Links for 2009-10-27

"I wrote about this topic a few years ago, and thought I'd update it. Many chemists find themselves looking at a periodic table and wondering "How many of these things have I personally handled?" My list is up to nearly 45 elements (there are a couple that I've got to think about, one-off catalyst reactions from twenty-two years ago and the like). And there are at least 29 that I hope to never use at all, since they're radioactive and I'm generally not in the mood for that. So what does that leave me?"

"How can we determine whether or not Fox is a news organization? Let's try a version of the what in arithmetic would be called the transitive property. If we can agree on the notion that some other entity nominally comparable to Fox or two are real news services, then we can see how well Fox matches up with them. If Fox and its competitors are recognizably similar as institutions, then we can say that just as if a = b and b= c, then a= c, Fox is a real news enterprise. If not, not"

"Here's the recipe for an eye-catching post according to Popular Mechanics. Find a picture of a giant machine designed to be used for the LHC. Browse the arXiv blog for the oddest paper that mentions the collider, then combine the two into a brief write-up about putting relativistic rockets to the test while smashing atoms at nearly the speed of light. But as much as I like to read about ideas for hyperdrives and potential revolutions in space exploration, I'm afraid that I've got some bad news about this one. Franklin Felber, the physicist behind the paper in question, is not nearly as close to making relativistic rocketry a reality as the post makes it seem."

"The top uses of whatever assessment systems are in place appear to be related to another form of assessment: accreditation. Asked to describe how they use assessment results (using a four-point scale from 1 as "not at all" to 4 as "very much"), only two items topped three 3 ("quite a bit"): institutional self-study for accreditation and program self-study for accreditation."

"Tom Ruprecht, a longtime writer on CBS' "Late Show With David Letterman," and Craig Finn, frontman of the popular rock band the Hold Steady, are teaming to write and produce the coming-of-age comedy "Fargo Rock City." The duo has acquired rights to the 2001 memoir of the same name by music scribe Chuck Klosterman, who will join the pair in producing."

"One of Mr. Klosterman's recurring themes is that we are so saturated by media that its sheer omnipresence not only alters our sense of reality but also prevents many of us from comprehending the degree to which that omnipresence exists. That challenge--to discern reality and truth in 21st-century America--runs throughout the collection.

The wide range of topics mirrors the big tent of American popular culture, from the lasting appeal of Abba to the annoying staying power of sit-com laugh tracks; from the nearly forgotten 1980s basketball star Ralph Sampson to Garth Brooks's critically dismissed foray into rock. Through it all, there is a cushioning empathy that has not always appeared in Mr. Klosterman's earlier work."