Links Dump
drorzel | June 24, 2010
On Writing and the Internet: Data Is the New Alcohol « Lev Grossman
"A lot of writers have been ruined by addictions in the past. Heroine, alcohol, etc. Me, I don't have big -- big -- problems with drugs and alcohol. (I have in fact, over the past 6 months, moderated my drinking, something I never thought I would do. In case you were, wondering, that's where the shortage of drunk-tweets is coming from.) Data will be the addiction that gets me if anything does."
(tags: writing blogs drugs internet computing culture)
What is quantum co-tunneling and why is it cool? « Physics and cake
A…
drorzel | June 23, 2010
Scanning Electron Microscope Submissions | SEM Image Galley by ASPEX
"Do you have a sample you'd like to send us to have scanned by one of our Scanning Electron Microscopes or our Tabletop SEM?
Just download the sample submission form below, fill it out, and mail it in along with your sample, and we'll post your images online for the world to see."
(tags: science atoms nano contests biology microscopy)
AAAS/Science Dancing Scientists? Announcing the 2010 "Dance Your Ph.D." Contest
"The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is proud to announce the third annual "Dance…
drorzel | June 22, 2010
slacktivist: Big shoes
"But what I think people meant about [Manute] Bol's "killer instinct" was that he never seemed to take the game of basketball quite seriously enough. He hadn't chosen this game, it had chosen him. It discovered him in that Sudanese village and plucked him out of it, whisking him halfway around the world. All for the sake of a game.
ManuteNancy Bol always seemed bewildered and slightly amused by that. Eugene McCarthy said that politics was like being a football coach, "You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important."
Manute…
drorzel | June 21, 2010
Lost Myths
" Lostmyths.net is a website featuring myths uncovered by writer Claude Lalumière (Tesseracts 12, Witpunk, Objects of Worship) and illustrator Rupert Bottenberg. As cryptomythologists, they study imaginary myths, just like cryptozoologists study imaginary creatures. [...]
The site features gods and deities from pantheons unsuspected until now and stories about some heretofore unknown players of existing traditions. Knowing that myths are not just stories but can manifest everywhere in culture and society, Claude and Rupert have made Lostmyths "a playful medley of…
drorzel | June 20, 2010
Jason Sanford: Why science fiction predictions hold back the genre
"In many ways, the idea that science fiction is about predicting the future is a remnant of the genre's past. During the 1940s and '50s, genre promoters pitched SF as a way to inspire and teach people about science and technology. And during the era of Sputnik and atomic bomb beauty pageants, perhaps this was the correct thing to do.
But that time is long past. And while few writers and readers within the genre give more than lip service to science fiction being solely about predicting the future, the problem is that outside…
drorzel | June 18, 2010
www.dumpert.nl - Hoe amerikanen voetbal kijken
A good spoof of American sports television, applied to soccer. the titles are Dutch, but the video is in English.
(tags: soccer sports world television silly)
World Cup 2010: Brick-by-brick fussball - England 1-1 USA | Video | Football | guardian.co.uk
"An animated recreation of England's first match against the USA. "
(tags: soccer video world games toys silly)
Luis von Blog: Outsourcing My Research Group
"A PhD student at Carnegie Mellon costs approximately $80,000 per year. (Research programmers and post-docs cost about the same.) Given…
drorzel | June 17, 2010
The Virtuosi: How Long Can You Balance A (Quantum) Pencil
"In this post I'd like to address a fun physics problem.
How long can you balance a pencil on its tip? I mean in a perfect world, how long?
No really. Think about it a second. Try and come up with an answer before your proceed.
What this question will become by the end of this post is something like the following:
Given that Quantum Mechanics exists, what is the longest time you could conceivably balance a pencil, even in principle?
I will walk you through my approach to answering this question. I think it is a good problem…
drorzel | June 16, 2010
The A-Team steers clear of Hill Street and avoids St Elsewhere and Cheers
"The A-Team premiered in 1983, a year after Cheers and St Elsewhere, two years after Hill Street Blues, a year ahead of Miami Vice, the fall after M*A*S*H said goodbye, farewell, and amen.
There had always been well-written, well-directed, and well-acted television shows. What made these shows different was that all at once TV audiences were presented with a group of shows that were more like movies in a particular and significant way.
The characters and their situations changed.
Not just from season to season either…
drorzel | June 15, 2010
In the Hunt for Planets, Who Owns the Data? - NYTimes.com
"Astronomers everywhere, who have been waiting since Kepler's launch in March 2009 to get their hands on this data, will be rushing to telescopes to examine these stars in the hopes of advancing the grand quest of finding Earthlike planets capable of harboring life out there.
But a lot of attention has been paid in astronomical circles over the past few months to what the Kepler team will not be saying. By agreement with NASA, the team is holding back data on its 400 brightest and best planet candidates, which the astronomers intend…
drorzel | June 14, 2010
In Defense of Evolutionary Psychology: Why They're Asking The Wrong Questions : The Thoughtful Animal
"Evolutionary Psychology suffers from a PR problem, which can be mostly blamed on ignorant (even if well-intentioned) members of the population who don't know what they're talking about.
