education
grrlscientist | June 2, 2010tags: education, public outreach, SciCafe, science cafe, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, streaming video
Who: A Conversation with AMNH Astronomer, Neil deGrasse Tyson
What: free public presentation, "Life, the Universe, and Everything"
When: Tonight at 700pm
Where: Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, American Museum of Natural History, Enter at the 81st Street (Rose Center) [directions and maps]
Cost: FREE, and there is a cash bar too! (must be 21+ with ID)
Ever ponder the mysteries of the universe? Join Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of AMNH's Hayden Planetarium, for a casual…
drorzel | June 1, 2010Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation in data from a Daily Kos poll question on the origin of the universe:
Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree (38 think it's more recent, the rest are undecided). I've said it before and I stand by it: conservative Republicanism is incompatible with science.
But looking at the finer details tells us a lot. The only group - gender, race, or region - with anything like the Republicans'…
sciencepunk | June 1, 2010Last year I visited Ben Goldacre in his secret offshore nerdbase to talk about science. While there we set up the famous Barbie Detox experiment as described in his book Bad Science. In this short video Ben talks about why the bogus idea of detox is harmful not just for our bodies, but our understanding of health. Says Ben: "The answer, from the future king of England, to your health problems is a fucking magic potion. It's like something out of a fairy tale!"
grrlscientist | June 1, 2010tags: Black-bellied Plover, Grey Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Black-bellied Plover, also known as the Grey Plover throughout much of Europe, Pluvialis squatarola, photographed at Bolivar Peninsula, Galveston County, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 14 April 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/400s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This mystery bird might be a little tricky to ID, but once…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2010tags: education, public outreach, SciCafe, science cafe, AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, NYC, streaming video
Who: A Conversation with AMNH Astronomer, Neil deGrasse Tyson
What: free public presentation, "Life, the Universe, and Everything"
When: Wednesday, 2 June at 700pm
Where: Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, American Museum of Natural History, Enter at the 81st Street (Rose Center) [directions and maps]
Cost: FREE, and there is a cash bar too! (must be 21+ with ID)
Ever ponder the mysteries of the universe? Join Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of AMNH's Hayden Planetarium, for a…
jdupuis | May 31, 2010For your reading and collection development pleasure:
137: Jung, Pauli, and the Pursuit of a Scientific Obsession by Arthur I. Miller
"The history is fascinating, as are the insights into the personalities of these great thinkers."--New Scientist Is there a number at the root of the universe? A primal number that everything in the world hinges on? This question exercised many great minds of the twentieth century, among them the groundbreaking physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Their obsession with the power of certain numbers--including 137, which describes the…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2010tags: Clapper Rail, Rallus longirostris, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Clapper Rail, Rallus longirostris, photographed at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 26 May 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/640s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
How to distinguish Clapper Rails from other, similar species:
King Rail is slightly larger than Clapper Rail, prefers freshwater marshes while…
clock | May 31, 2010Last week I went to this season's last American Scientist pizza lunch at Sigma Xi featuring Phaedra Boinodiris (Twitter, blog), Serious Games Product Manager at IBM.
I first saw Phaedra Boinodiris speak as the opening speaker at TEDxRTP (my review) back in March, but this was a different kind of talk, geared more towards scientists and science communicators.
I remember playing Pong when it first came out. I remember spending many hours back in 1980 or so playing The Hobbit on Sinclair ZX Spectrum. And I played many games at arcades (still not knowing which games started out as arcade games…
clock | May 30, 2010Last week I went to this season's last American Scientist pizza lunch at Sigma Xi featuring Phaedra Boinodiris, Serious Games Product Manager at IBM, and I filed my report over on Science In The Triangle blog.
grrlscientist | May 30, 2010tags: Eurasian Kestrel, Kestrel, Common Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Common Kestrel, also known as the Eurasian Kestrel or just as the Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, photographed in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 19 January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D300, 600 mm VR lens, with 1.4 x extender ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/800 sec.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Even though this bird is an African species that most of you have probably not…
grrlscientist | May 29, 2010tags: The Thinking Atheist, Scientology: Circus of the Stars, L Ron Hubbard, Dianetics, Thetans, Xenu, operating thetan, E-Meter, auditing, humor, funny, offbeat, streaming video
Shake off those physical chains and become the god you were meant to be! This video by The Thinking Atheist provides a look at the history and philosophy of the popular mind-control cult known as Scientology.
grrlscientist | May 29, 2010tags: Collared Pratincole, Common Pratincole, Glareola pratincola, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Collared Pratincole, also known as the Common Pratincole, Glareola pratincola, photographed in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, January 2010 [larger view].
