July 11, 2011
We took SteelyKid to the playground at one of the local elementary schools on Sunday morning. this one includes an odd sort of slide, made of dozens of rollers that are 1-2 inches in diameter (they're all the same size-- the range is just because I didn't measure them carefully). They're on really…
July 11, 2011
Thoughts on Cheating « Cooperative Catalyst
"Don't tell teachers, "whatever it takes," and then act surprised when they follow that advice to its logical extreme. Don't tell the principal, "you'll lose your job and we'll shut down the school if it doesn't make AYP," and then act surprised when…
July 10, 2011
This morning, via Twitter, I ran across one of the most spectacular examples of deceptive data presentation that I've ever seen. The graph in question is reproduced in this blog post by Bryan Caplan, and comes from this econ paper about benefits of education. The plot looks like this:
This is one…
July 10, 2011
Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls
""Maya," I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, "very nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too," she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice.
"Hey, what are you reading?" I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love…
July 9, 2011
A little while back, I bought The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. Abraham is the author of the highly-regarded but not all that highly sold Long Price Quartet. I've heard nothing but good things about this, but I couldn't get through the first book, for reasons that are entirely personal and no…
July 9, 2011
Ironic Effects of Anti-Prejudice Messages
The authors conducted two experiments which looked at the effect of two different types of motivational intervention - a controlled form (telling people what they should do) and a more personal form (explaining why being non-prejudiced is enjoyable and…
July 8, 2011
The final content area from my DAMOP overview is Precision Measurement. This is also the smallest area, with only one invited session on the topic on Fundamental Symmetry Tests, though two of the "Hot Topics" talks (by Zheng-Tian Lu and Ed Hinds) were precision measurement talks. You might be able…
July 8, 2011
The topic sucking up all blogospheric oxygen at the moment is the great elevator incident. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find lots of good summaries and explanations, including from Phil Plait and Josh Rosenau. The core of the story is that Rebecca Watson was propositioned in an…
July 8, 2011
Evil and Riddles: The Grey King | Tor.com
I don't need to re-read this, really I don't. And yet...
(tags: books sf review blogs tor nostalgia literature)
Cheryl's Mewsings » Blog Archive » Anthologies: Some Data
"On Saturday I mentioned that I had been sent some data about gender splits in…
July 7, 2011
This week's Toddler Blogging is a cell-phone picture in slightly dim light, but it's too cute not to use:
This is particularly noteworthy because the fire truck was bought by Grandma and Grandpa last year, while the fire hat was bought by Grandma and Grandpa before they were grandparents. In 1974…
July 7, 2011
It is my fervent hope that at some point in the future, we will once again live in a society where all discussions of politics are not indescribably depressing.
Really, that pretty much sums up my feelings about everything in the news right now, on-line and off. There are a bunch of things going on…
July 7, 2011
The Slacktiverse: DragonRaid: moral teaching through roleplaying games?
"In the mid-90's a friend and I became fascinated by the "Christian adventure game" (similar to a roleplaying game) called DragonRaid, published by Adventures in Christ. (Details can be found at the DragonRaid website.) We…
July 6, 2011
Today's Links Dump came late because I was at the meeting of the APS's Committee on Informing the Public. We apologize for the inconvenience, but I was too busy acquiring this critically important scientific data:
What is that, you ask? It's this:
That's the Superman roller coaster at the Six…
July 6, 2011
As Shuttle Program Ends, Dreams of Space Linger - NYTimes.com
Most of the scientists I know would be thrilled to see humans exploring space, landing on Mars, for example -- they just don't think that science should pick up the check. Many of them were suspicious of the shuttle, both because of…
July 5, 2011
Performance and Recording: "Everyone sing the chorus--including intellectuals!" -- Crooked Timber
"I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy and Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music [...]…
July 5, 2011
The fourth content area from my whirlwind overview of DAMOP is "traditional" AMO physics. This was the hardest to talk about in my talk, because I know it the least well, but ironically, that makes it really easy to write up here, because I don't have much to say about it.
