Links Dump
drorzel | January 31, 2010
Axe Cop
He's a cop, with an axe. His partner is a cop with a flute-- no, a dinosaur soldier-- no, an avocado. Can you tell this was written by a five-year-old?
(tags: comics silly internet art kid-stuff)
Malkin Grey's LiveJournal - Why Writers Go Nuts, Exhibit Number One Million and Something.
"Speaking as both a reader and a writer, this sucks. I do not pretend to know what the ideal price point for an e-book might be (though my pocketbook has its own opinions -- I don't mind paying a higher price for an e-book that in its hardcopy form is fresh on the shelves, but I don't want to still…
drorzel | January 30, 2010
The Mid-Majority : Assistant Palestra Custodian for a Day
"I presented my credentials. "I'm non-union, I work hard and I work for free," I told Dan. Usually, that gets me in the door every time. But not here.
"Well, you'd better be pro-union," Dan replied.
I assured him that my profession had no real national union, much less anything resembling a professional certification process. Besides, I said, I have friends who are high up in the Steelworkers. And that was good enough for Dan Harrell.
I was about to take on the greatest temp job I've ever had in my whole entire life: assistant…
drorzel | January 29, 2010
Physics Games - online physics-based games
Just in case you were planning to get something done today.
(tags: games physics science education internet computing)
J.D. Salinger Dead « Whatever
"Somewhere Holden Caulfield is pretending he doesn't care."
(tags: books literature news blogs)
Best Science Books 2009: The top books of the year! : Confessions of a Science Librarian
"For the last little while I've been compiling lists from various media sources giving their choices for the best books of 2009. Some of the lists have been from general media sources, in which case I've just…
drorzel | January 28, 2010
Resolving the Red Controversy? : Starts With A Bang
"Earlier this week, I introduced you to the Red Controversy, the observations recorded around 2000 years ago in Europe asserting that the star, Sirius, appeared red.
Now, taking a look at Sirius today, it is clearly not red:
And, based on what we know about stars, they don't change color on timescales that quickly. "
(tags: science astronomy blogs starts-with-bang pictures history)
Cambridge physicist wins Glamour magazine award | Varsity Online
"The award gives Professor Donald a chance to bring attention to the under-representation of…
drorzel | January 27, 2010
Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Along with Bunting's remarks, the Science Channel issued a statement claiming that it currently airs more than 150 programming hours that are tangentially, and often laughably, related to science, and that staff members are unable to bring themselves to make those hours even more asinine. "
(tags: science television onion silly education)
The Mid-Majority : In the Band for a Day
"Several minutes before tipoff, the director made a short announcement. "We have a guest today," he said. "…
drorzel | January 26, 2010
Physics Buzz: A Star Class is Born
"Scientists have proposed that there is a new, exotic type of star living in our universe that we haven't seen yet. The so-called "electroweak stars", if they exist, will be difficult to detect because they mostly emit neutrino's - subatomic particles which, for the most part, don't interact with ordinary matter."
(tags: science astronomy gravity particles blogs physics-buzz)
Three Papers On The Muon Anomaly
"Today my attention was caught by a triad of papers casually listed one after the other: written by different authors, but all on topics closely…
drorzel | January 25, 2010
The American Spectator : Osama bin Elvis
"Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals. "
(tags: war…
drorzel | January 23, 2010
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Neglected Books: the list
"So, I asked for recommendations for neglected books and authors and had an overwhelming response. I'm going to make the results into a useful reading list, in alphabetical order, with links, and usefully divided. The world is a very big place with a lot of stuff in it, and a lot of books are published and pretty much vanish. They say word-of-mouth is the best way to find books, and these are all books with someone to advocate for them. "
(tags: books sf literature blogs tor)
slacktivist: Bullies
"This is what…
drorzel | January 22, 2010
Creation | Film | Review | The A.V. Club
"Creation contains some vivid illustrations of evolutionary theory, and some intriguing consideration of what Darwin had to overcome to achieve greatness--in particular, his fear of disappointing his family. But for the most part, Creation is Biopic 101, earnest and over-explained. It's the kind of movie in which characters have to tell each other over and over just how important its subject is, in case we've never heard of The Origin Of The Species. It's also the kind of movie that reduces the life and work of a major historical figure to something…
drorzel | January 21, 2010
arXiv.org help - arXiv Support FAQ
"This FAQ addresses questions raised in response to Cornell University Library's work to develop a diversified funding model to support arXiv. In a nutshell: We are working with peer libraries to investigate voluntary contributions from institutions that are the heaviest users of arXiv. "
(tags: science publishing funding academia)
Cherie Priest » Blog Archive » Control
Things authors mostly control, things authors may influence in some measure, and things over which authors have virtually no say.
