Links for 2011-08-12

The usual mix of "pretty good" and "utterly preposterous" selections.

"You know I love videos that may or may not be fake. It gets me pumped up. Ok, here is a video. It is almost certainly fake.

Oh, how do I know? Well, first the guy is hitting a ball and bouncing it off of 4 nets? What would a small deviation in the initial velocity of the ball do for later collisions with nets? It would cause a huge problem. Actually, I am sure I will do this calculation at some point in the future, but not today.

Instead I want to show you how you can tell this is fake."

"We are scientists. We don't blog. We don't twitter. We take our time.

Don't get us wrong--we do say yes to the accelerated science of the early 21st century. We say yes to the constant flow of peer-review journal publications and their impact; we say yes to science blogs and media & PR necessities; we say yes to increasing specialization and diversification in all disciplines. We also say yes to research feeding back into health care and future prosperity. All of us are in this game, too.

However, we maintain that this cannot be all. Science needs time to think. Science needs time to read, and time to fail. Science does not always know what it might be at right now. Science develops unsteadiÂly, with jerky moves and unÂpredictÂable leaps forward--at the same time, however, it creeps about on a very slow time scale, for which there must be room and to which justice must be done."

"I've assigned myself an upbeat column amid the grim assault on Pell Grants and the deafening silence of anyone fighting the cuts. My first point, in policy, is evidence -- more evidence -- that the students whose Pell we are decimating, have intellects we, the people, should be investing in. My second point, constructive I hope, is to offer free-to-cheap ideas to add some learning and inspiration to these students under siege.

I'll share some classroom tools that brought me through this year. My hope is that in the comments below, readers will share theirs. Reporting our discoveries is evidence of the formidable intellects of students whose Pell Grants Congress is savaging. I'll be brief per item."