education
grrlscientist | August 23, 2009tags: Why Do People Laugh at Creationists? , atheism, religion, water, streaming video
The only people who are so stupid as to not understand the answer to that question are the creationists themselves.
grrlscientist | August 22, 2009The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came,--
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,--
And so the night became.
~ Emily Dickinson
This is the cutest event I've heard of for NYC: a night spent counting crickets and katydids.
What: NYC Cricket Crawl (counting 7 species of crickets and katydids in NYC)
Where: New York City area
When: Friday, 11 September 2009 at 7:…
rallain | August 22, 2009I found this link on twitter from New Scientist.
'iTunes university' better than the real thing
This pretty much sums it up:
"Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person."
The article also mentions a research study by McKinney that gave half of a class of 64 podcast lectures instead of a traditional lecture. Looking at the details, it doesn't seem like too convincing of a study.…
grrlscientist | August 22, 2009tags: Crowned Plover, Crowned Lapwing, Vanellus coronatus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Crowned Plover, also known as the Crowned Lapwing, Vanellus coronatus, photographed in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 29 August 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D2X, 200-400 Nikon Lens at 400.
So of course, before you give me an ID, I have to ask you how many legs you see in this picture.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | August 22, 2009tags: animal behavior, hamster on a piano eating popcorn, siberian dwarf hamster, Phodopus sungorus, humor, funny, streaming video
It is Saturday morning afterall, so I am just going to have fun sharing silly videos of the cutest little mammal known to humanity; Siberian dwarf hamsters. This video features a couple Siberian dwarf hamsters, one of which is a speed demon, revealed by the speedometer attached to its wheel. As an added bonus, this hamster teaches us a little math;
To get the hamster's speed, divide the speed written by ten, then you will have it in km/h.
grrlscientist | August 21, 2009The cricket sang,
And set the sun,
And workmen finished, one by one,
Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,
The twilight stood as strangers do
With hat in hand, polite and new,
To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came,--
A wisdom without face or name,
A peace, as hemispheres at home,--
And so the night became.
~ Emily Dickinson
This is the cutest event I've heard of for NYC: a night spent counting crickets and katydids.
What: NYC Cricket Crawl (counting 7 species of crickets and katydids in NYC)
Where: New York City area
When: Friday, 11 September 2009 at 7:…
gregladen | August 21, 2009CALLING ALL ALLIES:
Hemant Mehta is the Friendly Atheist (that's a blog) and a math teacher. There are people who want him fired. This is not the first time he's been through this. Please visit his site and give him some support.
Click Here.
If you are a blogger please point to the above referenced post. It would be nice if there were several hundred supportive comments there.
drorzel | August 21, 2009It's that time of year again, when the US News rankings come out (confirming my undergrad alma mater as the Best in All the Land) and everybody in academia gets all worked up about What It All Means. There are always a few gems in there with all the pointless hand-wringing, though, and Timothy Burke of Swarthmore has some of the best advice you'll ever read on choosing a college:
I sometimes join a faculty panel to talk to prospective Swarthmore applicants, and one of the first things that I say is that a college applicant and family can only have strong control over a few really basic…
grrlscientist | August 21, 2009tags: Wilson's Plover, Charadrius wilsonia, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Adult Wilson's Plover, Charadrius wilsonia, with chick, photographed at Brazoria Wildlife Refuge, Texas. [I will identify this bird species for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 31 July 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/160s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Before you ID this bird species, tell me: how many legs do you see?
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | August 20, 2009tags: Juvenile Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Juvenile Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, photographed at Galveston East Beach, Texas. [even the photographer doesn't know the identify of this bird, maybe you can help and come to a consensus ID?]
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 11 August 2009 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
grrlscientist | August 20, 2009tags: How Proteins Are Made From DNA in a Living Cell, biology, molecular biology, DNA, streaming video
This video uses the latest research to create an animation of how DNA gives rise to proteins in a living cell. But do you think the word "machine" is correct? I have difficulty with the use of that word .. [4:27]
drorzel | August 19, 2009Kate recently signed up for Facebook, and I was talking to her earlier about some of the options for wasting tons of time entertaining yourself with Facebook, and mentioned the ever-popular trivia quizzes and "personality tests" and the like. Of course, I had to caution her that most of the quizzes are really lame, because the people making them up don't know how to make a good quiz.
