April 28, 2011
TODAYMoms - Want another bedtime story, sweetie? Here's one: 'Go the F@#k to Sleep'
"The cats nestle close to their kittens.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the f@#k to sleep."
(tags: kid-stuff books silly sleep)
April 27, 2011
Union's edition of the chase-each-other-with-Nerf-guns game Humans vs. Zombies kicks off next week, and has prompted some discussion of whether this is just a harmless way of blowing off steam, or an existential threat to the core mission of academia. While some of this has been vaguely…
April 27, 2011
The nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards were released on Sunday, which is the sort of thing I usually blog about here, so you might think it's just our flaky DSL that's kept me from saying anything about it. that's only part of the story, though. I haven't said anything about them in large part…
April 27, 2011
It's been in the works for a while, but a couple of days ago the news got out via the usual combination of rumor-mongering and confidentiality-breaking that makes blogdom such a joy to work with (seriously, you want to know why it's hard to get mainstream media types to take bloggers seriously, or…
April 27, 2011
The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science
As someone who blogs about science and occasionally about politics, I am contractually obligated to link to this article. Fortunately, it's also good and interesting.
(tags: psychology science politics neuroscience climate vaccine culture society cog-…
April 26, 2011
Amazon's $23,698,655.93 book about flies
"A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence's The Making of a Fly - a classic work in developmental biology that we - and most other Drosophila developmental biologists - consult regularly. The…
April 26, 2011
This paper made a big splash back in November, with lots of news stories talking about it; it even made the #6 spot on Physics World's list of breakthroughs of the year. I didn't write it up then because I was hellishly busy, and couldn't take time away from working on the book-in-progress to…
April 25, 2011
I try not to do any shilling for political groups on the blog, but I'll make an exception for the National Center for Science Education. Why? Three reasons:
1) They do good and important, if not always glamorous work, supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools, both in the classroom and…
April 25, 2011
Our home Internet has been out since Friday, which is, as you might imagine, somewhat vexing. The most likely cause is that our DSL modem is dying (it's nine years old), which raises a technical problem.
A few years ago, when we last had a problem requiring a service call, the tech who came out…
April 25, 2011
The Management Myth - Magazine - The Atlantic
"The recognition that management theory is a sadly neglected subdiscipline of philosophy began with an experience of déjà vu. As I plowed through my shelfload of bad management books, I beheld a discipline that consists mainly of unverifiable…
April 24, 2011
nanoscale views: Public funding of science, and access to information
"While this is an interesting topic, I'd rather discuss a related issue: How much public funding triggers the need to make something publicly available? For example, suppose I used NSF funding to buy a coaxial cable for $5 as…
April 22, 2011
A few months ago-- just before the paperback release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog-- Amazon started providing not only their Sales Rank data, but also sales data from Nielsen BookScan. Of course, the BookScan data is very limited, giving you only four weeks, and the Sales Rank data, while…
April 22, 2011
I intended to do a big book-sales post today, but our DSL modem may be dead, so there was no Internet in Chateau Steelypips this morning, and I forgot to copy the relevant files onto a thumb drive, so it will have to wait. Maybe this afternoon.
In lieu of that, here's some other stuff on shale gas…
April 22, 2011
Top Facts - Gauss Facts
"Gauss has an Erdos number of -1."
(tags: math silly internet)
Making Light: Yog's Law
"Self-publishing is the part of the map where the author is the publisher and hires the editor, hires the cover artist, the typesetter, the proofreader, contracts the printer, buys the…
April 21, 2011
I'm sitting on the couch reading when Emmy trots in looking excited.
"Hey, dude, I've got a great idea!" she says cheerily. "You know how your puppy is away for the week?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I think this is the perfect opportunity to class up your blog a little. I mean, you always post pictures of her…
April 21, 2011
Several people blogged about a new measurement of gravitational states of neutrons done by physicists using ultracold neutrons from the Institut Laue-Langevin in France. I had to resort to Twitter to get access to the paper (we don't get Nature Physics here, and it's way faster than Inter-Library…
April 21, 2011
After chasing a bunch of kids with cell phones off of his lawn, Kevin Drum has kicked off a discussion of "multitasking", specifically about whether it's merely a threat, or a positive menace. He points to an interview with Clifford Nass, a researcher who says his experiments show that nobody is…
April 21, 2011
How to be South Asian on American TV « North Philly Notes
"Recently, a student presented on Outsourced, providing an overview of the TV show, clips, and some background information, including that Outsourced is the longest running show to date that has multiple South Asians as major characters…
April 20, 2011
(Alternate Title: "Epic Fantasy Is What We Point to When We Look Down on Epic Fantasy.")
I've been on a bit of an epic fantasy kick lately, evidently due to the thousand-ish pages of The Crippled God not being enough. This means that I was in a weirdly appropriate mental space to catch the recent…
April 20, 2011
Bill III's Blog » Have you ever printed a boarding pass?
"Well this little feat has been a long time coming. For those of you who have worked with me in Unalakleet you probably have heard about my aspiration of using the poster printer to print my boarding pass. Well two days ago my dream…
April 19, 2011
The New York Times had another article on the environmental impacts of shale gas drilling, which reminded me that I had intended to write something else on the subject after February's post on the fracking panel at AAAS, but never got around to it. The hook for the article is yet another study…
April 19, 2011
Keeping the Keys to the Kingdom « Easily Distracted
"I'm very much with my colleagues in their call for a renewal of practical wisdom. But in their view-and mine-one of the consequences of such a turn would be that we'd stop trying to make systems, rules and structures do to us, for us, with us…
April 18, 2011
It's been a while since I wrote up a ResearchBlogging post, but since a recent paper forced me to update my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" slides with new pictures, I thought I should highlight the work on the blog as well. Not that you could've missed it, if you follow physics…
April 18, 2011
TV staffing: uniquely awful, but survivable | johnaugust.com
"Here is what it means to be a TV writer: You are paid to work in conditions that vastly accelerate the degradation of your body while brainstorming fantasy lives for the select group of your co-workers who work in conditions designed…
April 17, 2011
A very silly musical poll question, brought to you by the local classic rock station's music selection this morning:
Which of these makes more sense:online surveys
On an unrelated note, it's deeply unfair that sleeping really late puts SteelyKid into a worse mood than not getting enough sleep…
April 16, 2011
By Ken Levine: How to create a hit network drama
"Fame and riches can be yours! Procedural/action dramas are in and you too can create one if you just follow these very simple steps:
Always start with a couple. He must be boyishly handsome and she must be smoking hot. You can go "mature" but…
April 15, 2011
Regular blogging has been interrupted this week not only because I jetted off to southern MD but because this week was the due date for the manuscript of the book-in-progress. It's now been sent off to my editor, and thus begins my favorite part of the process, the waiting-to-see-what-other-people-…
April 14, 2011
SteelyKid has been sick this week, which made it a perfect time for me to fly down to Maryland for a couple of days. Fortunately, she and Kate have both forgiven me. I did break out the new friend I purchased for SteelyKid a couple of weeks ago, and have been holding in reserve:
The fuzzy blue…
April 13, 2011
The Defenders - NYTimes.com
"One of those on the ramparts peering out into the night was a blue-eyed, dark-haired young Irishman named John Thompson, a private, who left what may be the only surviving description of the battle by a rank-and-file soldier: a long letter that he sent two weeks later…
April 12, 2011
I'm in last-minute-revision mode here, made mroe frantic by the fact that SteelyKid developed a fever yesterday, and had to be kept home from day care. I did want to pop in to note that I will be giving the Natural Science and Mathematics Colloquium at St. Mary's College in Maryland tomorrow,…
