Links Dump
drorzel | November 2, 2009
Boo! The optics behind "ghost" imaging « Skulls in the Stars
"Ghost imaging is in fact a fascinating and relatively new technique in which a detector can produce an image of an object that it cannot see! The physics behind this effect is somewhat subtle, and resulted in at least one minor controversy since its introduction. Let's take a look at it..."
(tags: science physics optics blogs skulls-in-stars)
nanoscale views: The unreasonable effectiveness of a toy model
"As I've mentioned before, often theoretical physicists like to use "toy models" - mathematical representations of…
drorzel | November 1, 2009
Another dumb article on why spaceflight is bad for you -- KarlSchroeder.com
"But really, people, think! This doesn't mean that space flight is intrinsically dangerous. It means that badly shielded tin-can environments that aren't spun for gravity are a bad idea. And that is quite a different conclusion."
(tags: space science sf economics blogs karl-schroeder)
Giants' Danny Clark Chose to Go Green With a Smart Car - NYTimes.com
"[T]he glances turn to stares and smiles when he parks his 1,600-pound vehicle and his 6-foot-2, 245-pound body emerges from behind the wheel.
"That's when the…
drorzel | October 31, 2009
A Plea for Peaceful Coexistence - The Pour Blog - NYTimes.com
"Beer and wine are not in competition. Yet people in the wine business, who I assure you drink an awful lot of beer, don't often take it seriously as a beverage. And people in the beer business, perhaps in reaction to not-so-imaginary slights, rarely even acknowledge the existence of wine, much less deem it worthy of drinking."
(tags: booze food blogs culture)
Casual Fridays: Is political wishy-washiness a general phenomenon? : Cognitive Daily
"Kevin [Drum] suggested that someone do a study to see if some people flip-flop no…
drorzel | October 30, 2009
Pimp My Novel: Tip O' the Week: Chasing Trends
"If you're currently penning a fantasy novel centering on a pious zombie vampire from an alternate 19th century in which science/alchemy/the Bible has predicted the earth's impending doom, uh, please send it to me, because that could be awesome. More importantly, though, stop doing it."
(tags: publishing writing books business blogs pimp-novel)
What Do Teens Want? - 10/26/2009 - Publishers Weekly
"In 2005, we conducted our first survey to learn what teens react to in the marketplace and what influences their reading choices. By this past…
drorzel | October 29, 2009
Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
"[E]ven though our two Steves are really brilliant economists, they just can't figure out why most of us women don't want to have sex for tons and tons of money. Why aren't more women successful prostitutes?, Levitt and Dubner ask. Is it because:
a) They don't like sex;
b) They hate men;
c) They're kind of dumb;
d) All of the above.
If you guessed D, you are probably either Steven Levitt or Stephen Dubner. (Thanks for reading, guys!)"
(tags: sex…
drorzel | October 28, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor - Bring Back Basketball's Little Big Men - NYTimes.com
"[I]f the N.C.A.A. truly cared about improving colleges instead of settling for the extra year before eligibility that Stern is talking about, it should use its considerable influence to demand that both the N.B.A. and N.F.L. foot the college's bill for training pro athletes by paying a given amount each year for each player successfully drafted from college. The money would go into a fund for academic scholarships at the colleges these players attended. It wouldn't perhaps turn young superstars into student-athletes,…
drorzel | October 27, 2009
Elements I Have Yet to Use. In the Pipeline:
"I wrote about this topic a few years ago, and thought I'd update it. Many chemists find themselves looking at a periodic table and wondering "How many of these things have I personally handled?" My list is up to nearly 45 elements (there are a couple that I've got to think about, one-off catalyst reactions from twenty-two years ago and the like). And there are at least 29 that I hope to never use at all, since they're radioactive and I'm generally not in the mood for that. So what does that leave me?"
(tags: chemistry medicine industry blogs in-…
drorzel | October 26, 2009
Historians Reassess Battle of Agincourt - NYTimes.com
"Agincourt's status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history -- and a keystone of the English self-image -- has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers. "
(tags: history humanities war)
Swans on Tea » It ... Moves
Boom de yada, boom de yada.
(tags: video silly swans-on-tea xkcd comics)
What the crappy…
drorzel | October 25, 2009
Quantum Physics in 60 Minutes
Damian Pope's talk at the Quantum to Cosmos festival. I'm tempted to steal the grain of sand thing.
(tags: science physics video education quantum)
Atlas Sucked -- Crooked Timber
"[I]t does raise the question of whether there are any genuinely good, genuinely political novels out there. Since we're coming up on the weekend, I'll throw this out as an open thread (I have a few nominations myself, but don't want to bias the sample). Have at it."
(tags: books politics literature history philosophy blogs crooked-timber)
No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund -…
drorzel | October 24, 2009
Deep Physics : Built on Facts
You can think of the earth's surface in New Mexico as subject to two superimposed sinusoidal periodic heat pulses. One has a period of 24 hours and corresponds to the heat rising and falling over the day/night cycle. The other has a period of 1 year and corresponds to the average heat changing through the seasons. Clearly this approximation is quite rough, but we can take it as a starting point for some mathematical spelunking of our own.
