weekly carnival of the best Kansasish blogging got one submission. Yers truly was moving between sites, but I don't know what anyone else's excuse is. Kansans, Kansas Citians or anyone who has ever been to Kansas or seen it on a map should submit their entries now, now, now.
goodmath | August 26, 2006About 10 days ago, I wrote about [Grigory Perelman and his proof of the Poincare conjecture][poincare]. This is a quick followup. There's a more detailed story over on [Seed][seed].
The Fields medal was supposed to be presented this past week, and they planned on presenting it to Perelman.
He turned it down. He refused to come to the conference where the award was presented; refused to accept the award in absentia. He wants nothing to do with it. Even a personal visit from the head of the Fields committee to his mothers apartment in St. Petersburg wasn't enough to convince him to come out…
goodmath | August 26, 2006Over the six months tåhat I've been writing this blog, I've gotten a bunch of email from people asking about what it's like working as a researcher in industry vs working in academia. It's a good question, one which I've spent a lot of time thinking about. So I thought it was worth turning into a post.
Industry versus academia is ultimately a tradeoff in a couple of different dimensions. I'll go into a bit more detail on each, but the basic tradeoffs as I see them are:
* Freedom: industrial research is much more constrained than academic; academics have more freedom that industrial folks…
tfk | August 22, 2006Via Bill, I discover that I am:
Which Programming Language are You?
It took some tweaking to get this result. I started out as binary, then became Lisp, then Java, before settling down on C++. I have never programmed binary, have only tweaked Emacs files (and don't know exactly what I did), and Java bugs me. Changing my choice of name for coffee dramatically altered my results, and given that I don't drink the stuff, that isn't really a sound basis for making that assessment.
Put your results in the comments.
tfk | August 21, 2006Dr. Myers was profiled by a creationist journal. The rest of us have to be content with that sort of attention from trolls.
tfk | August 21, 2006The new digs here are taking some getting used to. The biggest change is the comment system. I don't require TypeKey authentication, but if you use a TypeKey, you relieve me of having to manually approve comments. I know the system says your comment is being held for approval otherwise, but that's purely an anti-spam thing. Sign in with TypeKey and your posts will appear immediately.
Maybe the whole TypeKey thing is worthless. Let me know what you think.
Update: It was worthless. If spam becomes an issue, I'll change this, but for now, comments will just go up.
tfk | August 21, 2006Bora, discussing whether elephants run, tells a joke:
Two elephants are sitting on a tree. A third elephant flies by. The first elephant turns to the second elephant and says: "Hmmm, I bet her nest is close by"
Which reminds me of the classic question: Why do elephants paint their nails red?
Click through for the answer.
The answer, of course, is that it helps them hide in cherry trees. If you doubt the truth of this, ask yourself when you last spotted an elephant in a cherry tree.
Bora also observes that it was Ogden Nash's birthday a few days ago, which obliges me to post my favorite bit…
sb admin | August 20, 2006
Welcome to the new Thoughts from Kansas. I've moved a few of the posts I'm most proud of across from the old Blogger site, and I encourage you to check them out, that's probably the easiest way to get to know me, and don't be afraid to dig into all the archives back there.
By way of quick introduction, I'm a graduate student finishing my dissertation at the University of Kansas. That explains the second part of the title. I am not a native Kansan and never claimed to be, but this is where my thoughts originate.
My research is on the spatial distributions of species, and the ways that…
tfk | August 20, 2006
Welcome to the new Thoughts from Kansas. I've moved a few of the posts I'm most proud of across from the old Blogger site, and I encourage you to check them out, that's probably the easiest way to get to know me, and don't be afraid to dig into all the archives back there.
By way of quick introduction, I'm a graduate student finishing my dissertation at the University of Kansas. That explains the second part of the title. I am not a native Kansan and never claimed to be, but this is where my thoughts originate.
My research is on the spatial distributions of species, and the ways that…
goodmath | August 19, 2006I figured it was time I did the latest random thing to be wandering its way around Scienceblogs. [Janet has introduced the "random quotes" meme.][janet], in which we're supposed to go wandering through the [quotes here][quotes], and pick the first five that reflect "who you are or what you believe".
1. "Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.", Laurens Van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958). Could any quote possibly be more true?
