Janet Stemwedel over at Adventures in Science and Ethics has a new post on experiment vs. theory: Someone makes a comment about hot water making ice cubes faster than cold water. Someone else, familiar with thermodynamics, explains in detail why this cannot be the case. No actual ice cube trays risk harm, since none are […]
Month: March 2006
Great Moments in Student Course Evaluations
Question on the evaluation form: If there was a writing component in this laboratory, please comment on the attention given to it with respect to the improvement of your writing Student response: Dude, my writing totally improved. And so, we close the book on another academic term…
Why I Eat Fish on Fridays
To say I’m a lapsed Catholic would be an understatement. I haven’t set foot in a church in years, other than for a couple of weddings. I’ve never cared for parts of the official doctrine, and I think they blew it when they made Giblets Pope. In terms of general attitude toward religion, I’m sort […]
Wonder Drug Request
I want there to be a non-prescription anti-inflammatory drug that doesn’t seriously screw up my stomach. One of you med-chem types get on that, will you? Background: Last year about this time, I had severe muscle spasms in my neck and shoulder that led to a 2am trip to the emergency room. A combination of […]
Late Start Live-Blogging
I passed on the first set of games in favor of playing some basketball with the usual lunchtime crowd, but made it home in time to see Bucknell finish up winning against Arkansas, and Northwestern State hit a wild three at the buzzer to beat Iowa. What state is that? That’d be Louisiana. Now you […]
End of an Era
So, the big question in college basketball yesterday, “Can Syracuse sustain their Big East Tournament run through the NCAA’s?” was answered with a resounding “No.” They made a decent run at it, but Gerry McNamara didn’t have any legs left, and went without a field goal for the first time in his career. Terrence Roberts […]
Zing! (Slightly Paraphrased)
While chasing links for a religion-in-politics post that may or may not get posted (my opinions on the subject are aggressively moderate, and while I could use the traffic, I don’t know that I want the headache), I ran across the swear-to-uphold quote again. PZ cites an unsourced blog post for the story, reproduced in […]
WMAP Data Release
If you’d like some actual science from your ScienceBlogs, here’s the big news in the physical sciences today: The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) team has released a bunch of new data on the latest observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This is the relic radiation from the Big Bang whose temperature fluctuations tell […]
More NCAA Live-Blogging
All right, we’re back from our walk, and Emmy is very proud of the way she taunted the big scary German Shepherd up the road, so it’s back to the games. 5:53 Marquette’s three-point ace Steve Novak misses an open shot with eight seconds to play, and it’s all over but the intentional fouling and […]
Return of NCAA Live-Blogging
One of the few perks of working in academia is that I can take the occasional day off for no reason at all. I handed in my grades yesterday, and spring beak starts Monday, so I can feel free to take the afternoon off to sit on my ass and watch some basketball. And bring […]