Links Dump
drorzel | May 25, 2010
...My heart's in Accra » The Partisan Internet and the Wider World
"I think the comparison between ideological isolation in media and in face to face encounters is more like comparing apples and hedgehogs. They're thoroughly different types of interactions and we should have very different expectations for diversity and ideological isolation in each set. The media I consume damn well better be more diverse than the community I live in. That's what media is supposed to do - give me a broader view than I'm able to get from friends, family and coworkers. It's okay that there aren't any Thai…
drorzel | May 24, 2010
Sunday Function : Built on Facts
How hash functions can keep you safe if you find yourself part of the French underground fighting the Nazis.
(tags: math science blogs built-on-facts)
"Heretical" Copernicus Reburied as a Hero - CBS News
""There is no indication that Copernicus was worried about being declared a heretic and being kicked out of the church for his astronomical views," [Copernicus scholar Jack] Repcheck said.
"Why was he just buried along with everyone else, like every other canon in Frombork? Because at the time of his death he was just any other canon in Frombork. He was…
drorzel | May 23, 2010
Every Hug, Every Fuss - Scientists Record Families' Daily Lives - NYTimes.com
"[T]he U.C.L.A. project was an attempt to capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. The investigators have just finished working through the 1,540 hours of videotape, coding and categorizing every hug, every tantrum, every soul-draining search for a missing soccer cleat.
"This is the richest, most detailed, most complete database of middle-class family living in the world," said Thomas S. Weisner, a professor of anthropology at U.C.L.A. who was…
drorzel | May 22, 2010
News: Questioning Endowment Losses - Inside Higher Ed
"High-risk, high-reward policies heavily influenced by Wall Street helped some college endowments grow to several times their original sizes, but they also did damage to employees, local communities and the global financial system, a new assessment of investment practices at Harvard University and five other New England institutions suggests.
The development since the 1970s of the "endowment model of investing" may have paid off for many years, but in a report released Thursday, the Center for Social Philanthropy at Boston's Tellus…
drorzel | May 21, 2010
PHD Comics: Grading Rubric
Sounds about right. Maybe a little too generous on the lower row.
(tags: comics piled-higher academia education silly)
Producing novel semiconductors en masse - physicsworld.com
"John Rogers, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a related company, offer a production method by adapting a transfer-printing technique that they have been developing for the past few years. They begin by growing stacks consisting of multiple layers of gallium arsenide and aluminium gallium arsenide, which they then "peel" off one-by-one using a…
drorzel | May 20, 2010
The Virtuosi: Cell Phone Brain Damage: Part Deux
"I thought I'd take another look at cell phone damage, coming at it from a different direction than my colleague. Mostly I just want to consider the energy of the radiation that cell phones produce, and compare that with the other relevant energy scales for molecules."
(tags: science physics medicine biology quantum optics thermo atoms molecules blogs virtusoi)
Can we please stop talking about Supreme Court nominees like they are real people? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
"What I see in the national obsession over Kagan's unmarried…
drorzel | May 19, 2010
Why just earn a degree when you can leave behind a legend? - CharlotteObserver.com
"If you've spent significant time on the Davidson College campus the past four years, chances are you've at least heard of "the Name Tag Guy."
Or, less likely, Stephen Pierce.
They are one. Both were among 427 seniors who graduated during the college's 173rd commencement Sunday - Pierce pinning to his gown the same paper name tag he was given on his first day of freshman orientation in 2006."
(tags: academia silly culture education)
XENON100 is certain about its uncertainty (Blog) - physicsworld.com
"Now,…
drorzel | May 18, 2010
DLMF: NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions
An Abromowitz and Stegun for the Internet age.
(tags: math science software physics books internet)
Blog U.: Is TED Making Us Stupid? - Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed
"Pre-TED, I used to be able to sit through a boring lecture or presentation -- diligently taking notes while being sufficiently nourished by whatever small sliver of new insights or information the speaker could provide. I had patience, fortitude, and a long attention span for the bad presentation. TED has extinguished this valuable skill."
(tags: ted…
drorzel | May 17, 2010
Art - Lapham's Quarterly
It takes seven steps to get from Kevin Bacon to Mark Twain
(tags: books literature history art music pictures movies culture silly)
Shocking: Michael Faraday does biology! (1839) « Skulls in the Stars
"These experiments are fascinating and paint an amusing picture: Faraday and up to three assistants sticking their hands in the water repeatedly, zapping themselves [on an electric eel]. (I can't help but visualize Faraday speaking like Christopher Guest in this classic video clip: "What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest…
drorzel | May 16, 2010
james_nicoll: Please plug the holes in my ignorance
"China has its Four Great Classical Novels: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber. My impression, gained from minutes and minutes of research, is these are influential and the sort of thing any given Chinese person would be aware of and somewhat familiar with.
I was thinking about what the analogous stories would be for the West and abandoned that as too broad a category. For Britain and Britain-derived nations, though, I think there are at least two stories that almost everyone knows…
drorzel | May 15, 2010
News: Profs Turned Pols - Inside Higher Ed
"From local school board races to Congressional campaigns, an effort is under way to push scientists out of the lab and onto the stump.
