Links Dump
drorzel | September 23, 2010
Learning the Rules « Easily Distracted
"Today, for a zillion complicated reasons, many of them having nothing to do with the academy itself, the discrete knowledge that constitutes meaningful cultural capital within various professional and social worlds is much more fragmented, as are those worlds themselves. [...]Sometimes you'll get this in college, sometimes you'll get it from friends, and sometimes you won't get it until later.
This is fine: I am not one of those pining for the ability to compress the culture back into a tightly canonical straitjacket. What I wonder about is whether…
drorzel | September 22, 2010
Class « The Reality-Based Community
"Real class is what the economic aristocracy of our country has almost entirely lost. The American rich are wallowing in a moral slough, grasping for more and more money they have no clue what to do with, and venting their frustration that climbing over each other to new heights of wretched excess brings no satisfaction by lashing out at every social institution, and at a government whose largesse is never enough for them. Andrew Carnegie may have had his miners shot at Homestead, but he came to regret it and he also said it was sinful to die rich. He…
drorzel | September 20, 2010
6 Famous Unsolved Mysteries (That Have Totally Been Solved) | Cracked.com
"One of our favorite pastimes here at Cracked is sucking the mystery out of life like the cream out of a Twinkie, leaving only the bland, dry sponge cake of reality behind. To that end, we've decided to list the often mundane solutions to some of the world's most enduring mysteries, and once again, you're welcome."
(tags: science history internet lists cracked culture)
slacktivist: Jackie at the crossroads
""But this girl I work with told me about it," Jackie says. "She read it in a magazine. And she said her cousin…
drorzel | September 18, 2010
Rally to Restore Sanity
"We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles.
Are you one of those people? Excellent. Then we'd like you to join us in Washington, DC on October 30 -- a date of no significance whatsoever -- at the Daily Show's "Rally to Restore Sanity." Ours is a rally for the…
drorzel | September 17, 2010
http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/debut-author-lessons-10-things-about-signing-books/
Good, solid advice on signing books, some of which I've stumbled on myself, others I wish I'd known a year ago.
(tags: books publishing blogs)
Interference | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
An awesome picture of water wave interference involving a waterlogged bee.
(tags: pictures physics science waves water)
drorzel | September 16, 2010
What higher education costs § Unqualified Offerings
"There's a lot of talk going around about the cost of higher education. Let's look at some numbers in the state university system here, which focuses on undergraduate education."
(tags: academia education economics blogs unqualified-offerings)
Do Scientists Have a Special Responsibility to Engage in Political Advocacy? | Age of Engagement | Big Think
"I do not really believe that scientific credibility is as fragile as other people seem to believe. Scientists can be terrible people and still do good science, or they can be wonderful…
drorzel | September 15, 2010
Lunch at McDonald's - The Amateur Gourmet
"I won't be the first food writer to note that McDonald's makes terrific fries. I've read interviews with chefs who try to emulate that crispy exterior and moist interior, that perfectly pleasing balance of salty, savory and sweet. These fries are prevalent around the world for a reason: food scientists engineered the formula and the formula works. There's no real arguing with that.
It's how you feel afterwards that's the problem."
(tags: food review blogs culture)
Meet the New Wired Science All-Star Bloggers | Wired Science | Wired.com
"At Wired…
drorzel | September 14, 2010
Geocentrism: Was Galileo Wrong? : Starts With A Bang
No. An exhaustive explanation of how we know the Earth goes around the Sun.
(tags: science astronomy physics planets blogs starts-with-bang stupid education)
Testing, the Chinese Way - NYTimes.com
"Professor Cizek, who started his career as a second-grade teacher, said the prevailing philosophy of offering young children unconditional praise and support was probably not the best prescription for successful education. "What's best for kids is frequent testing, where even if they do badly, they can get help and improve and have the…
drorzel | September 12, 2010
R.W. Wood's lecture demonstrations (1897-1905) | Skulls in the Stars
In the early years of the 20th century, however, the most important physics journals published in English were the Philosophical Magazine and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Truly important results would appear in those journals first, and Physical Review was a second or third tier journal to which authors relegated their incremental and pedagogical discoveries. A number of authors contributed suggested lecture demonstrations, but none was as productive as Wood, who by my count published 5 demonstrates…
drorzel | September 10, 2010
NFL 2010: The biggest thing fans don't understand about life in pro football. (1) - By Stefan Fatsis, Nate Jackson, Josh Levin, and Tom Scocca - Slate Magazine
A great discussion of the modern NFL, including a couple of former players.
