Links for 2011-08-09

"For years, a commonly held belief has been that more educated Americans are less likely to embrace religion. But an article forthcoming (abstract available here) in The Review of Religious Research suggests that the relationship between education and faith is more nuanced, and that more education has a negative impact only on certain religious questions, not on all of them.

Some religious beliefs and practices -- including belief in God and regular prayer -- increase with years of education, the research found."

"Lev Grossman's 2009 novel The Magicians was a surprise smash, garnering great reviews and a stint on the New York Times bestseller list. The book, which blends famous children's fantasy series like Harry Potter and C.S. Lewis' Narnia novels with dark psychological realism, introduced a world readers might want to get lost in, except that the pressing problems of growing up and finding a purpose are still ever-present. Now, Grossman has released a sequel, The Magician King, which deepens the characters and settings of The Magicians, engaging with the idea of the quest, both in fantasy novels--where the quest is for a magical item--and in real life--where the quest can be something as mundane as finding somewhere to put down roots. Grossman, who works as the book critic for Time and frequently blogs there, recently talked with The A.V. Club about finding the story for the sequel, coming up with a new point-of-view character, and the perils of film adaptations of literary fantasies."

"Even though Richard Hammond is pretty cool, he does confuse speed with acceleration. When you say "fastest in the world," I expect you to talk about the change in position with respect to time. This is different than the acceleration, which is change in velocity with respect to time. Ok, but other than that -- nice video.

What about the acceleration of these other objects?
Hammond says that the acceleration of the Pilobolus fungi spores is greater than a bullet, a missile (actually, I think he called a bullet a missile), a jet and a rocket. Let me start with an estimation of the acceleration of these things."

"The iPhone 3GS has a built-in accelerometer, the LIS302DL, which is primarily used for detecting device orientation. I wanted to come up with something interesting to do with it, but first I had to see how it did on some basic tests. It turns out that the tests gave really interesting results themselves! A drop test gave clean results and a spring test gave fantastic data; however a pendulum test gave some problems."

"So you're MAD about something on the Internet..."