December 15, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Cost-Effectiveness, or Cost?
"The goal of the study -- which is entirely to the good -- is to encourage colleges to base resource allocation decisions on actual effectiveness, rather than on what sounds good or what has usually been done. The authors break…
December 14, 2010
As usual, the most sensible commentary on the Southern organizations celebrating the 150th anniversary of secession comes from the Daily Show. Specifically, Larry Wilmore:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The South's Secession Commemoration
www.thedailyshow.com…
December 14, 2010
Monday Matchup, Giants vs. Vikings From Detroit - NYTimes.com
"Tired of building vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes for your children's science projects? Recreate the collapse of the Metrodome roof instead.
Materials needed: green construction paper, some wooden dowels, a paper towel, about 500…
December 13, 2010
A bunch of smallish items that have been failing to resolve into full-fledged blog posts for a little while now, thrown together here because I don't have anything better to post this morning:
-- When is doubt, start with self-promotion: Physics World includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in…
December 13, 2010
What scientists in 1903 wanted for Christmas! | Skulls in the Stars
"Recently, while I was looking for a paper published in Nature in 1903, I happened across a series of advertisements in a supplementary issue of the magazine. These ads, clearly targeted towards those of a scientific persuasion…
December 12, 2010
As you can see from the picture at right, we've got our Christmas tree up, waiting to surprise SteelyKid when she comes home in a couple of hours. This also means it's getting toward the time when I switch over to the holiday music playlist on iTunes.
Christmas music is, of course, a problematic…
December 12, 2010
New York Governor Vetoes Fracking Bill - NYTimes.com
"New York Gov. David A. Paterson on Saturday vetoed legislation intended to curtail natural gas development using the technique called hydraulic fracturing until a closer review of its effects can be undertaken.
Instead, the governor issued an…
December 11, 2010
It's time now to talk about two of the greatest mentor figures in the literature of the fantastic. You know their stories well, I'm sure, but the parallels between them are eerie:
Both are gruff but kindly mentor figures who provide crucial guidance for the young and naive protagonist of the story…
December 11, 2010
Physics Buzz: Holiday Instability
"Holiday decorations are unstable. (We're talking about physics here. We'll leave their emotions aside.) To take a closer look at what we're dealing with, I've considered three of the most popular items from the array of December decor: The Christmas tree, the…
December 10, 2010
I'm currently working on a book about relativity, but I still spend a fair amount of time thinking about quantum issues. A lot of this won't make it into the book, because I can't assume people will have read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog before reading whatever the relativity book's title ends…
December 10, 2010
Academics for Mere Politicians | Wired Science | Wired.com
"It's not personal, and it's not business
This is a big one (that is why I put it first). A university isn't a business in the normal sense. Oh sure, they bring in money and they spend money. From the outside, it is easy to mistake it for…
December 9, 2010
SteelyKid is off spending a weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's, so this week's picture was actually taken early Wednesday morning:
The early hour accounts for both the pacifier (she wasn't willing to give it up yet) and the frizzy hair (bed-head toddler!). I'm pretty sure she hasn't grown measurably…
December 9, 2010
How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog continues to sell very well. The vanity search today led me to this, screen captured from the Guardian newspaper in the UK, which sells our book in its online bookshop:
Woo! Take that, biology!
Yeah, yeah…
December 9, 2010
Over at Backreaction, Bee runs through the pros and cons of different presentation methods for academic talks. As she quite correctly notes, both PowerPoint presentations and chalk talks have strengths and weaknesses. You can give a good talk with either, and a bad talk with either.
This does…
December 9, 2010
SteelyKid is off spending the weekend with her grandparents, so Kate and I went out to a nice restaurant last night (we love SteelyKid dearly, but miss eating in restaurants without a kids menu). I was kicking myself for forgetting to set the DVR to record a basketball game, though. Not the Duke or…
December 9, 2010
YouTube - Inception in Real-Time
All four levels of the dream caper synched up in one video clip.