(tags: science physics thermo math education blogs built-on-facts)
Gravity, evolution, and a peek at Bill Maher : Thoughts…
drorzel | October 23, 2009
An Inside Look at the Physics GRE | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"I am sworn to secrecy about a lot of the details, for good reason, but let me try to tell you from my perspective as an exam writer how to study for this dreaded event in your physics education."
(tags: science physics academia education blogs cosmic-variance)
Living Like Fitzgerald « Whatever
"To flag my own genre here, "Six cents a word," should sound vaguely familiar to science fiction and fantasy writers, as that's the current going rate at the "Big Three" science fiction magazines here in the US: Analog (which…
drorzel | October 22, 2009
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: What to Expect: The Third Decade.
"By thirty-years-old, your adult will probably be able to...
Feed and maintain a house pet,
Hold down a job,
Maintain eye contact while speaking,
Refrain from discussing high school,
Cook a meal (three-course),
Make small talk,
Forgive his family,
Acknowledge other viewpoints (social),
Detect and respond to ambiguity,
Finish school"
(tags: psychology kid-stuff silly)
Physics Buzz: Theater for physics fans, and physics for the rest of us
"Brad Carroll, a professor of physics and chair of the physics department at Weber State…
drorzel | October 21, 2009
Chairs : The Quantum Pontiff
"Michael Green is the new Lucasian chair of Mathematics replacing the esteemed Stephen Hawking. Green helped sparked the great optimism in string theory by discovering with John Schwarz the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism.
Elsewhere, the Perimeter Institute has named ten new distinguished research chairs, among them a host of the quantum computing afflicted"
(tags: science academia physics quantum blogs pontiff)
FemaleScienceProfessor: On Not Being There
"It can be difficult to balance a typical research university professor teaching load with a…
drorzel | October 20, 2009
Myth Confirmed. : Built on Facts
"[U]ntil relatively recently, no one had ever actually done the experiment. It's difficult, both in terms of dropping the bullets properly and making sure the gun fires exactly horizontally. Horizontal fire is critical, because if there is an initial vertical velocity for the fired bullet, the equation will be different from the dropped bullet and they won't hit the ground at the same time. Nonetheless there is a group of experimenters who are very good at this sort of thing, and not so long ago they actually did the experiment. They are of course the…
drorzel | October 19, 2009
Patrick Welsh -- To Explain the Achievement Gap, Examine the Parenting Gap - washingtonpost.com
"My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria. And it wasn't because the school system had failed them. They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn't wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop and where there is open enrollment in Advanced Placement and honors courses. Rather, it was…
drorzel | October 18, 2009
Analysis Of A Roulette Strategy
"As Hank explains in a recent article, when he visits a Casino he plays the Roulette. His simple strategy consists in betting on a single colour, doubling the bet every time he loses; when he wins, he starts back with the minimum bet.
Such a strategy is not going to make you rich, but no strategy does at the Roulette, especially the American one which has both a "0" and a "00" -two neutral numbers thrown in to enhance house odds. The idea of doubling every time is that eventually the colour you bet on is bound to appear, and you will win back all your fiches…
drorzel | October 17, 2009
Career Advice: A Regular Writing Routine - Inside Higher Ed
"In this article, I'm starting a four-part series on developing a regular writing routine. In this column, I'll discuss and debunk two popular myths about writing. In my next column, I'll review two of my favorite articles, one on expert performance and the other on writing research and apply it to developing a regular writing routine. Then I'll write a piece on what a regular writing routine looks like in real-time; that is, when you put your bum on the chair on your fingers on the keyboard, what really happens. To wrap up this…
drorzel | October 16, 2009
slacktivist: Oh, and Tony Perkins? He lies. A lot. For money.
"Please don't clutch your pearls and get the vapors that such an impolite thing is stated so honestly. That Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council lies a lot in order to scare people into sending him money is not surprising, or new, or unusual or controversial. Tony Perkins lies for money. Giraffes have long necks. Water is wet. "
(tags: politics religion law crime society evil stupid gender race blogs slacktivist)
The Digital Cuttlefish: Someone Is Wrong On The Internet
"Someone Is Wrong/
...On The Internet,/
And I won't…
drorzel | October 15, 2009
Electrons flow forever in metal rings - physicsworld.com
"[I]f a metal ring is very small - about 1 μm diameter or less - quantum mechanics says that its electrons should behave in much the same way as electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. And in the same way that electrons in the lowest energy configuration of an atom maintain their orbits without the constant input of energy, electrons in such "mesoscopic" rings should flow forever. Indeed, a 1 μm diameter ring cooled to 1 K should support a current of about 1nA. "
(tags: science physics quantum experiment news)
The Brancatelli File…
drorzel | October 14, 2009
AdLit.org: Adolescent Literacy - William Farish: The World's Most Famous Lazy Teacher
"Thomas Jefferson was arguably one of the most well-educated Americans of his time. He was well-read, thoughtful, knowledgeable in a wide variety of topics from the arts to the sciences, and the founder of the University of Virginia. The same could probably be said of Ben Franklin, or James and Dolly Madison. On the larger world stage, we could credibly make such claims for René Descartes, William Shakespeare, Galileo, Michelangelo, and Plato.
But there is one thing unique about the education of all these…