(tags: books publishing writing business sf blogs)…
drorzel | January 20, 2010
james_nicoll: In the spirit of Christopher Wren
"How much would it cost to rebuild Port-au-Prince with the infrastructure a modern, first-world city should have? Large sections of it will have to be rebuilt so it might as well be done right."
(tags: economics politics world blogs james-nicoll)
Hester Prynne, Schmester Prynne, or Sarah Palin's Ressentiment Clubhouse « Easily Distracted
"I think many people, even Sarah Palin's devotees, might concede under pressure that having a President who has a strong baseline knowledge about the world, about American history, about economics, and so…
drorzel | January 19, 2010
Cocktail Party Physics: a bevy of bloggers (#scio10)
"I especially liked Carl's (I think it was Carl) description of this emergent media enterprise as a delicately balanced ecosystem, each segment interdependent on the others for survival. Several weeks ago, Bora! posted one of his occasional rants relishing the collapse of traditional media, in which he baldly stated that he really didn't care if the cost of the revolution was journalists losing their jobs. (I can't find the link, sorry. He's just so damned prolific.) I adore Bora!, but he's wrong about this. He should care that…
drorzel | January 18, 2010
BOOK VIEW CAFE BLOG » It seemed like a good idea at the time: The Slushpile Smackdown
"The traditional method of sifting slush is in-house - a job usually handed out to a junior because it's time consuming and occasionally injurious to mental well being. Why? Because anyone with a word processor can submit a novel and while many aspiring authors are professional, know how to follow guidelines and are eager to learn, many are just eager.
And submit as soon as the last word hits the page, sometimes sooner. They're full of hope and convinced they've just penned the bestest of bestsellers.
Cue…
drorzel | January 16, 2010
News: Duncan Challenges NCAA to Change - Inside Higher Ed
"Education Secretary Arne Duncan pulled no punches in a high-profile address here Thursday at the annual convention of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, proposing a series of policy changes that he said could rid college sports of the "tiny minority" of bad actors that "stains" its reputation.
Duncan, former co-captain of Harvard University's basketball team and first-team Academic All-American, criticized the high-stakes recruiting wars that take place in sports like men's basketball and football. He wants further rules…
drorzel | January 15, 2010
Pondering a Ponderous Pendulum : Built on Facts
"Why the long discussion about the period of a pendulum yesterday? Because we're actually going to take a look at a particular pendulum today. This one hangs in the central atrium of the George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, which constitutes half of the beautiful and brand spanking new two-building complex now housing the Texas A&M department of physics."
(tags: science physics blogs built-on-facts education history)
Cocktail Party Physics: shameless self-promotion
The Damn Book is finally…
drorzel | January 14, 2010
"There was a lot of smoke." « Quantum Moxie
That is how my son, who is in 3rd grade, described a class science experiment gone awry. The experiment involved electrical tape, a battery, lightbulb, and a piece of insulated wire with the insulation stripped off on the ends. Yes, amazingly simple, but it's 3rd grade.
(tags: science physics electronics blogs education experiment)
Announcing Open Lab, 2009!!! : Neurotopia
If you're looking for some stuff to read while I'm out of town, you could do worse than this. A little thin on the physical sciences, maybe, but some good stuff.
(tags:…
drorzel | January 12, 2010
Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to…
drorzel | January 12, 2010
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Neutrino Telescope Measures Temperature of the Ozone Layer
"The IceCube neutrino observatory is a kilometre-scale array of photon detectors buried under the ice at the South Pole. When neutrinos pass through the ice, they occasionally bump into atoms creating particles called muons. These muons then generate light as they pass through the ice which is then picked up by the detector allowing scientists to determine the direction of the incoming neutrino.
The trouble is that most of the muons that IceCube sees are not generated by neutrinos at all but by…
drorzel | January 11, 2010
Cut This Story! - The Atlantic (January/February 2010)
An essay about how newspaper articles are too long. In keeping with the Iron Laws of the Internet, it could probably stand to be cut down a little.
(tags: journalism writing media internet politics)
Writing About Writers: An article by Bob Thompson | The American Scholar
"I spent four years on the book beat, and looking back -- I took early retirement from the Post last summer -- I'm still amazed and grateful for what it permitted me to do. An obsessive reader since childhood, I got paid to read mostly excellent books and have…
drorzel | January 10, 2010
Philip Guo - On Popularity
"In sum, whether you are popular in middle and high school is largely out of your control, so it is unreasonable to aspire to become popular if you are not already popular. From my experience, the happiest teenagers are the ones who have accepted their status in the high school social hierarchy and made good friends with people of similar status."
(tags: culture education kid-stuff society essay)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 013602 (2010): Manipulation of Nonclassical Atomic Spin States
"We report successful manipulation of nonclassical atomic spin states. We apply an…