(tags: movies video youtube culture)
Making omelettes inside of eggshells - Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
Weirdly fascinating food geek blogging. "Weirdly," because I don't like eggs at all, and…
December 8, 2010
The great British physicist Ernest Rutherford once said "In science, there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting." This is kind of the ultimate example of the arrogance of physicists, given a lovely ironic twist by the fact that when Rutherford won a Nobel Prize, it was in Chemistry. (…
December 8, 2010
Locus Online: Locus Magazine Digital Editions
"Starting January 2011, we will be launching our first digital editions of Locus magazine. Subscriptions will be available in, at minimum, PDF format, and we hope to have e-pub and Kindle versions also. We plan to primarily distribute from our own…
December 7, 2010
Today is the official release date for the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I wanted to write up something cool about quantum physics to mark the occasion. I looked around the house for inspiration, and most of what we have lying around the house is SteelyKid's toys. Thus,…
December 7, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Research Design in a Recession
"My college is planning a major student survey for the Spring. We're drawing up questions that we think could help shape budget priorities over the next few years, assuming there's actually enough money to have some level of…
December 6, 2010
I'm going to be at a media training session for most of the day. I had hoped to have a long and silly post about physics to schedule today, but, well, that didn't happen. So here's a silly poll to pass the time.
The name of element number 13, chemical symbol Al, is pronounced with how many…
December 6, 2010
Surviving the World - Lesson 821 - Santa Claus
Many Worlds, many presents.
(tags: comics surviving-world physics silly quantum science)
On jargon, and why it matters in science writing | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine
"The bottom line is that you educate people by explaining…
December 5, 2010
YouTube - MST3K - Patrick Swayze Christmas
A carol to move the hardest of hearts...
(tags: silly music movies television youtube video)
Not Even Not Even Wrong - Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design : Built on Facts
"Isaac Newton, when he wasn't revolutionizing mathematics and almost single-…
December 4, 2010
It feels a little weird not to be doing a Short Story Club entry, so here's a different sort of pop culture item: Over at EphBlog, my classmate Derek Catsam has decided to break up the carnival of reactionary politics by commenting on great albums, jumping off from Spin's Top 125 of the Last 25…
December 4, 2010
The 12 Days of Christmas | The Language of Bad Physics
"On the fifth day of Christmas,
My PI gave to me:
Five Ci-ta-tions...
4 revisions,
3 rejected drafts,
2 data sets,
And a pile of papers to read."
(tags: academia education silly music blogs kavassalis)
A is for Ackbar | brandonpeat.com
"…
December 3, 2010
Lance Mannion has a good post on the fake outrage of the moment in sports, where Derek Anderson, the terrible quarterback of the godawful Arizona Cardinals, was caught on camera maybe laughing with one of his receivers during their drubbing by the not at all good San francisco 49ers. When…
December 3, 2010
Cocktail Party Physics: books, books, books galore!
"A couple of weeks ago, an editor asked me to name my favorite science book from 2010 for a year-end round-up her magazine was putting together. My incredulous response: "You mean you want me to pick just one?" Because let's face it, 2010 has…
December 2, 2010
SteelyKid decided she needed to put on her Christmas outfit earlier tonight, and her day care class at the Jewish Community Center has begun celebrating Chanukah, so it seemed like a good night for a festive holiday Toddler Blogging picture, with some bonus Feats of Strength:
Look! SteelyKid can…
December 2, 2010
In reading a bunch about relativity and related subjects as research for the book-in-progress, I have run across a usage question that seems like a good basis for a poll. So:
The "Classical" in "Classical Physics" means:online survey
Please note that none of these options include quantum…
December 2, 2010
The poor coverage of science in the media is an evergreen topic in blogdom, to the point where I've mostly stopped clicking on links to those sorts of pieces. This ScienceProgress post about newsroom culture bugged me, though, and it took me a while to figure out the problem. The author worked as a…
