August 24, 2011
To my ultra-rich readers (in the unlikely event I have any) | slacktivist
"Those seem to be the options. You can either risk losing a big pile of money for the slim chance of a decent return or you can give up on the idea of a decent return just to avoid losing a big pile of money.
But what if I…
August 23, 2011
As long as I'm picking on education research papers in Science, I might as well call out the one immediately after the paper I wrote up in the previous post. This one, titled Graduate Students' Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills, is another paper whose basic premise I…
August 23, 2011
A while back, I Links Dumped Josh Rosenau's Post Firing Bad Teachers Doesn't Create good Teachers, arguing that rather than just firing teachers who need some improvement, schools should look at, well, helping them improve. This produced a bunch of scoffing in a place I can't link to, basically…
August 23, 2011
'Infinite Jest' Imbues Decemberists Video by Michael Schur - NYTimes.com
"It is a project that so fully combines Mr. Schur's favorite book -- the first he ever read that he felt was written the way he thought and spoke -- and favorite band, he says he would have been crushed if anyone else had…
August 22, 2011
The whole issue of pseudonymity has come up again, both on Google+ and on ScienceBlogs. While I've been on the Internet for nigh on 20 years, my initial point of entry was through a Usenet group that strongly preferred real names (or something real-name-ish). As a result, I've never tried to…
August 22, 2011
A few people last week were linking to this press release from Fermilab, which probably says more about the state of American particle physics than anything else: it's about an experiment that they expect to be approved in 2012, to break ground in 2013, and start running in 2016. I guess with the…
August 22, 2011
hwrnmnbsol: Michele Bachmann: EXPLAINED
"[I]t seems that a great many statements made by Michele Bachmann have the effect of generating bewilderment among a certain class of the population, a class that for brevity's sake I shall label 'people who know things'.
I have a new theory to help…
August 21, 2011
A physics story makes the front page of the New York Times today. Sadly, it's with the headline Laser Advances in Nuclear Fuel Stir Terror Fear. Sigh.
The key technological development, here, is that General Electric has been playing around with a laser-based isotope separation technique. This is…
August 21, 2011
As noted a while back, the Hugo Award nominations for this year were pretty uninspiring. The actual awards were handed out last night and, well, yeah. I wasn't all that wild about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but it at least would've been an interesting choice. But giving it to Blackout/ All…
August 21, 2011
Law, economics, and politics § Unqualified Offerings
"This is a musing on large bureaucratic organizations. I have noticed that some people get frustrated because they do not understand that law, economics, and politics are distinct things and they are not equally persuasive as arguments."
August 20, 2011
I've heard a bunch of good things about Dan Wells's John Cleaver series (a trilogy at the moment, consisting of I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, and I Don't Want to Kill You, but the ending of the last leaves an opening for more, should he want to write more), but I somehow didn't expect them…
August 20, 2011
Things I can only teach you in research § Unqualified Offerings
"When I'm teaching a regular class, I know the answer. Or I don't know the answer, but I think I do. Or I know I don't know the answer for sure, but I'm "pretty sure" what the answer is and I'm winging it because it's just that…
August 19, 2011
Back in June, when I was headed to DAMOP, I got email telling me that they had an official Android app. I installed it, and in with the meeting program and maps and things was a "Social Media" section, that included an official hashtag: #apsdamop.
I posted a few things using it, but it rapidly…
August 19, 2011
As a follow up to Wednesday's sad balloon post, the repair that lofted it back to the ceiling was a temporary reprieve, unsurprisingly. After 24 hours, more or less, it had sunk back down to the point where the ribbon was just barely touching the floor.
On the one hand, it looks kind of pathetic…
August 19, 2011
Jason Gay: Recreational Sports: It's Not Mortal Combat - WSJ.com
"Everybody who plays a sport for fun has encountered a Serious Guy (or a Serious Girl). A Serious Guy turns 3-on-3 into a curse-filled nightmare. A Serious Guy makes backyard badminton feel like tax preparation, and elevates…
August 18, 2011
For this week's Toddler Blogging, here's a dad's eye view of one of today's playground activities: walking the 4x4 border on the sand playground as if it was a balance beam.