Nikon D300s, 600 mm VR lens, with 1.4 x extender ISO 400, f/8, 1/400 sec.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This African species' morphology and feeding behavior are seemingly incongruous (although wing…
cagapakis | May 28, 2010I don't get nearly as many emails asking for advice as I'm sure the lovely and talented Dr. Isis does, and I'm not sure if my advice can compare in quality and sassiness to hers, but I want to address the questions I get most often--how do you get into synthetic biology if your background is in something else, and how do you get into a PhD in synthetic biology?
While there are an increasing number of labs that work primarily on synthetic biology and schools with undergraduate iGEM teams, there are still very few (if any?) graduate programs that will write "Synthetic Biology" on your diploma,…
grrlscientist | May 28, 2010tags: Barnacle Goose, Branta leucopsis, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Barnacle Goose, Branta leucopsis, photographed at Luonnontieteellinen keskusmuseo (University of Helsinki Museum of Natural History), Helsinki, Finland. [picture of the same species with its muscle and feathers]
Image: GrrlScientist, 18 May 2010 [larger view]
Canon SX100 IS.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
EEEK! It's another completely bare-nekkid bird for you to identify! Can you ID this bird species? (Yes, it's going to be very challenging to ID species, but…
rallain | May 27, 2010Sometimes (ok - just once) I get asked for recommendations about reading material on the ideas of teaching physics. I used to recommend Arnold Arons book on teaching introductory physics. Still, that is a classic and a great resource. However, there is a better one.
Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite - Edward Redish
Originally, this was kind of like the instructor's manual that went with one of the big name intro-physics books (maybe the new version of Halliday and Resnick). But this book is way more than an instructor's manual. What is even better is that it is online and free (see…
rallain | May 27, 2010Even though I have taught courses like this before (in a sense, my last physical science course was like this), I really don't like these courses. I will classify a "tell and repeat" course as one where the instructor tells the students stuff and then the students repeat this on the test. Look around, it happens a lot. But really, what is the point?
Here are some example questions from a tell and repeat course (most of these I have used in a course - when you point a finger, 4 are pointing back at yourself):
What is the difference between a meteorite, a meteor, and a meteoroid?
Which has…
grrlscientist | May 27, 2010tags: Heermann's Gull, Larus heermanni, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Immature (1st winter/second summer?) Heermann's Gull, Larus heermanni, photographed somewhere along the Pacific coast of the United States [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joe Fuhrman. I encourage you to purchase images from this professional photographer.
NOTE: Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
This species has a special natural history character that makes them especially vulnerable to extinction. Can you tell me what that is?
Heermann's…
ddobbs | May 27, 2010
I know where you're going, but you don't understand. Teachers are just different.
via nytimes.com
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
drorzel | May 27, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Thoughts on DIY U
"Eleemosynary institutions have real and serious flaws, but they exist to empower the weak. They are necessary to empower the weak. If you rend them asunder, you will expose the weak to the predations of the strong. This is so fundamental that I'm surprised it even needs to be brought up. If it weren't scandalously unethical, I'd propose an experiment: take two sets of kids who barely got through a weak school district. Send one set to the local community college, and tell the other set it's free to educate itself under digital…
ddobbs | May 26, 2010
David Sloan Wilson, an atheist himself, has a few things to relate to 'angry atheists' like Richard Dawkins.
I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist. One of the things that infuriates me about the newest crop of angry atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, is their denial of the beneficial aspects of religion. Their beef is not just that there is no evidence for God. They also insist that religion "poisons everything", as Christopher Hitchens subtitled his book. They are ignoring the scientific theory and evidence for the "secular utility" of religion, as Ãmile…