Through a series of Web-based seminars and organizing efforts on university campuses, Scientists & Engineers for America (SEA) has been luring professors and others with advanced degrees into political life. The nonprofit group's underlying premise is that public policy debates often lack the direct input of scientists and engineers, who would bring knowledge and problem-solving skills to topics as diverse as…
drorzel | May 14, 2010
Blue laser awesomeness : Dot Physics
"Yes, green laser pointers are cool. Especially when you use them to make stuff fluoresce. Ok, what about a blue laser pointer? They are getting surprisingly cheap (Amazon has a 10 mW for pretty cheap). Still not cheap enough for me. But, you know what? Some of the physics majors here at Southeastern Louisiana University purchased a couple of these. Physics major Daniel let me borrow his."
(tags: science physics blogs lasers atoms molecules dot-physics pictures video)
Physics Buzz: Obama Loves Lasers
"Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the laser…
drorzel | May 13, 2010
Cocktail Party Physics: oily hair is not a problem - its a solution for the gulf coast
"One of the more interesting solutions proposed (aside from dropping trash in the pipe to block the oil) also involves using fibers; however, the fibers in question are human hair. Chicken feathers, straw, and wool have all been used to collect oil in the past, but human hair seems to work particularly well. A big advantage is that the oil is adsorbed rather than absorbed. Adsorbed oil forms a very thin layer - a molecule or two thick - at the surface of the hair. Because the molecules are only weakly…
drorzel | May 11, 2010
The Science and Entertainment Exchange: The X-Change Files: Tony Stark's Science
"While the film naturally took some liberties with the details -- sci-fi has the luxury of not having to pass peer review -- Marvel Studios nonetheless cared enough about plausibility to ask the Science & Entertainment Exchange for a suitable scientist with whom they could consult."
(tags: movies science culture blogs x-change comics)
Using Laser to Map Ancient Civilization in a Matter of Days - NYTimes.com
"In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light…
drorzel | May 10, 2010
Against a Definition of Science Fiction -- Paul Kincaid
"When I called my collection of essays and reviews What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, I was struggling toward something I could not fully articulate. I don't know what is involved in reading science fiction, because I don't know what science fiction is.
There was a time, not so long ago, when I was quite clear what science fiction is. I could pick up a book from the shelf and know, with no real doubt or confusion, that it was science fiction. That certainty is with me no more, not because science fiction has changed (it has…
drorzel | May 9, 2010
Jason Sanford: Living in a world where most writers suck
I find bad writing to be cross-generational and not caused by someone loving video games or fanfic. If you turned Shakespeare loose on gaming or fanfic, he'd likely come up with some great stories.
He'd also come up with some horrible stories--don't forget that before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he penned Titus Andronicus, a play so bad Harold Bloom claimed it could only be enjoyed if directed by Mel Brooks. Which is the other reason I'm not overly worried about the writing ability of new writers. A new writer who produces bad stories…
drorzel | May 8, 2010
YouTube - Walk on water
"Liquid Mountaineering is a new sport which is attempting to achieve what man has tried to do for centuries: walk on water. Or to be more precise: running on water. We are developing the sport from scratch. By accident we found out that with the right water repellent equipment you can run across bodies of water, just like a stone skimming the surface."
(tags: sports video youtube)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 183602 (2010): Observation of a Cooperative Radiation Force in the Presence of Disorder
"Cooperative scattering of light by an extended object such as an atomic…
drorzel | May 7, 2010
Microsoft's PowerPoint isn't evil if you learn how to use it. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
I've seen more terrible slide presentations in my life than good ones, but that stat isn't necessarily an indictment of the program--I've also encountered a lot more terrible books than terrific ones, and I've certainly seen more ugly Web sites than pretty ones. Yes, PowerPoint--and slide software in general, a category that includes Apple's Keynote--can be heroically misused. But if you use it correctly, slide software can help you captivate and inform an audience in a way that a speech alone…
drorzel | May 6, 2010
Particle Detector Shows Promise, if Nothing Else - NYTimes.com
"A new widely anticipated experiment underneath a mountain in Italy designed to detect a sea of dark particles that allegedly constitute a quarter of creation did not see anything during a test run last fall, scientists reported Saturday.
But, they said, the clarity with which they saw nothing spurred hopes that such experiments are approaching the rigor and sensitivity necessary to detect the elusive gravitational glue of the cosmos. The results also cast further doubt on some controversial claims that dark matter has already…
drorzel | May 5, 2010
Being Complementary About Uncertainty : Built on Facts
"Complementarity is a very general concept and not easy to define formally, though informally you might say it's the principle that the wave-like and particle-like aspects of an object can't be simultaneously observed. More formally you could say that each degree of freedom of a system corresponds to a conjugate pair of observables, which means these pairs (say, position and momentum) can't both be measured precisely at the same time."
(tags: physics quantum education blogs built-on-facts)
Color Survey Results « xkcd
Over five…