Links Dump
drorzel | 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 complex ideas in a simple way, not by explaining simple ideas in a complex way (or, for that matter, elucidating elementary conceptions in an abstruse fashion). It comes down to thinking about your audience, rather than about yourself."
(tags: science writing blogs language biology education…
drorzel | 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-handedly inventing physics as a systematic discipline, wrote some really ridiculous stuff. Alchemy, occult esoterica, you name it. In his defense, it was the 1600s. He didn't have a whole lot of prior scientific understanding to help him sort the wheat from the chaff.
Until he reached the age at which…
drorzel | 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
"When my wife Emma and I found out we were pregnant with our first child, Tycho, we began thinking of fun ways to decorate a baby boy's room. Since we live in an apartment and aren't allowed to paint the walls, that meant posters or prints of some kind. And, being artists, we naturally wanted to create…
drorzel | 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 been a banner year for popular science books. [...]
The steady stream of science books hasn't stopped, either, so I thought I'd highlight just a few of the new offerings (mostly math and physics related) that came out this fall -- just in case you're looking for the perfect gift for the science…
drorzel | December 2, 2010
NYU Carter Journalism Institute, ProPublica Team Up to Enhance an Essential Form of News Coverage-- "The Explainer"
"New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and ProPublica, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalism non-profit, have formed a joint project to enhance the genre of "The Explainer," a form of journalism that provides essential background knowledge to follow events and trends in the news.
The project aims to improve the art of explanation at ProPublica's site and to share what is learned with the journalism community."
(tags: journalism society…
drorzel | December 1, 2010
Slate's 80 Over 80: The most influential octogenarians in America (2010). - - Slate Magazine
"For the second year in a row, Mormon President Thomas S. Monson stands atop the list. As the divine prophet, seer, and revelator for 5.5 million Americans and more than 12 million people around the world, he's the most powerful 83-year-old we could find. Look for Monson to stay on top for years to come--at least until Boyd K. Packer, octogenarian president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, succeeds him as the alpha Mormon."
(tags: politics religion slate society culture lists silly)
A Mailing…
drorzel | November 30, 2010
What correlates with problem solving skill? | Casting Out Nines
"About a year ago, I started partitioning up my Calculus tests into three sections: Concepts, Mechanics, and Problem Solving. The point values for each are 25, 25, and 50 respectively. [...]
I did this to stress to students that the main goal of taking a calculus class is to learn how to solve problems effectively, and that conceptual mastery and mechanical mastery, while different from and to some extent independent of each other, both flow into mastery of problem-solving like tributaries to a river. It also helps me identify…
drorzel | November 29, 2010
Our Boring Future | Mother Jones
A variant on Joe Fitzsimon's comment on Twitter: "How to be a futurist in 1 easy step: confuse logistic curves for unbounded exponential growth."
(tags: society social-science politics blogs kevin-drum)
Making Light: "We live underground. We speak with our hands."
"Somewhere in our brave new century, somebody actually pays nearly $1,000 a foot for speaker cable. And somewhere else, people toil anonymously to write things like that review. One can see the rough emerging outlines of Eloi and Morlocks--but not which is which."
(tags: sf blogs making-light…
drorzel | November 28, 2010
TopatoCo: Dinosaur Comics Dry Erase Whiteboard (Temporarily Out of Stock)
Something to get for that person who has always wanted to write their own dinosaur comics, but is too lazy to PhotoShop their own text in.
(tags: comics internet silly gadgets)
Surviving the World - Lesson 813 - One View Of The Afterlife
Know your afterlife destinations.
(tags: silly comics internet religion)
Are you writing an tenure-track job application?
"WINNING
Research statements less than 3 pages long. Trust me, your work is not so complicated that it requires 8 pg of single-space type to get the point…
drorzel | November 27, 2010
Why hasn't the war against terrorism produced any great First Amendment cases? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
"There seems to be no one answer to why there hasn't been a single important First Amendment protest case in the last decade. It's certainly not that the court is reluctant to rule on First Amendment issues altogether. The Supreme Court has taken up a surprising number of speech cases recently. But right now the court is more interested in crush videos, gay marriage bans, anti-Hilary Clinton movies, violent video games, corporate speech, and funeral protests than in the…
drorzel | November 26, 2010
Gender gap in physics exams reduced by simple writing exercises, says CU-Boulder study
"Women are underrepresented and on average perform more poorly than men in introductory physics. But a recent study finds that this gap arises predominantly from differential preparation prior to college and psychological factors, rather than differences in ability.
And the effects of these psychological factors can be largely overcome with a brief writing exercise focusing on important values, such as friends and family, learning or even music. This simple "values affirmation" writing exercise generally…
drorzel | November 25, 2010
Surviving the World - Lesson 811 - Thanksgiving Parenting
"Thanksgiving is the perfect time of year to evaluate how well you have done as a parent..."
