Links Dump
drorzel | August 14, 2015I forgot to do this last week, because I was busy preparing for SteelyPalooza on Saturday, but here are links to my recent physics posts over at Forbes:
-- What 'Ant-Man' Gets Wrong About The Real Quantum Realm: On the way home from the Schrödinger Sessions, I had some time to kill so I stopped to watch a summer blockbuster. The movie was enjoyable enough, thanks to charming performances from the key players, but the premise is dippy even for a comic-book movie. It does, however, provide a hook to talk about quantum physics, so...
-- Great Books For Non-Physicists Who Want To Understand…
drorzel | May 23, 2014Here's some stuff I've had open in Chrome for a while, and want to close before we go out of town for the weekend:
-- Statistics on the professionalization of science blogging, a topic I have banged on about in the past. Nothing really new, but nice to have it somewhat quantified.
-- Speaking of quantifying things, this New York Times piece on metrics is less stupid than I expected. Which is about as high as praise is likely to get for op-eds on this subject.
-- If I didn't get bored with topics after a while, I could just write endless responses to pieces about the state of science…
drorzel | April 11, 2014This has been a pretty brutal week-- classes are in full swing, and we had a candidate interview for our visiting faculty position which always eats up a bunch of time. And then Kate was out of town for work Wednesday night. So I haven't had time for substantive blogging, and don't really have the brains for anything deep. The kids are at Grandma and Grandpa's all next week, though, so maybe I'll finally get to do some of the little experiments for the blog that I've been kicking around in my head.
Until then, though, here are some links to thing I've had open in tabs for a while, and won't…
drorzel | February 28, 2014I got book edits this week, gave an exam on Thursday, and pre-registration for our spring term classes is just beginning, so I have a parade of students begging to get into this course or that one to deal with. So I have no more time for detailed blogging, but will do a bit of tab-clearing to end the week.
This piece about bimodal exams resonated well with my experiences in intro classes. I see a lot of the same thing, though with less statistical power, given that our maximum class size is 18. But in general, the "well-prepared students are bored, poorly-prepared students hopelessly lost"…
drorzel | October 19, 2012In which we look at commemorating an important anniversary, an unusual way to publish more articles, one of the best discussions of fraternities and sororities I've seen, an article calling for more flexibility in academia, and a bit of political silliness.
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Emilio Segrè Visual Archives
"Niels Bohr’s atomic model has had an immense impact on the history of physics and is an icon of the scientific revolutions of the 20th century. The History Programs of the American Institute of Physics and the Niels Bohr Archive, Denmark, celebrate the model’s 100th anniversary with this calendar…
drorzel | October 5, 2012In which Heinlein helps out a friend, new Trek turns 25, the future isn't what it used to be, skeptics see a chupacabra, Star Wars characters can't read, and Frank Turner is brutally honest about John Lennon's worst famous song.
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British folksinger Frank Turner on why he hates John Lennon’s “Imagine” | Music | HateSong | The A.V. Club
AVC: You come from a punk background. That seems to fit in with the anti-nationalism, anti-corporate, and anti-religious messages of “Imagine,” no? FT: Yes, but that’s one of the things that’s so fucking annoying about it. Compared to, say, “The…
drorzel | September 28, 2012I'll be taking advantage of the one daily flight to Toronto that allows Albany to claim an International Airport today, en route to Waterloo, where they are celebrating the opening of their shiny new Quantum and Nano Center with an Open House on Saturday, September 29. I'll be giving my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" (now with 100% more ephemeral pop-culture references!) at 12:30, and appearing as part of a panel discussion at 4pm with people who are more famous than I am. If you're in the general area, stop by for one or both of those.
This will, obviously, keep me from…
drorzel | September 26, 2012In which Rhett almost makes me want ridiculously expensive sneakers, space loses its aura of cool, the Dean Dad introduces his kids to Star Trek, John Myers Myers overreaches in an interesting way, and a blogger asks for information on why women leave physics.
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Physics Not Physical: Why I'm Asking Why
I want to know WHY the percentage of women in physics going down. Right now there is a ton of support for women entering physics. We have conferences and mentorship programs all over the nation. But one crucial voice is missing: the women who dropped out of the physics major, and…
drorzel | September 24, 2012In which we look at the real goal for the Giants, how they've overspent on running backs over the last twenty years, the capital-S surrealism of Daniel Pinkwater (author of Lizard Music and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death), and an attempt to put the cost of the Large Hadron Collider in perspective.
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One LHC A Year
Italy, who is one of the contributors to CERN, and thus helped financing the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in measure proportional to their gross internal product, is a country full of people who visit magicians, tarot readers, healers, etcetera.…
drorzel | September 19, 2012In which we look at the death of a sports-media pioneer, the settling of the Chicago teachers strike, writing while a parent, why even highly educated people hate school teachers, and a different approach to teaching students not to plagiarize papers.
A Positive Solution for Plagiarism - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The first writing assignment I give students in my writing courses involves plagiarism as a topic. I ask them to investigate and read resources on the Web assembled by experts on the subject such as Nick Carbone, a new-media consultant for Bedford/St.…
drorzel | September 12, 2012In which we learn about a new science communication service, some history of astronomy, a more complete definition of "one-hit wonder," and a new science award promoting basic research.
