Links Dump
drorzel | January 25, 2009
Gold saved! RSC Italian Job competition is won | RSC Blog
After all that waiting, you can finally know what Charlie Croker was thinking in the most famous cliffhanger in film history.
(tags: science physics silly movies)
Analysis of a head of a beer over time | Dot Physics
Making physics relevant to student concerns.
(tags: science physics blogs math statistics dot-physics)
Sports Guy: One final toss for The Dooze - ESPN Page 2
Another sad story about the death of a beloved dog.
(tags: sports stories animals pets)
Three Foggy Mornings and One Rainy Day / Will Rot the Best Birch Fence…
drorzel | January 24, 2009
nanoscale views: What is a polaron?
"One common example of a quasiparticle is the polaron. When a charge carrier (an electron or hole) is placed into a solid, the surrounding ions can interact with it (e.g., positive ions will be slightly attracted to a negatively charged carrier). The ions can adjust their positions slightly, balancing their interactions with the charge carrier and the forces that hold the ions in their regular places. This adjustment of positions leads to a polarization locally centered on the charge carrier. The combo of the carrier + the surrounding polarization is a…
drorzel | January 23, 2009
McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Sestina: How to Build a Sestina Template in Microsoft Excel.
" Open a new Excel workbook. In cell B1, write your title. Leave row 2 blank.
In cells A3 through A8, place the letters A through F. These letters are the cues
for your repeating words (teleutons). Leave row 9 blank to denote a stanza break.
In cells A10 through A15, put the letters F-A-E-B-D-C. Then skip a line. Likewise create
your teleuton template for the rest of your stanzas
based on the standard sestina form (left to you to find)."
(tags: silly language computing poetry)
The Agitator »…
drorzel | January 22, 2009
Steven Chu Addresses the National Labs | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"The new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, addressed the national labs in an all-hands video transmission today. I was not there, but my colleague and friend Rob Roser at Fermilab was there, and sent me a very nice bulleted summary. "
(tags: science energy environment politics US)
What Are Freshmen Thinking? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"âThe American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2008,â a longitudinal study now in its 43rd year, is based on a fall 2008 survey of…
drorzel | January 21, 2009
Legoland California's depiction of Barack Obama's inauguration | World news | guardian.co.uk
(tags: politics news silly pictures toys)
Let My Students Drink: College presidents say it's time to lower the drinking age - Reason Magazine
"Q: Why lower the drinking age?
A: Weâve had a law on the books for 24 years now. You donât need an advanced degree to see that the law has utterly failed. Seventy-five percent of high school seniors have consumed alcohol. Sixty-six percent of high school sophomores have. "
(tags: politics stupid academia society culture drugs booze)
The Little Unions That…
drorzel | January 20, 2009
Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 5 (2009): Lauren E. Kost, Steven J. Pollock, and Noah D. Finkelstein - Characterizing the gender gap...
"Binned by quintiles, we observe that males and females with similar pretest scores do not have significantly different post-test scores (p>0.2) . The post-test data are then modeled using two regression models (multiple regression and logistic regression) to estimate the gender gap in post-test scores after controlling for these important prior factors. These prior factors account for about 70% of the observed gender gap. The results indicate that the…
drorzel | January 20, 2009
A Sample Book Proposal: Newton and the Counterfeiter | ScienceOnline09
"I donât mean to suggest that this is a generalizable model, just an example of one approach that worked in the marketplace. As noted in the Wiki page for the session â to be moderated by David Munger and myselfâbesides the fact that this proposal worked, the other feature of note is that the book that evolved from this proposal differs from this ancestral form in key ways, while maintaining a clear connection to its origins."
(tags: science books writing history)
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts /…
drorzel | January 18, 2009
Information Processing: The Age of Computing
"Historians of science have seen fit to ignore the history of the great discoveries in applied physics, engineering and computer science, where real scientific progress is nowadays to be found. Computer science in particular has changed and continues to change the face of the world more thoroughly and more drastically than did any of the great discoveries in theoretical physics."
(tags: science physics computing history)
Mind Hacks: Joseph Weizenbaum has left the building
"Do you believe it is normal to be sad because you just found out that my…
drorzel | January 16, 2009
Emptywheel » This Miracle Brought to You by Americaâs Unions
"They're calling it a miracle--the successful landing of a US Airways jet in the Hudson and subsequent rescue of all 155 passengers. They're detailing the heroism of all involved, starting with the pilot and including cabin crew, ferry crews, and first responders. What they're not telling you is that just about every single one of these heros is a union member."
(tags: blogs politics economics news class-war)
â¦My heartâs in Accra » Is ad-supported journalism viable in a pay-for-performance age?
"Whatever objections I have to…
drorzel | January 15, 2009
Simple Checklist Makes Surgery Safer - NYTimes.com
"The researchers reviewed the outcome of 7,688 patients who were undergoing noncardiac surgery at the hospitals. About half the patients had surgery before the checklists were adopted, and half after. At the end of the study, the average death rate dropped to 0.8 percent from 1.5 percent, and the average complication rate fell to 7 percent from 11 percent."