(tags: comics internet silly holiday)
John Scalzi - Saying Thanksgiving Grace, the Science-fictional Way - Filmcritic.com Feature
"We also thank you for once again not allowing our technology to gain sentience, to launch our own missiles at us, to send a robot back in time to kill the mother of the human resistance, to enslave us all, and finally to use our bodies as batteries. That doesn't even make sense from an energy-management point of…
drorzel | November 24, 2010
From the Editor's Desk: Quantifying Outreach to the Cult of Science | Deep Sea News
"Science needs a reality check too. It has tried to exist in an academic vacuum for much of its existence. The OCD nature science needs behavioral therapy, to be forced to confront its discomfort of engaging with non-scientists. Science also needs to acknowledge that there is value in this engagement. That it is not only the public that benefits from engagement (i.e. science literacy/appreciation), but science benefits just as much. Very few academic institutions wholly recognize this and science's ability…
drorzel | November 23, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: The Sick Kid Shuffle
"This weekend The Girl got hit by a nasty stomach bug, so nobody got much sleep and our Sunday plans were discombobulated. It brought back memories of those times when TW still worked outside the house, and we had to do the Sick Kid Shuffle.
When your kid normally goes to daycare, a sick kid is a major crisis. Suddenly your first line of defense is down, since you can't take a sick kid to daycare. (I've seen parents try it, though.) Most days, we had to choose among several imperfect options:"
(tags: kid-stuff academia education…
drorzel | November 22, 2010
Are you a highly skilled worker? (Blog) - physicsworld.com
"But what's this? Kostya's only got 75 "attribute points" (not counting the 10 each for speaking English and having £800), and he needs 80 to qualify as a highly skilled worker. Bad luck, Kostya! Better go do your Nobel-prize-winning research somewhere else!
Yes, as it turns out, "Kostya" isn't entirely hypothetical. In fact, he's based on Konstantin Noveselov, the Russian-born Nobel laureate who moved to the University of Manchester as a postdoc in 2001. The only thing I changed in going from Noveselov circa 2001 to "Kostya" in…
drorzel | November 21, 2010
Friday Night Videos!: The Hits of 1990 | Popdose
"Aerosmith - Janie's Got A Gun: With this video and Madonna's "Oh Father," director David Fincher was cornering the market on music videos about child abusers. Also note the prominent use of dudes in hats before backlighting, presaging Det. Somerset in Seven. Also note Steven Tyler's big mouth, presaging Steven Tyler's big mouth."
(tags: popdose music nostalgia video blogs)
Seth's Blog: Groping for a marketing solution: TSA and security theater
There's plenty of controversy about the new full body scanners that the TSA is installing at…
drorzel | November 20, 2010
A presumption of guilt makes people angry : Thoughts from Kansas
"The virtual strip searches and actual pat-downs now performed by TSA are not selective. Everyone is treated like a terrorist. The pat-down is the same one given to a suspect being arrested, and the strip search is even more invasive. Every air passenger is presumed guilty. It's absurd. It's an inversion of core American principles. And it's finally got a conversation started that we should have been having 9 years ago."
(tags: travel politics war us law stupid blogs thoughts-from-kansas)
What are the chances of getting hit…
drorzel | November 19, 2010
Physics Buzz: It'll make you laugh; it'll make you cry. It's...Science!!!
A friend once told me that she never watches the Discovery Channel because she feels some sort of obligation to pay attention and retain the information being presented. I can see where she's coming from; science can be intimidating. But my message is simple: It's okay to watch scientific programming simply to be entertained. Just enjoy. I bet, without even knowing it, you'll learn something new without even trying.
(tags: science television blogs physics-buzz culture media)
Prince William Engaged | The Onion -…
drorzel | November 18, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Mini-Me
"Fans of cheesy-bad movies will remember Mini-me as Dr. Evil's sidekick/mascot in the Austin Powers movies. Dr. Evil had his share of great lines ("the Diet Coke of evil"), but his true awfulness shone forth in his creation of Mini-Me. Mini-me was exactly how he sounds -- a smaller, but recognizable, version of Dr. Evil himself.
I've seen managers hire Mini-me's to help them, and I really have to wonder what they're thinking. It's much smarter to hire your opposites.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Mini-me's have the same strengths and…
drorzel | November 17, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Business or Town?
"Tenured Radical's thoughtful post on elite presidential salaries got me thinking about the "run the college like a business" canard.
Most of the people who use that phrase, whether approvingly or damningly, haven't personally worked in a college that was actually a business. I have -- you've heard of it -- and I can report confidently that it's the wrong metaphor for the community colleges I know.
Having been in all three settings, I'm convinced that community college administration is much closer to town or municipal government…