Where the other areas…
July 5, 2011
I'm going to be at an amusement park tomorrow, for a meeting of the APS's Committee on Informing the Public, which oversees the APS outreach program. Why an amusement park? Because a common outreach-type program is to do a Physics Day at an amusement park and talk about the physics of roller…
July 4, 2011
The Virtuosi: Coriolis Effect on a Home Run
"I like baseball. Well, technically, I like laying on the couch for three hours half-awake eating potato chips and mumbling obscenities at the television. But let's not split hairs here.
Anyway, out of curiosity and in partial atonement for the sins…
July 3, 2011
Between the holiday weekend and finally getting to concentrate on book edits, there hasn't been much time for blogging recently. So here's another SteelyKid-at-the-Bronx-Zoo picture for filler:
As I said when I posted this to google+, this practically demands a caption. Unfortunately, I haven't…
July 2, 2011
YouTube - âªSlightly less than two drinks (cut from That Mitchell and Webb Look S04E04)â¬â
"You must never drink any more than slightly less than two drinks. Beyond that state of mildly intoxicated perfection lies drunken madness, 3rd pints, kebabs, and destruction."
(tags: booze silly comedy…
July 1, 2011
Third of the five research categories within DAMOP that I talked about is Quantum Phenomena. This is a little bit of a catch-all, as there are a few different things going on in this area. They are all unified, though, by the fact that they end up making quantum mechanical effects manifest in some…
July 1, 2011
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Spiked Cities
"Having followed [Richard] Florida on twitter for a while, I've noticed that his position goes beyond noting creative clusters. There's a general pro-urban, anti-suburban flavor to his thought. Add a few bike paths and a vibrant gay community…
June 30, 2011
SteelyKid's away at Grammy and Grampy's this week, so I can't take a Toddler Blogging photo for this week. I do, however, have this random artsy shot from last Saturday's trip to the Bronx Zoo:
This is from the Children's Zoo section. She's going up the stairs to the upper platform, where there's…
June 30, 2011
The second in the DAMOP research categories I talked about is "Extreme Lasers," a name I was somewhat hesitant to use, as every time I see "Extreme [noun]," I get a flash of Stephen Colbert doing air guitar. It is, however, the appropriate term, because these laser systems push the limits of what's…
June 30, 2011
YouTube - âªWits with Neil Gaiman, Adam Savage, and Gollum: "I Will Survive"â¬â
The Internet is a very, very strange place.
(tags: silly internet video music movies television)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Yes, College is Worth It
"One way to test the truth of the proposition that…
June 29, 2011
The first of the five categories of active research at DAMOP that I described in yesterday's post is "Ultracold Matter." The starting point for this category of research is laser cooling to get a gas of atoms down to microkelvin temperatures (that is, a few millionths of a degree above absolute…
June 29, 2011
Out in Minnesota, Melissa expresses some high-level confusion over the preference for people with a small-college background:
In the past few months, I have been involved in several conversations where someone mentioned that a particular faculty member or administrator was or was not an alum of a…
June 29, 2011
Chuck Klosterman on Led Zeppelin's last stand - Grantland
"4:52 to 5:24: brrrrrrringgggggg ... brrrrrrrrrringggggggg
"Hello?"
"Hi. Is this John Paul Jones?"
"Yes. Yes it is. Why are you calling me in the middle of this song?"
"I just noticed you had a telephone on your keyboard, so I thought I'd…
June 28, 2011
That's the title of my slightly insane talk at the DAMOP (Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society) conference a couple of weeks ago, summarizing current topics of interest in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. I'll re-embed the slides at the end of…
June 28, 2011
But it doesn't move! | The Renaissance Mathematicus
"All in all to believe in heliocentricity at the beginning of the 17th century was literally an act of blind faith and those that opposed it did so on solid scientific grounds and not purely out of some sense of religious bigotry as is often…