(tags: science medicine health-care)
Methane on Mars varies with the seasons - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
"Michael Meyer: "What we have here is not evidence for…
drorzel | January 14, 2009
slacktivist: Gerbils and polar bears
"What I'm trying to say here is a bit tricky, because it involves to some extent comparing those Palin supporters to Grandin's neurotic gerbils, and I don't suppose anyone likes being compared to neurotic gerbils. And it probably doesn't help that I'm prefacing this by saying that I mean no offense in comparing them to neurotic gerbils. But I find the comparison illustrative, so here goes."
(tags: politics psychology society culture US religion biology slacktivist)
FemaleScienceProfessor: In Praise of B Students
"When choosing undergrad research…
drorzel | January 13, 2009
Haidinger's brush: the unknown sense
"Yes !!! With some effort you can learn to see what remains invisible to most people! Without the help of any instrument you will be able to tell not only if the light you look at is strongly polarized or not, but also if it is linearly polarized or circularly polarized and, moreover, in which direction it vibrates or rotates. Any time that you raise your eyes to the blue sky you will be rewarded by the same clues that guide bees in their flight. Acquire P-Ray Vision ! "
(tags: science physics biology optics)
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect…
drorzel | January 8, 2009
Lin leads Harvard to 82-70 upset over No. 17 BC - College Basketball - Rivals.com
Score one for the smart kids. Don't talk to me about Maryland.
(tags: sports basketball)
Michael Nielsen » Three myths about scientific peer review
"The myth that scientists adopted peer review broadly and early in the history of science is surprisingly widely believed, despite being false. It's true that peer review has been used for a long time - a process recognizably similar to the modern system was in use as early as 1731, in the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Medical Essays and Observations. But in most…
drorzel | January 7, 2009
The Quantum Pontiff : Relatively Right in Front of Your Nose
"In other words, there is a reference frame in which what is "right under your nose" is far far away, and just seconds after the big bang (let's ignore cosmology for now.) "
(tags: science physics blogs relativity)
The Best Jobs in the World | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
Why are actuaries so popular, anyway?
(tags: math economics silly jobs)
ALFALFA: The Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA Survey
Love those recursive acronyms.
(tags: science astronomy blogs internet)
Moral arbitrage -- Crooked Timber
"So, if you want to raise…
drorzel | January 6, 2009
Discovering Biology in a Digital World : Another reason why science education sucks
"According to the article almost 40% of the 59 science education specialists, surveyed in the California University system, were "seriously considering leaving" their current jobs and some (20%) were considering leaving the field entirely."
(tags: science education stupid academia)
Squeezing and over-squeezing of triphotons : Abstract : Nature
The paper mentioned in the press release below.
(tags: science physics articles quantum optics experiment)
U of T physicists squeeze light to quantum limit
An…
drorzel | January 5, 2009
EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect
"The middle fifth of the income distribution begins at a yearly income of $34,738 per household. Assume they pay 20 percent in total taxes (it's probably a bit higher), and they're left with $27,798 to live on. That's fairly rough if you're raising a family. The top 0.01 percent, by contrast, begins at a yearly income of $20,471,271. Assume they pay, including state and local taxes, 35 percent of their income (they probably pay less), and they're living on a mere $15,353,453 a year. It's hard to imagine the electorate taking much pity on that sort…
drorzel | January 4, 2009
Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: Donald Westlake, R.I.P.
With links galore.
(tags: books writing mystery)
A question of mass? « Physics and cake
"The Penrose interpretation of quantum mechanics...
...states that the mass of a system affects the system's ability to maintain quantum coherence. This is the basis for some theories of quantum gravity. Above the Planck mass, which is ~1E-8kg, a system can no longer maintain coherence for any measureable time, due to the onset of gravitational interactions."
(tags: science physics quantum mass philosophy)
A little rant about that 2012…
drorzel | January 3, 2009
TheStar.com | Entertainment | Cultural resolutions: bigger, better, closer, stronger
"No offence to those of you who buy all your books online, but whenever anyone asks why I invariably prefer to purchase my reading matter in a bricks-and-mortar establishment, I have one simple answer: because I don't want to live in a world without bookstores."
(tags: economics society culture books)
Iron Man, physics and g-tolerances | Dot Physics
"My attack will center on the scene where Tony Stark (Iron Man) escapes from captivity with his home made iron man suit. He uses some type of rocket boots to…
drorzel | January 1, 2009
So it goes.: A Day in the Life
"I wake up to the sun's early morning glow or from the Luganda streaming through my mosquito net, which I'm not sure. It is another day in Uganda, a handful of kilometers beneath the equator. I can easily recall the first days in Africa when the sun did not wrestle me out of bed at dawn and when the Luganda was strange and invoked loneliness. But now, 5 months in, I slip out of bed and into the day easily. "
(tags: education academia society culture charity world)
Biocurious: Edge World Question 2009: What will change everything?
"The 2009 Edge World…
drorzel | December 31, 2008
slacktivist: Clean shoes
"Getting down on his knees and taking unclean things in his hands was more than just a pattern with Jesus -- it was something like an obsession. This goes beyond a mere motif or refrain in the Gospels. Jesus looked at the purity codes and the holiness codes and the long lists of people and things that were unclean and never to be touched and he treated these like he was collecting points on a scavenger hunt."
(tags: society culture religion history war charity slacktivist)
snarkout: a world he never made
"Steve Gerber died this February. His fascinating and…