November 15, 2009
10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don't | GeekDad | Wired.com
"1. Munroe's Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his position automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins."
(tags: science…
November 14, 2009
WTF, Aerosmith? WTF? | Popdose
"Never has there been a band so unbelievably great and so sadly shitty at the same time. That, to me, is the Aerosmith legacy, and it's only bound to get worse. Yet, there is something that still seems sacred about this band, beyond mere nostalgia. I just think they…
November 13, 2009
Physics Buzz: Best physics inventions of 2009
"TIME magazine has announced the 50 best inventions of 2009. NASA's Ares family of rockets was a shoo-in for best invention, given the recent launch of Ares 1-X, the family's test rocket. I'll give them that; NASA could certainly use the cheerleading…
November 12, 2009
An indignant SteelyKid says "What do you mean I can't go to day care? I'm perfectly healthy!"
She is, indeed, doing much better. Last night, I wasn't sure you'd get any Baby Blogging at all, because snot and fever don't make for a photogenic baby. She's waddling around in more or less her usual…
November 12, 2009
The always interesting Timothy Burke has a good post about PowerPoint in classes, spinning off a student complaint. I've been lecturing with PowerPoint-- my own slides, not something sent to me by a textbook company-- since day one, so of course I have opinions on the topic.
For the most part,…
November 12, 2009
SteelyKid had a check-up yesterday, and got three shots (chicken pox, MMR, and seasonal flu). This may or may not be related to her high fever and general misery last night; whatever the cause, she was not a happy camper.
Since she can't very well go to day care like that, I'm staying home with her…
November 12, 2009
Das Kriegstagebuch von Dieter Finzen im 1. Weltkrieg - Wardiary of Dieter Finzen in WW1
Diary entries from a German soldier in WWI, posted 93 years after they were written.
(tags: history war world blogs)
WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier
"This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin…
November 11, 2009
Some years ago, I heard Bob Park give a talk about pseudoscience, using "How to get rich and famous abusing your science knowledge" as a framing device. He ran through the deceptions involved in a bunch of high-profile "science" based scams and scares-- homeopathy, free energy, power lines causing…
November 11, 2009
I've gradually gotten used to the idea that as a semi-pro blogger, I will occasionally be sent review copies of books I've never heard of. These are generally physics books, and I have a stack of them sitting next to the bed at the moment, not being read nearly fast enough.
It's only recently that…
November 11, 2009
If you want to be a musician, there are some simple rules you must follow:
And now you know...
(The squeaky toy noises in the early part of this drive Emmy nuts...)
November 11, 2009
Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat - Why you might want to live in ND...
"My rural area friends have commented on this same trend. Most kids don't do anything unsupervised in cities and spend all of their time indoors. School is making this worse. Kids are being given ever more…
November 10, 2009
I failed to write something on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall yesterday, partly because I think the other six million blog posts on the subject had it pretty well covered. Another factor, though, was the fact that I don't have the sort of crystal-clear recollection of where I was…
November 10, 2009
Syracuse head basketball coach Jim Boeheim won his 800th game last night. Fittingly, it was a thirty-point win over an overmatched New York school.
Since winning the NCAA tournament in 2003, Boeheim has finally started to get some respect in the college basketball world. Before that, he was…
November 10, 2009
A New Spacecraft to Explore on Waves of Light - NYTimes.com
"About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely…
November 9, 2009
I am curious as to what people at other institutions think about "Greek organizations," the slightly confusing catch-all term for fraternities and sororities (very few of whose members are ethnically Greek, and very few of whom know more Greek than a handful of the letters of the alphabet). Thus, a…
November 9, 2009
There's a nice post over at "The World in a Satin Bag" on the important things editors do. The emphasis is on fiction publishing, but most of it applies to non-fiction as well:
Editors make you into a better writer. Emphasis on better. They don't make you into the greatest writer ever, but they…
November 9, 2009
The Mid-Majority : The Old Ways
"Once the Union was preserved forever, the United States stopped worrying splitting into two. So with the late 1800's came the combat-in-context of professional and amateur sports. If you're looking for a reason why the South never rose again, it's probably because…
November 8, 2009
OK, fine. Today's nice weather is well within the range of seasonal variation for New England. But after a chilly week or two, it was nice to get a chance to go to the park with SteelyKid, who definitely enjoyed it:
Of course, after a bunch of swinging, sometimes you just need to sit quietly and…
November 8, 2009
Via somebody on a mailing list, Eric Whiteacre's virtual choir:
The post I got this from doesn't contain any details, nor does it contain useful links to the making of this particular video, but looking around the top level of the blog it's fairly clear that this was put together from a large…
November 8, 2009
On Denialism and the role of science in America. (1) - By Chris Mooney and Michael Specter - Slate Magazine
A fourpart discussion on science, the media, and American society, featuring the authors of _The Republican War on Science_ and _Denialism_.
(tags: science politics media journalism society…
November 7, 2009
We subscribe to Locus, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what's coming out from various publishers, but it's also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff.
In…
November 7, 2009
WIPP Exhibit: Message to 12,000 A.D.
"This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a…
November 6, 2009
"It's a question of character, of friendship. Hell, Leo, I ain't afraid to say it, it's a question of ethics." --Giovanni Gaspari
I'm back to lunchtime hoops after a two-week layoff due to teaching responsibilities. And this has reminded me of one of the great character tests that sports provide.…
November 6, 2009
Today's Quantum Optics lecture is about quantum computing experiments, and how different types of systems stack up. Quantum computing, as you probably know if you're reading this blog, is based on building a computer whose "bits" can not only take on "0" and "1" states, but arbitrary superpositions…
November 6, 2009
Philip K. Dick | Books | The A.V. Club
"Why it's daunting: Science fiction and fantasy get a lot of mileage out of taking their readers to new worlds, but most classic genre fiction is really about making new worlds seem like home. The Lord Of The Rings would lose a lot of its appeal if the…
November 5, 2009
For this week's Baby Blogging, we have a shot of Kate helping SteelyKid with her new favorite game:
It's called "Take off my shoes, and put them back on." She can play this for hours. It would be even cuter if she could do the putting on and taking off herself, but alas, she's still kind of…
November 5, 2009
I have a lab all morning, so I won't get to more substantive blogging before this afternoon. The Yankees won their 27th World Series title last night, though, and given their status as the most polarizing team in baseball, this seems like a good excuse for a poll:
What do you think about the…
November 5, 2009
It's not getting as much press as the "X Prize" for private rocket launches, but NASA has quietly been running a contest for work toward a "space elevator," offering up to $2 million for a scheme to transmit power to a small robot climbing a 1km cable. Yesterday, the team from LaserMotive,…
November 5, 2009
TPM: The Philosophers' Magazine | My philosophy: Alan Sokal
"Physicists, when they do philosophy, often do it badly. They're often confused about the conceptual foundations of their own physics, because sometimes you can compute and get the right results even if you don't understand conceptually…
November 4, 2009
It's November now, which means we're edging into winter, and my morning ritual has been expanded to include scraping the frost off the cars when I get back from walking the dog. I've had to do this half a dozen times already, and I've noticed a puzzling pattern.
Our driveway is aligned almost…
