September 3, 2010
Earlier this summer, I talked about the blog and the book on the phone with somebody from the APS, providing material for a profile of me that was posted yesterday on Physics Central. It's pretty good, but it's still a little strange to see my name and picture on their profile index with some of…
September 3, 2010
Via Thoreau, a story at Free Range Kids about "zero tolerance" policy run amok, this time from someone who moved to the US as a kid and ran up against the modern school culture in a bad way:
Once again, I came from a culture where you were made fun of if you forgot your pocket knife on a school…
September 3, 2010
Tom Waits | Music | Gateways To Geekery | The A.V. Club
"Waits, who made his proper recording debut with 1973's Closing Time, inspires music writers' wild, Charles Bukowski-fueled imaginings because his work has always been about the losers, the freaks, the slow 3 a.m. drunks who fumble change…
September 2, 2010
For this week's Toddler Blogging, SteelyKid demonstrates her mastery of bubble technology. Appa is not that impressed.
Her other big new trick is bossing us around in great detail-- she'll put something on her fake grill, close the lid, turn the knobs, then say, "Daddy! No touch! Hot!" pointing at…
September 2, 2010
"Hey, dude, whatcha doin'?"
"Signing these contracts. I'm not sure why they need four copies, but they do."
"Contracts for what?"
"The new book. Remmeber, the one we've been talking about these last few weeks? Sequel-of-sorts to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog? About relativity?"
"Oh, yeah, that'…
September 2, 2010
Over at Inside Higher Ed, there's a list of "survival tips" for women entering grad school in the sciences. It's a pretty good and pretty typical list of advice-- you can find more or less the same advice posted somewhere every fall.
What's striking about it, though, is that if you stripped all the…
September 2, 2010
BBC News - Would more holiday be good for America?
"Whenever citing Americans' acceptance of the longer hours they work or their lack of paid leave, the cliche is to say it goes back to the country's Puritan heritage or the Protestant work ethic.
I disagree. I think it comes from raw fear."
(tags…
September 1, 2010
Rubber dino, you're the one,
You make bathtime lots of fun
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
Doo-doo doo-de-doo
Rubber dino, fearsome roar,
Good thing you're a herbivore
Rubber dino, I'm awfully fond of you
doo-doo doo-de-doo
Every day when I,
get undressed next to the sink,
I find a
Little…
September 1, 2010
Prompted by an off-line conversation, a question about the magnum opus of Jim Steinman and Marvin Lee Aday:
Playing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" at a wedding reception is:online surveys
I'm sure you can come up with lots of songs that would be even less appropriate. Feel free to leave them…
September 1, 2010
There's been a lot of energy expended blogging and writing about the LA Times's investigation of teacher performance in Los Angeles, using "Value Added Modeling," which basically looks at how much a student's scores improved during a year with a given teacher. Slate rounds up a lot of reactions, in…
September 1, 2010
I doubt that this will actually work, but then the Web has brought me some improbable successes before, so it's worth a shot:
I have a sealed glass cell (Pyrex, I think, if it matters) that I would like to get re-filled with a mix of rare gases-- partial pressures of 100mT Ne, 30mT Ar, 30 mT Kr.…
September 1, 2010
There's a new medical study of the effects of alcohol consumption that finds a surprising result:
Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23%…
September 1, 2010
This is why I "support" majoritarian rule. - Acephalous
"As a means of registering my discontent with conservative claims that the fact that 70 percent of Americans abhor the idea of the "Ground Zero Mosque" means it should be abandoned, I hereby present other things that 70 percent of "certain"…
August 31, 2010
A lot of people have been blogging and Twittering about this subway map of science, which puts various branches of science in the place of the lines on the London Underground map, showing connections between them. It's a huge graphic, but a kind of cool image.
