Links Dump
drorzel | December 16, 2009
"Edward Gorey's "The Trouble with Tribbles"" By Shaenon K. Garrity
"By morning, the mass of mewling fluff had become quite suffocating"
(tags: comics television sf silly literature)
Dave Foley | Film | Random Roles | The A.V. Club
"With his boyish good looks and wry delivery, Dave Foley was pegged as the breakout star of beloved Canadian sketch-comedy troupe The Kids In The Hall. He followed the group's eponymous show and its 1996 spin-off movie Brain Candy with a leading role in the beloved comedy NewsRadio, which ran from 1995 to 1999. In 1998, he voiced the lead character in the Pixar…
drorzel | December 15, 2009
slacktivist: "Yes we can"
"Evidence is of no consequence to Medina and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and the rest of the terrified angry mob calling itself a Tea Party because they're not acting based on evidence, or reason, or reality, or honesty. They're acting based on fear -- blind, howling, maddening, confusing fear."
(tags: politics slacktivist race culture society US)
Physics Buzz: Dark matters
"[W]hen rumors circulated last week that CDMS had a paper coming out in the December 18th issue of the journal Nature, the physics blogosphere went mad in a way that reminded me endearingly of…
drorzel | December 14, 2009
Blog U.: 'With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them' - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed
"According to the report, the US has now slipped to tenth place in international college completion rates. I don't think it's coincidental that we are one of the few developed countries in which subsidized day care is not a given."
(tags: academia education society culture social-science kid-stuff gender blogs inside-higher-ed)
Conversation Hackers
"Two important men are having a careful conversation on military training. What do you call the guy who, having no particular competence or interest in the matter at…
drorzel | December 13, 2009
7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable | Cracked.com
"[H]ow did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn't live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common. In those days, if your buddy moved away the only way to communicate was with pen and paper and a stamp. We have Iraq, but our parents had Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people) and their parents had World War 2 (which killed 1,000 times as many). Some of your grandparents grew up at a time when nobody had air conditioning. All of their…
drorzel | December 12, 2009
Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border Boing Boing
With information on how to donate to his legal defense.
(tags: canada sf law blogs crime US stupid)
The Good and Bad of the New Hubble Image : Starts With A Bang
Earlier this week, I showcased the newly-released Hubble Ultra Deep Field in the infrared, and compared it with the older image of the same region taken in visible light.
As many astute readers noticed, the newer image looks blurrier than the old one! This is true, and there's a good reason for this.
(tags: science astronomy galaxies…
drorzel | December 11, 2009
Blu-ray Review: "Living Fireplace Volume 2" | Popdose
"Yes, I've written a review of a Blu-ray disc that features little more than a burning fireplace. I know it's a little weird. Here's something even weirder: Everyone has their favorite television holiday special, right? Mine is the Yule Log."
(tags: review television video holiday silly popdose blogs)
Why was Snape such a Bad Teacher?!
"Snape, as a student, apparently used the same textbook that he is teaching with now. When he was a student, he figured out all sorts of small improvements to make better potions more easily. He KNOWS…
drorzel | December 10, 2009
The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of
"EVERYONE THINKS they are open-minded. Scientists in particular like to think they have open minds, but we know from psychology that this is just one of those attributes that people like to apply to themselves. We shouldn't perhaps have to worry about it at all, except that parapsychology forces one to ask, "Do I believe in this, do I disbelieve in this, or do I have an open mind?"
The research I have done during the past ten or twelve years serves as well as any other research to show up some of parapsychology's peculiar problems and even, perhaps, some…
drorzel | December 9, 2009
Physics Buzz: When chemistry dunces bake
"Shirley Corriher, a former research biochemist at Vanderbilt University, got her start in the kitchen burning scrambled eggs beyond all recognition. Later, when she ruined recipes while taking a cooking class, she impressed her teacher by being able to explain scientifically what had gone wrong. Red cabbage gone purple? Add vinegar to restore the acidity. Asparagus gone an unappetizing olive green? Overcooking broke the veggie's cell walls. Soon her teacher and chefs and bakers all over the southeastern US were calling her with their questions;…
drorzel | December 8, 2009
News: Lincoln U. Ends Obesity Rule - Inside Higher Ed
"For the past few weeks, "Fitness for Life" may well have been the most discussed college course around. From now on, however, no one at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania will be required to take it.
The course became famous because of a requirement adopted at Lincoln for classes that entered in 2006 or later: that any students with body mass index scores above 30 show that they have lost weight or taken the course by the time they graduate. This year's seniors were the first to be covered by the requirement, attracting publicity that…
drorzel | December 7, 2009
Sunday Conversation: The case for Pluto | SciGuy | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
The controversy just never ends...
(tags: science astronomy planets media blogs)
Chromoscope
How the Milky Way looks at a variety of different wavelengths.
