February 28, 2007
The Cosmic Variance post that led to the Cult of Theory post earlier this week was really about a New York magazine article about the negative effects of praising kids for intelligence. It mostly concerns a study done by Carol Dweck, in which fifth-graders who were praised for being smart after an…
February 28, 2007
One of the under-reported effects of cheap and widely available personal computers is the increasing dorkification of sports.
I'm talking here about the rise in obsessive stat-geekery across the board, with the accompanying increase in "fantasy" sports. Those phenomena have hardly been ignored, but…
February 28, 2007
Tennessee beat Florida by ten last night, handing the Gators their third loss in the last four games. Much as I dislike Florida, and enjoy seeing them lose, I wouldn't ordinarily comment on this. Hell, I wouldn't've watched this, ordinarily-- it was an SEC game, and Vitale was calling it. I…
February 27, 2007
Terence Tao explains quantum theory as a game of Tomb Raider:
Imagine first that Lara is about to navigate a tricky rolling boulder puzzle, when she hears a distant rumbling sound - the sound of her player saving her game to disk. From the perspective of the player, what happens next is the…
February 27, 2007
Kate's in Rochester to argue a couple of cases, and the Queen of Niskayuna is being Difficult this morning, so I don't have as much time as I'd like for this. As a result, it may come out a little more inflammatory than I intend, but then, that's half the fun of blogging. Or something.
Anyway, the…
February 27, 2007
Another unexpected win for one of my teams. I think Jay Bilas put it pretty well when he said "I bet Jim Boeheim didn't expect to be playing his senior walk-ons in the final minute of a victory." A loss, maybe, but Syracuse winning 72-58 is a real surprise.
This was a good old-fashioned Big East…
February 27, 2007
This looks like it's most likely a robin, though it was kind of big for a robin, and the color is a little weird. Maybe it's molting, or some such. Anyway, it was perched right outside the window, and Her Majesty found it absolutely fascinating. So I took a picture.
February 26, 2007
Check out the DeMille group rigid rotor photo. Truly, a remarkable display.
(One of my students stumbled across this while researching grad schools, and showed it to me today.)
February 26, 2007
Over at Cosmic Variance, Julianne (not JoAnne, as I originally typed) has a very nice post about the cult of genius in physics, and its relationship to research on the problems caused by excessive praise. Doug Natelson also has some comments. There's some fascinating stuff in the articles about…
February 26, 2007
Kate has posted a report on Boskone talk by Brother Guy Consolmagno, on hunting for meteorites in Antarctica. Guy is a Jesuit brother, and also a research astronomer for the Vatican, and a better example of the peaceful coexistence of science and religion would be hard to find.
He's also a very…
February 26, 2007
Well, I didn't expect this... Between that and the Oscars, I'll never cut it as a telephone psychic.
I came back from the intramural game (we lost to a team of football players who had a slight strength and conditioning edge over us) with about 11 minutes left, and it looked pretty much like what I…
February 26, 2007
There are some comments in the earlier post about firing teachers that probably deserve responses. They don't deserve the responses they would've gotten yesterday, though, as I was grading lab reports all morning, and the snark level was high.
Having cooled off a bit, I'll try to get back to that…
February 25, 2007
A few days ago, Inside Higher Ed did an Oscar preview, and asked five academics who study film to predict the Best Picture winner. Three of the five picked The Departed to win, and one of the other two preferred it to his predicted winner (Babel).
