June 18, 2007
In response to a question about "Other aspects of the instructor's teaching," one student in my recently completed E&M class wrote:
Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics and the course was taught in that slightly…
June 18, 2007
It's the first day of the summer research session today, which means I'm going to be run ragged getting my three (!) summer students started with their various projects. So, here's a pop-culture post inspired by the wedding Kate and I went to over the weekend:
What's the most inappropriate song you…
June 18, 2007
Lots of people are down on physics or physicists these days:
Cosma Shalizi is down on power-law fits, or, more precisely, annoyed at people who misuse power-law distributions. He's written a paper about how to use them correctly, and provides a handy list of take-home points on his blog.
Travis…
June 17, 2007
Via Jeff "jefitoblog" Giles, who wrote the Editor's Notes, the collaborative review site Rotten Tomatoes has generated a list of the top 100 science fiction films, based on their user ratings. It's split over 100 individual pages, and tarted up with lots of slow-to-load graphics, so here are their…
June 17, 2007
Today is, at long last, Commencement at Union. At around the time this is posted, I'll be parading around in academic robes, or possibly listening to a variety of boring speeches.
Of course, I can't really claim that I don't enjoy this. After all, Kate and I drove back here from Boston last night…
June 15, 2007
Inside Higher Ed has an opinion piece today in which a a provost and a professor talk about service, which is the catch-all category of faculty activities that aren't teaching and research. As the title of the piece says, this is a particularly unloved area:
Yet this is the area that is least…
June 15, 2007
As Kate and I will be attending the Worldcon in Japan, we're eligible to vote for the Hugos this year. In an effort to be responsible voters we downloaded the electronic version of the short fiction nominees that are available from the official nominations site, and I've been working my way through…
June 15, 2007
I'm turning in my grades today, which means another year has come to an end. Also, I'm on sabbatical next year. Woo-hoo!
To celebrate, here's a silly random songs post. In honor of the end of the term, iTunes chose to serve up a set of songs with lyrics that are either completely insipid or…
June 14, 2007
As several of you know very well, Kate and I were married five years ago in Massachusetts, near where her family lives. Which, of course, means that our marriage was totally cheapened and rendered meaningless by today's vote against an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution.
Or--…
June 14, 2007
Since it seems to be a good day for posting things that may be unwise, I'll throw this out. In the middle of a news release dump from the APS, there's a story about a new study of physics pedagogy that found gender gaps persisting in spite of "active learning" techniques. This is in contrast to a…
June 14, 2007
According to Inside Higher Ed, that's what sociologists found when analyzing data from a longitudinal study of more than 10,000 young Americans. Those who went to college were more likely to remain religious than those who didn't attend college, with 76% of the non-college group reporting a decline…
June 14, 2007
According to Inside Higher Ed, a new report about the Virginia Tech shooter puts the blame on college lawyers:
"Throughout our meetings and in every breakout session, we heard differing interpretations and confusion about legal restrictions on the ability to share information about a person who may…
June 14, 2007
As a science fiction fan, when I see a dramatic headline like Computer Flaw Could Imperil Space Station, I can't help thinking of murderous AI's. Sadly, the real problem is much more prosaic:
The [International Space Station] depends on Russian and American computer systems to maintain the attitude…
June 13, 2007
Another itme from yesterday's Inside Higher Ed that's worth a mention is a report about a new call for improved science teacher in the public schools:
The report by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) is distinguished from the many other recent reports on the subject, the forum's leaders…
June 13, 2007
His Holiness posts a YouTube video of a cartoon explanation of double-slit interference. Apparently this was made by the "What the Bleep" people, and it sort of shows in the gosh-wow tone that shades toward mysticism at the end.
As always with YouTube, though, the real fun is in looking at the…
June 13, 2007
Bora's probably already aware of this, but the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies is currently underway in Minnesota. Like many professional society meeting, this has led to a giant blort of press releases on EurekAlert, as the PR office for the conference tries to drum…
June 13, 2007
As regular readers of this blog know, I'm a college basketball junkie. As far as I'm concerned, the NBA is just a giant methadone program to easy me into the summer, when there aren't any sports worth watching on tv. I'm a big fan of NCAA basketball, but I'm starting to think about how I can manage…
June 12, 2007
Clifford Johnson is pointing to a pair of stories about extrasolar planets. One is a news piece about the "flood" of new discoveries, and the other is a Top 10 list from space.com (warning: irritating web design).
This provides a good excuse to roll out a blog suggestion from Ron Walsworth, who…
June 12, 2007
The current tempest in the teapot of the academic blogosphere is the stalking of Scott Eric Kaufman. John Holbo has a decent summary, with links to most of the relevant original posts. The short form is this: Scott commented negatively on the "Jesus' General" blog about what he thought was an…
June 12, 2007
Via the Little Professor, I learn that Geoffrey Chaucer can hath cheezburger.
For many dayes ich haue desyred to maak Lolpilgrimes from the smal peyntures that Mayster Linkferste hath ymaad for my Tales of Canterburye - not oonly wolde it be a thing of muchel solaas to me, but it wolde be a good "…
June 11, 2007
I need to disappear into a swamp of paper grading, exam writing, and committee meetings for a while, so here's a comment thread topic inspired by somebody else's typo:
Librarians or Libertarians?
I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm asking for-- it could be "Which of these groups have done more…
June 11, 2007
One of the few glitches in the DAMOP meeting program was the way the poster sessions were run. For those from regions of academia that don't do poster sessions, it's pretty much what the name implies: rather than delivering short talks about their work, the presenters in the session prepare posters…
June 11, 2007
Friday at DAMOP ended up being more about socialization than science. I went to a few talks, but there wasn't that much on the program that looked exciting, and I had to spend some time in the middle of the day grading papers and dealing with some panicky emails from students.
As a result, the…
June 10, 2007
For the third year running, the after-dinner speaker at DAMOP was a politician-- a Canadian one, this time, former MP Preston Manning (who also has his own official web site). I was a little surprised to see him described as a "right-wing populist" because he sounded very reasonable, but on…
June 10, 2007
You know those guys you see getting on planes with big shoulder bags that couldn't possibly be made to fit in those little test boxes they put by the gates that everybody ignores? I'm one of them, for good reason: whenever I check luggage, something goes wrong.
Take yesterday, for example. I was…
June 8, 2007
I was trying to think of something deep and meaningful to post today, but I've been in conference mode too long to do anything all that deep. So here's a simple binary choice for all the nerds in the audience:
Bosons or fermions?
It's a tough call after a few days of conferencing: On the one hand…
June 7, 2007
The highlight of Day 2 of DAMOP was, obviously, the special Undergraduate Research session. OK, it's possible that I'm only saying that because one of my students was talking in that session...
Mike did a really good job with his talk, though there were a couple of phrases in there that I would've…
June 7, 2007
Sort of in the same spirit as yesterday's summer reading post, another book-related question:
What's the best book you were ever forced to read for school? What's the worst?
The best, for me, is probably The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a sort of metafictional Vietnam novel in stories. I…
June 6, 2007
With attendees still trickling in after Tuesday's storms upset pretty much every mode of travel in Alberta, the DAMOP meeting opened with the Plenary Prize Session, and the first two talks were probably the highlight of the day, as far as I was concerned. Jun Ye and Jim Bergquist both work in…
June 6, 2007
Greetings from sopping wet Calgary, where thunderstorms and local flooding delayed my arrival until after midnight (2 am my time), which really put a damper on the 8am talks. I had meant to schedule some book-related posts to appear here while I'm gone, but I'm an idiot, and didn't select "…