I do, however, have a problem with it…
August 31, 2010
Back in July, I did a post looking at how the fountain in our ornamental backyard pond shoots higher when the level of the pond drops. I set up a simple model of the process, which worked surprisingly well, but I said at the time that I really needed more data to say whether that agreement was real…
August 31, 2010
Over in Discover-land, Razib has a couple of posts about the content of science blogs, based on an analysis of the content of the top science blogs according to Wikio. Razib's second post is sparked by a pointed question from the author of the original study:
I'm now curious to find out why there…
August 31, 2010
Sunday was a really long day around Chateau Steelypips, and I couldn't see staying awake to watch the premiere of Phil Plait's Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel, so I'm way late in writing about it. I DVRed it, though, and watched it last night.
The theme of the premiere/ pilot was killer rocks…
August 31, 2010
slacktivist: The Clod and the Pebble and the politics of resentment
"What happened was that 78 poor children whose fathers are incarcerated received free back-to-school supplies provided by three area churches. Their dads were permitted to be on hand to help present these presents, getting a rare…
August 30, 2010
Last week, John Baez posted a report on a seminar by Dzimitry Matsukevich on ion trap quantum information issues. In the middle of this, he writes:
Once our molecular ions are cold, how can we get them into specific desired states? Use a mode locked pulsed laser to drive stimulated Raman…
August 30, 2010
There was a deeply silly New York Times article about "Past Life Regression" over the weekend:
In one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor…
August 30, 2010
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Why experimentalists hate theorists.
(tags: science silly cartoons comics)
YouTube - Hitler and P = NP
Why the hell am I paying you morons to use a f&#$*% brute force algorithm?! That blasted Russian Perelman can solve the Poincare conjecture. Why can't you…
August 29, 2010
We're trying not to let SteelyKid watch a whole lot of tv, but we've taken to showing her YouTube videos of old Sesame Street and Muppet Show skits as a way to wind her down before bedtime. this, of course, has let to her demanding to watch videos any time one of us is anywhere near a computer.
One…
August 29, 2010
I am planning to buy a telephoto lens for my camera. From time to time, I want to take pictures of the various critters Emmy chases in the back yard, and that would be a whole lot easier if I didn't need to get so close to them. And, of course, I strongly suspect there will be outdoor sports in…
August 29, 2010
dirtcandy : HOME
The third part of a series (with links to parts 1 and 2) on the making of an episode of Iron Chef America that will air Sunday night.
(tags: food television blogs culture)
Liberal Arts Chemistry: If Hemingway were a Chemist ...
There is a reason why some reagents and some…
August 28, 2010
Over at Torque Control, Niall Harrison is doing a Short Story Club, hosting discussions of SF short fiction. As I always vaguely regret not reading enough short fiction to make sensible nominations for the Hugos, this seemed like a good opportunity to read a selection of stories that a smart person…
August 28, 2010
I've never thought of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I haven't had to, since I don't live in The City, so about all I remember about him is that his choice of party back when he was first running seemed awfully opportunistic. I was really impressed with his appearance on the Daily Show this…
August 28, 2010
Williams College - The Purple Cow goes national: ESPN College Football GameDay commercial looms
"In 2007, when I was but a wee sophomore at Williams College, ESPN College GameDay visited our campus marking the first and possibly last time they visit a Division III school. I thought that would…
August 27, 2010
Via Thoreau, a paper from a physicist in Oregon that's pretty much a grenade lobbed into the always-explosive grade inflation discussion:
We use four years of introductory astronomy scores to analyze the ability of the current population to perform college level work and measure the amount of…
August 27, 2010
I'm pretty sure I've used this topic before, but not with PollDaddy. And while I really ought to do a ResearchBlogging post today to make it a clean sweep for the week, I just don't have the energy.
So here's a poll: what's your favorite fundamental force?
What's your favorite fundamental force?…
August 27, 2010
I've said before that I think Fred Clark of Slacktivist is the very best blogger writing about religion and politics in America today. It's not even close. His recent series on things the government ought to be doing to help the economy is also outstanding-- that link goes to the most recent, and…