Making up good questions is a skill that takes time to master. The key elements that the people behind most Facebook quizzes are missing are good distractors-- the plausible-sounding wrong answers that lead…
grrlscientist | August 19, 2009tags: Grey-backed Camaroptera, Grey-backed Bleating Warbler, Camaroptera brachyura, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Grey-backed Camaroptera, also known as the Grey-backed Bleating Warbler, Camaroptera brachyura (brevicaudata), photographed in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, Africa. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Dan Logen, 31 August 2007 [larger view].
Nikon D2X, ISO 200, Nikon 200-400 VR lens at 400 mm. f/4. 1/160.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
bioephemera | August 19, 2009
For me, back-to-school shopping was always accompanied by a frisson of anticipation and excitement. It was the only time of year I actually got to go on a shameless shopping spree - which required leaving town and adventuring an hour or two north to find a wider selection of department stores. I didn't care about clothes much, so it wasn't the clothes I really cared about, but what they represented: the possibility that if I just hit on the right costume, the right ensemble of luscious jewel-toned sweaters and tights and matching socks (this being the 80s and 90s), I'd suddenly enter into a…
rallain | August 18, 2009I wrote two letters (for two different classes). These are letters from the students of the near future to themselves in the present. this first one is for a non-majors lab. In this lab, I let them turn in "informal" lab reports that they can then use on the midterm and the final exam. The thing is that a lot of students don't even turn this in. Here is the letter:
Dear Past Me,
How are you? I know how you are because I am you and I remember this day. Really, you should be asking how I am.
I am not doing so well. I just took the midterm for the physics lab and it didn't go too well.…
drorzel | August 18, 2009One of the blogs I hyped at the science blogging panel at Worldcon was Built on Facts, Matt Springer's blog explaining introductory physics concepts. You might not think that you want to read a blog that goes through freshman physics problems in detail-- I would've been dubious on the concept, had you explained it to me that way-- but it's really excellent stuff.
He's recently completed a series of posts on Maxwell's Equations, with one post for each of the four equations, plus one bringing them all together: Gauss's Law for Magnetism, Gauss's Law for Electricity, Faraday's Law, and the…
grrlscientist | August 18, 2009tags: Bhutan Laughing-thrush, Garrulax imbricatum, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Bhutan Laughing-thrush, Garrulax imbricatum, photographed in Bhutan (recently split from Streaked Laughingthrush, Garrulax lineatus).
Image: Larry Gardella, spring 2009 [larger view].
Sony Cybershot with 10x external zoom.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
Review all mystery birds to date.
drorzel | August 17, 2009The results of the estimation contest are in. There were 164 serious entries (I excluded the $12,000 and $1,000,000 "guesses" from the final data). The mean value guessed by commenters was $83.30, and the median was not far off, at $77.12. The standard deviation was high-- $43.10-- but as you would expect with a large sample, the standard error (or standard deviation of the mean) was small, $3.37.
Or, in convenient graphical form:
That's a histogram with $20 wide bins showing the number of guesses in a given range. A pretty nice distribution, on the whole.
The red line indicates the actual…
grrlscientist | August 17, 2009tags: Short-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus griseus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Probable Short-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus griseus, remains were fairly close to a busy industrial road northern Alberta (roughly 300 km northeast of Edmonton) Canada. [short of microscopic examination of these feathers or DNA analysis, this bird will probably never be definitively identified, sorry]
Image: Marcel Gahbauer, August 2009 [larger view].
Scanned, not photographed.
Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.
The collector writes;
The location of…
bioephemera | August 17, 2009No, I'm not being rude, I promise! The Gates Foundation is matching DonorsChoose donations to high-need schools. They'll fund 50% of any classroom project request that prepares students in rural and high-poverty schools for college, up to $4.1 million.
Just jump in and pick from a list of projects eligible for matching funds here. Here's a project that caught my eye:
One of my former students had done water rockets at his school in another state. He introduced this to me and I have been hooked on it ever since then. Normally, I have teaching funds from our state. This year my funds have been…