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Bowler Hat Science
Matthew Francis launches his Media Empire, offering a variety of talks (both public lectures and research talks), and more importantly workshops on communicating science to a general audience.
Transit of Venus History: Deaths and Dilemmas - News Blog - SkyandTelescope.com
Western astronomers in 1761 may not have been the first to see a transit of Venus. The renowned Arab…
drorzel | September 10, 2012In which we look at Obama's speaking style, what Bill Clinton wrote vs. what he said, and Gangnam Style.
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Obama and the Racial Politics of American English - NYTimes.com
This ended up being less interesting than it seemed it might be, but I'm not sure why.
What Bill Clinton Wrote vs. What Bill Clinton Said - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
How knowing your material backwards, forwards, and inside out lets you turn a pretty good text into a masterful speech.
My Dear Korea: KOREAN MUSIC: PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and "Gangnam Oppa" in “Architecture 101” (1)
If you, like me, are a little…
drorzel | September 8, 2012In which science shows the FAA is full of crap, Slate takes on the question of science grad school, NFL team logos get redesigned to make them honest, the Joint Quantum Institute invites your Nobel guesses, and experimentalists are more sought after than theorists.
Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes? - WSJ.com
"The odds that all 78 of the passengers who travel on an average-size U.S. domestic flight have properly turned off their phones are infinitesimal: less than one in 100 quadrillion, by our rough calculation. If personal electronics are really as dangerous as the FAA rules suggest,…
drorzel | September 5, 2012
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Kermit
How Kermit the Frog is the perfect model for an academic administrator.
Chester A. Arthur: Sasquatch Trainer : Filmmaking Frenzy: Commander-in-Chief
From the people who brought you "Rutherford B. Hayes, Urban Vigilante," a movie about the only Union alumnus (so far) to be US President.
In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why? « Face in the Blue
One of my most-visited sites on the web is Reddit.com, and one of my favourite subreddits is HistoricalWhatIf, an online community that debates…
drorzel | September 2, 2012Physics after accelerators, the need for more athletic thinking, a call for more phenomenological thinking in physics, and a goofy phenomenological model for politics.
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More things in heaven than earth § Unqualified Offerings
A vision of a post-accelerator world for fundamental physics.
Fit for Physics – Dynamics of Cats
An argument that we need physics students to be more like football players.
Backreaction: Questioning the Foundations
A call for more phenomenological thinking in physics.
The Surprising Power of the New Hampshire Primary | Mother Jones
A goofy phenomenological…
drorzel | June 25, 2012In which we look at the history of lunch, the breathtaking inanity of the NYTimes's Style section, what kills us then and now, the latest tempest in the blogging teapot, and some of the best songs from one of my favorite bands.
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Lunch: An Urban Invention
As late as 1755, according to Samuel Johnson’s definition, lunch was simply “as much food as one’s hand can hold” — which, as Laura Shapiro, culinary historian and co-curator of the New York Public Library’s new Lunch Hour NYC exhibition, recently explained to me, “means that it’s still sort of a snack that you can have at any…
drorzel | June 21, 2012In which we look at the failure of elites, and the international language of bad dancing.
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Why Elites Fail | The Nation
A pure functioning meritocracy would produce a society with growing inequality, but that inequality would come along with a correlated increase in social mobility. As the educational system and business world got better and better at finding inherent merit wherever it lay, you would see the bright kids of the poor boosted to the upper echelons of society, with the untalented progeny of the best and brightest relegated to the bottom of the social pyramid where…
drorzel | June 20, 2012In which we look at failures of academic collegiality, the allocation of resources in the liberal arts, teaching as a big grey area, advice for new teachers, common misconceptions about education, an ambitious plan to reform jury duty, and a former member of Fred Phelps's hateful Westboro Baptist Church.
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Confessions of a Community College Dean: Collegiality
In traditional higher ed, there is neither a meaningful bottom line for most individuals, nor a credible threat of exit. There’s an institutional bottom line, in the sense of a budget that has to be met, but the consequences…
drorzel | June 19, 2012In which we look at an impassioned plea from a gay seminarian, a satirical video about the Singularity, and two more dispatches from the imminent death of traditional publishing.
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Letter from a gay Christian classmate « Mercy not Sacrifice
I am asking you to set aside your quiet whispers for a potent disquietude; I’m asking you to turn over a few tables in the temple; I’m asking you to upbraid the violent language of your church; I’m asking you to openly speak truth to power, as one you said you would; I’m asking you to do risk crucifixion within your order; I’m asking for your…
drorzel | June 18, 2012In which we look at basketball analytics, complaints about ancient Rome, the latest dispatch from the imminent death of publishing, and the optics of spy satellites.
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Where the Heat and the Thunder Hit Their Shots - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
The shooting patterns for the players on the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder reveal where they are most dangerous on the court. Below, compare each player’s strengths using court maps and analysis by Kirk Goldsberry, a geography professor at Michigan State.
The Seven Plagues of the Ancient Roman City Dweller | The Getty Iris…