She doesn't actually need to hold my hand to walk this, but it makes her happier.
I snapped that with my phone, expecting…
August 18, 2011
I've moved on to the second of three academic writing projects I wanted to work on this summer (yes, I know I'm rapidly running out of summer...), which is a sort of review article on which I will be the only author. This creates an awkward situation in the introductory material, because it just…
August 18, 2011
I'm not much of a baseball fan, but we're edging our way toward football season, so I flipped to ESPN radio a couple of days ago, in time to hear Mike and Mike discussing Jim Thome's 600th home run. They were questioning how much meaning we should attach to home run records any more, given how many…
August 18, 2011
What is journalism worth?
"What is journalism worth? That's the question journalism managers and entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out ever since it became clear, years ago, that the Internet was disrupting local publishing monopolies. And so we've endured years of conference panels, email…
August 17, 2011
My birthday was two months ago, and SteelyKid's was the weekend before last, so we've had balloons running around the house for a good while now. Meaning that when I came into the library yesterday, I saw the sad little image on the right: a half-deflated Mylar balloon floating at about chest…
August 17, 2011
A little more tab clearance: these are stories about the transformation of publishing that I've been meaning to say something about but haven't got around to.
First, some actual news: rumors of the imminent death of publishing may be somewhat exaggerated, as more books were sold for more money in…
August 17, 2011
Is Rick Perry a 'sucker,' or was he just lying? | slacktivist
"Maybe he really believed that. Maybe the single example of "stifling regulations" that he chose for his stump speech was some wild rumor that, despite being a state governor, he never bothered to check into or to have an aide check…
August 16, 2011
Two "small world" items, involving people I know turning up unexpectedly, doing well for themselves:
1) As mentioned previously, I've been thinking a lot about physics education stuff (even though I have other things I ought to be doing), and reading a lot more education-oriented blogs. I was…
August 16, 2011
Over at io9, they have a post on the finances of running a research lab at a major university. It's reasonably good as such things go, but very specific to the top level of research universities. As I am not at such an institution, I thought it might be worthwhile to post something about the…
August 16, 2011
Welcome to the Fall Semester | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Sharpen your pencils and charge your laptops. It is time for the next semester to start.
How about some tips to those that will be involved. Yes, I am talking to you. All of you."
The Only Time the Conservative Politicians Ignore Warren…
August 15, 2011
Over in Twitter-land, Josh Rosenau re-tweeted a comment from Seattle_JC:
It is a bad sign when the promotion of science and science education has been reduced to a grassroots movement in this society.
It's a nice line, but it doesn't entirely make sense. When I hear the term "grass-roots movement…
August 15, 2011
Bill Kirchen and Friends: Folsom Pinball Blues - YouTube
"Bill Kirchen and whole collection of talent at SoHo in Santa Barbara, CA doing a delicate combination of Folsom Prison Blues and Pinball Wizard."
Takraw: Thai Soccer - Thailand - YouTube
This would be so much cooler to have on tv than…
August 14, 2011
Lev Grossman's The Magicians never got a full entry to itself, but as I said when I mentioned it in this round-up post, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a magical school novel about recognizable American teenagers attending Brakebills, a sort of liberal arts college for the wizarding set, somewhere…
August 14, 2011
THE "Don't Miss" Volume? | Tor.com
"In the 1995 Hugos thread, Womzilla asked what was THE don't-miss novel of Bujold's Vorkosigan series. There has been much interesting discussion in the thread of the idea of a series novel winning the Hugo and specifically of which Bujold to read first, but I…
August 13, 2011
"Black And Blue" | Homicide: Life On The Street | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club
"Andre Braugher's Pembleton is fiery and mercurial and theatrical, and he works so fast that it's as if he thought that extracting false police confessions was a category recognized by the Guinness Book Of World Records…