(tags: sports football slate culture)
I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
"This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong.…
drorzel | September 9, 2010
Swans on Tea » I'm Not Willing to Believe You
"I'm perfectly willing to believe that the data one uses for one's thesis is gathered in three months, and my experience is similar, but that's not the whole story. A Ph.D. is not just the dissertation -- you can't just write off the experience leading up to it. To claim that you could just walk into the lab and take data means that you had the requisite knowledge and lab experience, which you must have acquired as an undergraduate. And I don't believe it."
(tags: academia education science physics biology experiment blogs swans-on-tea)
The…
drorzel | September 8, 2010
Ancient brew masters tapped antibiotic secrets
" A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago."
(tags: science archaeology chemistry history news medicine)
Physics Buzz: How not to: The Fire Tornado
"In the last two weeks, both water and fire tornadoes have been widely covered by the media. First there was the dramatic…
drorzel | September 7, 2010
The Daily What
"I love xkcd wedding cakes / boom de yada boom de yada."
(tags: internet pictures xkcd comics food)
The physics.org web awards | Latest Features | physics.org
"The aim of physics.org has always been to help those interested in physics navigate this sea of information. Over the past few years we've gathered together over 4,000 of what we consider to be great webpages, and put them into our Explore database on physics.org.
To take things one step further, this year we're hosting our first ever physics.org web awards to give the best physics sites out there some well-deserved…
drorzel | September 6, 2010
Why do we get Labor Day off? - By Brendan I. Koerner - Slate Magazine
"Though President Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day a national holiday in 1894, the occasion was first observed on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. A parade was organized by the city's Central Labor Union, a branch of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, a secretive labor union founded in 1869 by a clique of Philadelphia tailors. Historians still debate over whom, specifically, to credit with the idea of a holiday dedicated to the workingman."
(tags: history us politics culture society slate)
"Some Enchanted…
drorzel | September 5, 2010
The short answer Yglesias's question is "Yes." - Acephalous
"[A]s it currently stands, the choice is between being a "serious" scholar who engages no one or an "unserious" scholar whose work is read by many but, because of that, counts for nothing. I'm obviously not endorsing this model, nor am I saying it's the same in all disciplines, as I would love to be in a discipline in which my work mattered on its merits rather than for what its publication wins me; however, for those invested in the system as it's currently constituted, the idea of public engagement is understandably frightening.…
drorzel | September 4, 2010
News: Searching for STEM Success - Inside Higher Ed
"During the two-decade period from 1985-1986 to 2005-2006, rural community colleges increased the number of women and minority STEM graduates by more than 42 percent. By contrast, urban community colleges boosted these underrepresented groups by just under 24 percent and suburban community colleges by about 10 percent.
Breaking down degree production within specific STEM disciplines and then by type of community colleges reveals even more variance. Rural community colleges, for example, bolstered their numbers of female engineering…
drorzel | September 3, 2010
Tom Waits | Music | Gateways To Geekery | The A.V. Club
"Waits, who made his proper recording debut with 1973's Closing Time, inspires music writers' wild, Charles Bukowski-fueled imaginings because his work has always been about the losers, the freaks, the slow 3 a.m. drunks who fumble change out of their pockets for the broken jukebox; the lurching, homeless fools who mark out their days with piano wire and broken bottles; the lovers for whom love is the only lie still worth living for. He is by turns macabre, melancholy, cynical, and optimistic, a heap of broken images left rusting in…
drorzel | September 2, 2010
BBC News - Would more holiday be good for America?
"Whenever citing Americans' acceptance of the longer hours they work or their lack of paid leave, the cliche is to say it goes back to the country's Puritan heritage or the Protestant work ethic.
I disagree. I think it comes from raw fear."
(tags: us world society economics class-war vacation jobs)
The View From Mercury : Starts With A Bang
A slew of pictures of Mercury, plus one of Earth from Mercury.
(tags: science astronomy pictures blogs planets starts-with-bang)
Science and religion vs. humanities and religion § Unqualified…
drorzel | September 1, 2010
This is why I "support" majoritarian rule. - Acephalous
"As a means of registering my discontent with conservative claims that the fact that 70 percent of Americans abhor the idea of the "Ground Zero Mosque" means it should be abandoned, I hereby present other things that 70 percent of "certain" Americans once hated."
(tags: politics us blogs acephalous race religion society)
Square Signals : An Anesthetic Default
"I have this problem.
When I get home from work, I sit down on my couch and open my laptop. When I'm waiting for the next bus, I pull out my iPhone.
Then there's the unconscious…
drorzel | August 31, 2010
slacktivist: The Clod and the Pebble and the politics of resentment
"What happened was that 78 poor children whose fathers are incarcerated received free back-to-school supplies provided by three area churches. Their dads were permitted to be on hand to help present these presents, getting a rare chance to spend a few hours with their young kids.
This is, unambiguously, a Good Thing. "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the needy have their needs met, children are prepared to learn, broken families experience healing, the poor have good news brought to them."
Most readers will…