2. "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from…
goodmath | July 14, 2006Over at fellow SBer {Worlds Fair][worldsfair}, they've put up an unofficial "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question, about childrens books:
Are there any children's books that are dear to you, either as a child or a parent, and especially ones that perhaps strike a chord with those from a science sensibility? Just curious really. And it doesn't have to be a picture book, doesn't even have to be a children's book - just a book that, for whatever reason, worked for you.
I've got two kids, a girl who's almost six, and a boy who's three. And they're both showing serious signs of being pre-geeks.…
goodmath | July 7, 2006It's friday again, so it's time for a random ten. So out comes my iPod, and the results are:
1. **Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, "Latitude"**: mediocre tune off of the latest Flecktones album. This album was a 3-CD set. Unfortunately, it really should have been a single CD; they just didn't bother to separate the good stuff from the not-so-good stuff. Very disappointing - they're an amazing group of guys (well, except for Jeff...), and this just isn't up to the quality they should be able to produce.
2. **Marillion, "Man of a Thousand Faces"**: a really fantastic Marillion tune. It ends with…
goodmath | June 30, 2006It's that time of the week again, when I bore you with my bizzare taste in music. Quite an eclectic mix this week.
Spock's Beard, "Thoughts". A track from an oldish Spock's Beard album. SB is an American neoprog band, which sounds something like a blend of old Genesis, Kansas, and Rush. Very good band. This isn't my favorite of their albums (that would be "V").
Gentle Giant, "Way of Life". A classic song off of a classic album.
Whirligig, "Mister Fox". An interesting little ballad by a wonderful NYC based Irish band.
Peter Gabriel, "San Jacinto". Peter Gabriel at his absolute best. He's never…
goodmath | June 29, 2006This is the last time I'm going to bug folks to remind them to donate to the SB challenges.
The DonorsChoose fundraiser here at ScienceBlogs is just about over. Three more days for you to help some kids get a good education in math and science. The GoodMath/BadMath challenge is here; and Janet has a rundown on the challenges that are close to their goals. (If the challenge is met, DonorsChoose will add in an extra 5% bonus.)
As an extra incentive, for the next 10 people who donate to the GM/BM challenge, if you send me a copy of your DonorsChoose receipt, I'll let you pick one topic for me to…
goodmath | June 22, 2006Just a reminder: the ScienceBloggers DonorsChoose challenge is not over yet. 10 GM/BM readers have already contributed over $1100. I can't even begin to say how terrific I think that is. 9 of the proposals that I picked for the challenge have been fully funded!
Just to try to motivate other folks - here's some of the things that I'd like to see get funded:
Pre-Calculus Text Books for some awesome students!. This is the biggest proposal that I included in the GM/BM challenge, and I don't believe that we'll manage to fund it just from SB readers. But this is a school with a class of kids who…
goodmath | June 22, 2006It's that time of the week again, and a new "Ask an SBer" question is out. The question is: "What makes a good science teacher?"
As usual, since I'm the only math blogger around here, I'm going to shift the subject of the question a bit, to "What makes a good math teacher?". The answer is similar, but not quite the same.
In my experience, what makes for a good math teacher is a few things:
The ability to teach. This should go without saying, but alas, it doesn't. There are an appalling number of folks out there who are brilliant mathematicians and genuinely nice people who have all of the…
goodmath | June 22, 2006Off topic, but can't resist commenting, for reasons that will become clear.
Over at Sadly No, Brad discusses a review of Glenn Reynold's latest book, which includes some babble about "Transhumanism".
The very first comment?
I was watching a show on the History Channel on Star Trek's influence on scientific research- there's a guy in Britain, as I recall, who is trying to connect everyone to the Internet, and engage in cyborging, etc.
This is, actually, rather more widespread an ideal than one would think, particularly among both neo-libs and communistic types; theoretically, a non-intrusive…
goodmath | June 21, 2006Off topic, but as a proud New Yorker, I can't resist. Over on Feministe, zuzu posted a link to an article about New Yorkers, and how when it comes to genuine helpfulness, NY is the best city in the world..
Basically, Readers Digest did a series of experiments, where they actually observed people in different cities in the world. NYers were rude, but far and away the most helpful city-dwellers.
I particularly love one thing zuzu included, because it perfectly captures the spirit of NY to me. A friend of her described New Yorkers like so:
f you fall down on the sidewalk, they'll help you up.…