Evolutionary psychology attempts to describe the evolution of the mind and of behavior and, well, everyone has a mind, and everyone can observe behavior. This makes people think that they are experts. Anybody who has ever had a child knows everything there is to know about child development. Anybody who has…
drorzel | June 12, 2010
slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 3
"My conundrum was not unique -- not to me and not to the question of usury. The same dilemma arises whenever we treat the Bible as a rulebook. That's an approach that guarantees -- that manufactures -- conflicts between text and reason, text and experience, text and reality, text and context.
And such conflicts always produce perverse choices. In my case it was the perverse choice between, on the one hand, the evident goodness of the work being done by South Shore and Grameen and a hundred real-world incarnations of the Bailey Bros. Building & Loan…
drorzel | June 11, 2010
Will New York Rebel Against Fracking? - Green Blog - NYTimes.com
"A well blowout that shot gas and water polluted with drilling fluids as high as 75 feet into the air in Pennsylvania is a vivid reminder how a new generation of gas drilling is becoming more of a presence in the Northeast.
Discussion of whether the main result will be jobs and royalty payments or environmental degradation still remains surprisingly below the radar screen in New York State, aside from the upstate communities that will probably be affected. But the issues are already a huge fact of life just across the Delaware…
drorzel | June 9, 2010
Sunday Function : Built on Facts
"Let's say you want to prove that all the dominoes are going to fall. One way to do this would be to prove that the fall of one causes the fall of the next, and that the first domino falls. Those two statements combined prove that all the dominoes will fall.
Mathematical induction works much the same way."
(tags: science math blogs built-on-facts education)
Audubon Magazine
"Audubon has sent me to lots of wild places over the past 31 years, but I'd seen only one wolf and three cougars (a litter) until December 8, 2009. On that day, before noon in the…
drorzel | June 5, 2010
IPN announces Ninth Annual Bastiat Prize Competition | International Policy Network
"For the ninth year, International Policy Network (IPN) is accepting submissions for its annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism. The Prize is open to writers anywhere in the world whose published articles eloquently and wittily explain, promote and defend the principles and institutions of the free society.
Submissions must be received on or before 30 June 2010.
In addition to the Bastiat Prize for Journalism (First - $10,000; Second - $4,000; Third - $1,000), we are again awarding the Bastiat Prize for Online…
drorzel | June 4, 2010
slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 2
"I'm being too polite here. I need to state this more vigorously because I need to put it in a way that will make my accusers fruitfully angry. So let me try this:
The Bible is not a book about homosexuality and it will not allow itself to be treated as a book about homosexuality. Nor is the Bible a book about sex. But the Bible is, in fact, very much a book about wealth, possessions and the poor. That is not the central theme, but it is a massively important theme that pervades every portion of the book. If you don't agree with that then I don't know…
drorzel | June 3, 2010
Precautions and Paralysis « Easily Distracted
"The cautionary example that I think is most pertinent for academics is newspaper and magazine journalism. Fifteen years ago, some of the developments that have cast the future of print journalism as we have known it into doubt were already quite visible. But few people in the industry took those developments seriously as a threat, even if they were otherwise interested in online media and digital culture.
Would it have made any difference if print journalists in 1995 had sat down for an industry-wide summit, accurately forecast what online…
drorzel | June 2, 2010
BOOK EXPO AMERICA LUNCHEON TALK
"The Future, capital-F, be it crystalline city on the hill or radioactive post-nuclear wasteland, is gone. Ahead of us, there is merely...more stuff. Events. Some tending to the crystalline, some to the wasteland-y. Stuff: the mixed bag of the quotidian.
Please don't mistake this for one of those "after us, the deluge" moments on my part. I've always found those appalling, and most particularly when uttered by aging futurists, who of all people should know better. This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of…
drorzel | June 1, 2010
OPERA Sees Tau Neutrino Appearance!!
"It is official: the OPERA experiment (above, in a sketch) has found its first tau lepton in one of its bricks (a picture of a brick is shown below). What gives, I am hearing some of you ask. It means that a muon neutrino launched from the CERN laboratories in a 730 km course underground has oscillated into its brother, a tau neutrino, and that the latter has materialized into the charged partner, the tau lepton, inside the OPERA detector.
In other words, the observation spells the direct detection of muon neutrino oscillations into tau neutrinos! This…
drorzel | May 31, 2010
slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 1
"For Nehemiah, charging 1 percent was shameful usury. The low-interest loans I was championing through our alternative investing still charged more than that.
And the Gospels weren't any help at all. Jesus did not merely reinforce the prohibition against usury, he reached past it -- forbidding lending with the expectation of repayment.
I had studied myself into a bind. On the one hand, I earnestly believed, in that murky, visceral way we evangelicals have, that God had led me to this new job. And the job seemed like an exciting chance to learn a great…
drorzel | May 26, 2010
Student Tip: Asking for a better grade : Dot Physics
"If you are a student and you want a higher grade, you need to come in and show me that you understand the material at a level that was different than you showed on the exam. Most students don't come in with this attitude."
(tags: academia education physics blogs dot-physics science)
News: The Aging of Science - Inside Higher Ed
"What if key elements of science policy are based on patterns of discovery that no longer exist?
That's the question behind a paper (abstract available here) released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic…