(Series explanation here.) The lab I worked in in grad school contained a bunch of miscellaneous objects whose purpose was a little hard to discern. One of the oddest was a big heavy acrylic lens. It was probably an inch thick, and two or three inches in diameter, and had four screw holes around the […]
Month: March 2006
Blog Pimping(*)
I feel a little guilty for catering to the whims of Internet perverts in the previous entry, so here are a couple of new science-y blogs worth taking a look at: First, via Derek Lowe, is the blog of chemistry grad student Dylan Stiles. There’s lots of highly geeky material, with lots of little diagrams […]
Give the People What They Want
One of the nice things about the move to ScienceBlogs is that I gained access to a much better stats package than we had for Steelypips. In particular, I can now look at the keywords that bring people to my site (for steelypips, I could only get keywords for the domain as a whole, which […]
Taxons Wanted
I’m not taking as much heat as the other two amateur taxonomists on ScienceBlogs, but I’ll also throw the topic open for suggestions. So, if I left your favorite sub-field of physics out of my Geek Taxonomy, drop me a comment suggesting a field that I left out, and what I ought to say about […]
Generations of Atheism
Writing the previous post about religion reminded me that I never did comment on the two student panels on religious matters that I went to a couple of weeks ago. The details aren’t terribly important, but they provide some local anecdotal support for Sean’s demographic point. (Alternate post title: “I Believe the Children Are Our […]
True Conference Stories
Eszter at Crooked Timber points to some public speaking tips she wrote. Some of the advice is fairly specific to the academic conference setting, but it’s all excellent. In the Crooked Timber post, she emphasizes problems with people going over their allotted time, and mentions in passing session chairs who let them. This reminds me […]
Top 25 Books
Via a mailing list, the Top 1000 Books in the US, ranked in order of library holdings. The Top 25 (after the cut):
Sports in College
Kevin at No Se Nada has a post up about Nobel laureate Carl Wieman leaving Colorado, and how it relates to the role of college athletics at an educational institution. (Check his comments for a special bonus Carl Wieman anecdote.) Probably coincidentally, Timothy Burke at Swarthmore also has a post today about the role of […]
Know Your Geeks
Alex Palazzo offers a taxonomy of biologists, and takes some heat in the comments for leaving people out or mischaracterizing subdisciplines. This reminded me that I did a similar post about physics quite some time ago– almost four years! That’s, like, a century in blog-time… I’ll reproduce the geek taxonomy after the cut, and clean […]
So Much for the Power of Ignorance
So, how’s my winning NCAA strategy going, you ask? Shut up, I reply. Well, OK. I’m currently in a four-way tie for tenth place in the ScienceBlogs pool (of 23) on Yahoo. Of course, unlike some gloating people, all four of my Final Four picks are still alive… I still don’t have much chance of […]