Clearly, Scorsese is doomed to lose yet again.…
February 25, 2007
Syracuse beat Providence yesterday, in a good old-fashioned Big East game-- on a critical late-game play, a Providence player got smacked across the face hard enough to turn his head, and no foul was called. He missed the shot, Syracuse got the rebound, and it was all over but the free-throw…
February 25, 2007
(Recipe from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World)
Chicken Stock: 3.5 cups
Saffron Threads: 1.0 pinch
Extra Virgin Olive Oil: 3.0 Tbs
Onion, Minced: 1.0 medium
Rice, Short/Medium Grain: 2.0 cups
Shrimp, Cut Up: 2.0 cups
Salt, Pepper: to taste
Parsley: for garnish
Pre-heat the oven to 500 F…
February 25, 2007
Haiku about research
(Link via Crooked Timber)
Go cast your vote now
February 24, 2007
Speaking (as we were) of the glamourour life of writers, Bookslut points to an interview with Iain Banks. If you're not familiar with Banks, he's a prolific author who alternates "mainstream" literary novels (as "Iain Banks") with genre SF novels (as "Iain M. Banks"). With a very few exceptions,…
February 24, 2007
OVer at the Whatever, Senor BaconCat has two long posts on the glamorous life of a successful SF writer: one breaking down his income from SF writing in detail, and the other talking about why he's talking about money. The comment threads are also lively and interesting in their own right. It's…
February 24, 2007
Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman are both talking about firing teacehrs. Being moderate, wonkish guys rather than fire-breathing ideologues, they mostly say sensible things-- Kevin notes that it's really difficult to document bad teaching, and Mark has a particularly good point about teacher pay:
[T]he…
February 23, 2007
Stolen from Brad DeLong:
Woof.
February 23, 2007
It's a good day for people posting about science I don't understand...
Peter Woit points to the Non-Commutative Geometry blog, at which Alain Connes, the godfather of non-commutative geometry, is posting. It's not the most polished blog, but if you can understand what they're talking about, it's…
February 23, 2007
Buried in a "Quick Takes" post a few days ago, Inside Higher Ed had a link to a set of suggestions for improving public education:
Education Sector is offering the following eight education ideas for the 2008 presidential campaign. They cover the educational spectrum, from preschool to higher…
February 23, 2007
Two American physicists are reporting the discovery of nearly perfect quasicrystal patterns in the decorative tiles of a certain type of Islamic art:
Penrose tiling is very reminiscent of "girih" - the elaborate patterns used in Islamic architecture. While travelling in Uzbekistan, [Harvard…
February 22, 2007
Fade In: The dining room of Chateau Steelypips, at dinner time.
"Can I have a piece of chicken?"
"No."
"But I really like chicken."
"That's nice. The answer is still no."
"But I really like chicken. Pleeeease?"
"For the last time, no."
"OK." Pause "Can I have a cookie? Pleeeease?"
Fade out
Of…
February 22, 2007
Two exciting new developments in the Seed-o-sphere:
1) Rob Knop's Galactic Interactions has joined ScienceBlogs. It's nice to have another physical science type around here, along with all these damn biologists. If you're so inclined, go say "hi."
2) The Powers That Be have also unveiled a new RSS…
February 22, 2007
My father taught sixth grade in the public schools for thirty-odd years, and always griped about the teacher training workshops that they were periodically subjected to, in which some expert would be brought in to talk about the wonders of the latest fad in pedagogy, while all the teachers in the…
February 22, 2007
This is an approximate transcription of my physics talk from Boskone, titled "Spooky Action at a Distance," in which I attempted to give a reasonable explanation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen ("EPR" hereafter) paper and Bell's Theorem. This was sort of a follow-on from last year's "Weird Quantum…
February 22, 2007
Maryland beat Florida State last night, and moved over 0.500 in the ACC for the first time. This is also their 21st win on the season, and Jeremy Gold has gone round the bend:
MD could rise as high as #2 seen in the NCAAs should they finish 10-6 in the ACC and win the ACC Tournament. Granted that…
February 22, 2007
The only reason I'm not going to hunt and kill James Nicoll for pointing me at the Conservapedia thing is that he also provides a link to the latest results from the Spitzer telescope. Not the one that Kate's former boss uses to keep an eye on the New York State Legislature, but the one that…
February 22, 2007
I was busy yesterday at work, so I managed to avoid looking at the "Conservapedia" until James Nicoll, the bastard, drew my attention to the entry on Relativity:
Unlike most advances in physics, the theory of relativity was proposed based on mathematical theory rather than observation. The theory…
