February 24, 2008
There was some back-channel talk about the Academy Awards this past week, in which another ScienceBlogger opined that the Oscars were stupid and that we, as Serious Intellectuals, ought to have better things to talk about than a pop-culture award show. I think that's well over on the "pompous ass"…
February 24, 2008
Here we see the mighty hunter returning from a successful pursuit of the elusive Red Snow Squid.
(It's a nice sunny day, here, and the snow storm of a few days ago left a nice coating in the back yard. It occurred to me that the snow makes a nice contrast with Emmy's black coat, and I still need…
February 23, 2008
The Field » Texas Early Voting Wave as Reaction to Systemic Disenfranchisement
Prairie View students shut down a highway in order to march seven miles for early voting.
(tags: academia politics race US)
Unruled Notebook » Blog Archive » Guilty of Plagiarizing Seventy Research Papers
A…
February 23, 2008
Because I'm a Bad Person:
(Context here, here, and here, Flickr group here.)
February 23, 2008
I had to do a couple of tests yesterday that required me to start something in the lab and then leave it alone for an hour, so I wandered over to a talk sponsored by the History department. Spencer Crew, the former director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, OH was…
February 22, 2008
sillybean » Translation from Aburt-speak to English of selected portions of his SFWA presidential platform[1]
"I don't understand why people on the internet are so mean to me, but I fully expect that my patronizing approach will bring them to their senses."
(tags: SF writing silly politics)…
February 22, 2008
A reader writes in with a literary query:
I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be…
February 22, 2008
The Hugo Award nomination deadline is fast approaching, so I've been doing a bunch of reading to make sure I've covered a reasonable range of potential nominees. I've been really bad about book-logging recently, but I thought I'd at least post some brief comments on my crash reading here, for those…
February 22, 2008
Inside Higher Ed reports on this week's candidate for Dumbest Administration Ever: Arkansas Tech:
After the Virginia Tech murders a year ago, Yale University banned the use of stage weapons in a student theatrical production -- infuriating actors and educators who believed audience members could…
February 22, 2008
Over at Arcane Gazebo, Travis talks about commuting, based on an Ezra Klein post:
Longtime readers know my obsession with the way we overvalue positional goods like money, prestige, and real estate and undervalue non-positional goods like social connections, walking to work, and health. But the…
February 21, 2008
Scientists probe fireballs with X-rays - physicsworld.com
"Theories put forward so far suggest that this "ball lightning" is either a moving electrical discharge or that it is some kind of self-contained object. Now, research from an Israeli group is making the latter seem more likely. "
(tags:…
February 21, 2008
Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy has live-blogged his own vasectomy.
Why did he do this? Your guess is as good as mine.
Why am I linking to it? Misery loves company. Until I figure out a way to scrub that knowledge out of my brain, the best I can do is make sure that the rest of you suffer,…
February 21, 2008
Janet Stemwedel is blogging, as is her wont, about questions of ethical behavior in science. She had a post Monday giving advice on how to counter unethical behavior, which all seems pretty good to me.
Unfortunately, the people who read and comment on blogs about academic culture tend to start at "…
February 20, 2008
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
"What do you want me to do? LEAVE?"
(tags: comics internet silly)
Researchers create 'self-healing' rubber - physicsworld.com
"If the material is snapped in half, the two torn pieces can be made to mend themselves…
February 20, 2008
Regular commenter Johan Larson writes with a suggested blog topic:
The Human Genome Project (yes, you have to pronounce those capitals) cost about $3 billion. If $3 billion were yours to spend on scientific research, how would you spend the money?
That's a great question, and a great topic for a…
February 19, 2008
Can Scientists Dance? -- Bohannon 319 (5865): 905b -- Science
A contest to see who could do the best interpretive dance based on their Ph.D. thesis.
(tags: academia music science video silly)
Conservatives Just Aren't Into Academe, Study Finds - Chronicle.com
"Conservative students, however,…
February 19, 2008
Another tidbit from Boskone. At the Sunday afternoon panel on global warming, one of the panelists brought up the fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics ensures that power generating systems always generate a great deal of waste heat. He wondered about how the waste heat released into the…
February 19, 2008
An interesting tidbit that occurred to me in thinking about the "unexpected uses of technology" panel (well, along with the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" thing): In a certain sense, my entire professional career is derived from unexpected uses of technology.
I'm not talking about the physics-with-…
February 18, 2008
Cocktail Party Physics: built for speed: part deux
Part two of the interview with the author of "The Physics of NASCAR"
(tags: physics books sports education science)
A Gut Check Moment for SFWA
Pass the popcorn...
(tags: writing SF stupid publishing books)
Mike the Mad Biologist : Bunny…
February 18, 2008
Since basically nobody reads my inside-baseball stuff about SF, I'll put the details below the fold. Short version: Kate and I went to Boskone this past weekend, and it was good.
Various miscellany:
-- During the week, Kate came down with the cold that I had last weekend. As late as Thursday night…
February 18, 2008
Via slashdot, I learn that a couple of colleagues of mine have achieved nerd fame with an art project in which a robot acts out dreams.
"Is there video?" you ask. Silly reader! Of course there's video!
The deal here is that one of the two, Fernando Orellana, went to a sleep disorder center and…
February 18, 2008
I gave a talk at Boskone in the prime Sunday 10 am slot, on quantum teleportation. I read the opening dialogue from Chapter 8 of the book, and then did a half-hour (or so) explanation of the real physics behind quantum teleportation.
If you weren't one of the thirty-ish people who watched at least…
February 17, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff : SqUINT Live Blogging - Saturday Talks
More updates from the cutting edge of quantum information.
(tags: quantum physics meetings science)
Cocktail Party Physics: built for speed: part one
An interview with the author of "The Physics of NASCAR"
(tags: books physics science…
February 16, 2008
evolgen: These Are the People at Your Departmental Seminar
A field guide to academic audiences.
(tags: academia science)
The Quantum Pontiff : SquinT Live Blogging - Friday Talks
A quick tour of the latest in quantum information.
(tags: quantum physics science academia meetings)
Accounting…
February 15, 2008
There has been another shooting on a college campus, with a gunman opening fire on a geology class at Northern Illinois, before killing himself. Early reports suggest that the safety measures put into place after the Virginia Tech tragedy all worked properly, and the response from police was as…
February 14, 2008
The Neon Season - Things I Have Learned From Reading Children's and YA Books of Yesteryear (and sometimes of Year Now)
"1. The dog always dies."
(tags: books literature culture silly)
Talk Like A Physicist
Because we're cooler than pirates.
(tags: physics science silly)
Cocktail Party Physics…
February 14, 2008
The Physics Central Nanobowl collected YouTube videos using football to illustrate something about physics. They've got a bunch of finalists, and the polls are open for the People's Choice Award. Check out the nine semi-finalists, and vote for your favorite.
The slickest is probably "Theoretical…
February 14, 2008
Over at Slaves of Academe, Oso Raro rants about student life professionals. The Dean Dad offers a defense of student life offices on procedural grounds (which is how I found the original piece).
It's hard to judge how much of the original rant is humorous exaggeration. There are some reasonable…
February 14, 2008
Via a EurekAlert release with the catchy headline "As graduation rates go down, school ratings go up", a new study of the Texas school system, which provided the inspiration for "No Child Left Behind". It's not pretty:
A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas-Austin…