(tags: astronomy space science pictures physics galaxies)
Less Wrong: Parapsychology: the control group for science
"There's no particular reason to think parapsychologists are doing anything other than what scientists would do; their experiments are similar to those of scientists, they use statistics in similar ways, and there's no reason to think they…
drorzel | December 6, 2009
Questions Odd and Profound - NYTimes.com
"In the following pairs of excerpts, which sample, A or B, is from a Royal Society letter, explaining earnest scientific endeavor, and which is the work of a deeply skeptical satirist in the guise of Lemuel Gulliver? "
(tags: science history literature culture books)
The 10 Best Books of 2009 - The New York Times
It even includes a book about science...
(tags: books review literature)
The best films of the '00s | Best Of The Decade | The A.V. Club
"The scene was not unlike 12 Angry Men (or, in this case, 3 Shlubby Men, 1 Exasperated Woman, And A…
drorzel | December 5, 2009
Angular Momentum Example : Dot Physics
Rhett explore my favorite demo from intro mechanics.
(tags: science physics education blogs dot-physics)
Luis von Blog: Advice On Grad School Applications
(tags: academia education blogs silly)
drorzel | December 5, 2009
All Of You Industrial Scientists: Out Of the Room. In the Pipeline:
"It looks as if the accreditation groups decided that they were faced with a choice: commit themselves to judging what sorts of presentations should count for CE credit (which you might think was their job), or just toss out anything that has any connection with industry. That way you can look virtuous and save time, too. My apologies if I'm descending into ridicule here, but as an industrial scientist I find myself resenting the implication that my hands (and those of every single one of my colleagues) are automatically…
drorzel | December 3, 2009
The Science and Entertainment Exchange: The X-Change Files: Holy Concussive Incident, Batman
"Batman takes a lot of blows to his head. These come from his fighting activities and from being routinely thrown--or leaping--onto or into hard objects like walls, floors, and moving vehicles. The issue of concussion in Batman's career is something I addressed in Becoming Batman. In examining the scientific possibility of a human training to achieve the pinnacle of physical skill of comic book icon Batman, I reckoned him having a pretty short career. The main thing to shorten Batman's career would…
drorzel | December 2, 2009
AMC - Blogs - SciFi Scanner - A Cinematic Voyage Through Hollywood's SciFi Solar System
Our solar system is a wondrous and frightful venue, and from the magmatic center of the sun to the ghost ships orbiting Neptune, Hollywood has explored it all. Join us for a cinematic voyage through the scifi solar system, which features if not the most well-known movies about our sister planets, then at least the ones that tell us something interesting about the way we think of other worlds.
(tags: sf movies blogs planets astronomy)
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: If the Manhattan Project Worked Like…
drorzel | December 1, 2009
A Good Author Is Hard to Find - Books - The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper
"Mention the word "slush" to anyone who's worked in publishing for longer than five minutes, and you're likely to get an expression of sheer horror. Slush pile is a term used to refer to the collective mass of unsolicited manuscripts and query letters--novel or nonfiction synopses with a few sample pages attached--that daily deluges the offices of agents and editors throughout the industry. Occasional hits emerge from the morass: Twilight began as an unsolicited query. But far, far more often, the slush pile's…
drorzel | November 30, 2009
On false dichotomies : Thoughts from Kansas
"To the degree that I object to "New Atheism" (an ill-defined entity to which I am not entirely unsympathetic), my objection is to this precise aimlessness. By embracing Radical Honesty and railing against evidence-based communication strategy, they seem to be coming out against clearly stated goals, yet they complain when people refuse to treat them as a serious political movement. Sorry folks, but political movements have clearly stated political goals, and take actions with an eye (however skewed it may be) toward making those goals real. If…
drorzel | November 29, 2009
For a Budding Fan, Basketball The Way It Ought to Be - NYTimes.com
"My older son, Gabe, turned 3 in May, and I knew this would be the season I would finally take him to his first basketball game. I wanted the experience to be fun, the start of what I hoped would be a lifetime of basketball fandom. "
(tags: sports basketball essay)
Revisiting The Einstein-Bohr Dialogue (Part 1 of 3)
"A well-entrenched narrative tells the story of the Einstein-Bohr debate as one in which Einstein's tries, from 1927 through 1930, to prove the quantum theory incorrect via thought experiments exhibiting in-…
drorzel | November 28, 2009
Colliding Galaxies For Fun and For Science! : Starts With A Bang
"Galaxy Zoo has developed an outstanding game where you can help astronomers by doing something that humans easily defeat computers at: visually matching galaxies to simulations!"
(tags: science astronomy computing internet blogs starts-with-bang)
Should You Get a Ph.D.? : Mike the Mad Biologist
"My very short answer: no."
(tags: academia science jobs biology education blogs mad-biologist)
December 2009: James Wolcott on Reality Television | vanityfair.com
"The influence of Reality TV has been insidious, pervasive. It has…
drorzel | November 27, 2009
Spins spotted in room-temperature silicon - physicsworld.com
"Physicists in the Netherlands are the first to show that spin-polarized electrons can be injected into silicon at room temperature. The team injected the electrons into both p-type and n-type silicon and measured how long the polarization lasted. Although the lifetime was shorter than expected the physicists believe it is long enough to support the development of spintronics devices."
(tags: science physics condensed-matter materials electronics news experiment)
The Popdose 100: The Best Songs of the Decade | Popdose
"[H]ere's…