It’s college application season, and the New York Times style section ran a nice article Sunday about parents touring colleges with their children. It’s mostly about the bonding that goes on on such trips, which is probably instantly recognizable if you’re the sort of wealthy Northeasterner who is the target demographic of the Sunday New… Continue reading Campus Visit Season
Month: October 2006
Radio Simulation
Thinking a little more about the soundtrack post from a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the fact that I don’t seem to have the same strong associations with more recent songs that I do with some older stuff. It’s not that I’m buying less music, I don’t think, but rather that iTunes… Continue reading Radio Simulation
(String Theory Backlash) Backlash
So, I recently finished The Trouble With Physics (initial comment here, full review forthcoming) and I read Not Even Wrong a little while ago (review here). I suppose I could dig up Lawrence Krauss’s book, and go for the String Theory Backlash trifecta, but I could also hit myself in the head with a brick…… Continue reading (String Theory Backlash) Backlash
SAT Challenge Update
The Blogger SAT Challenge made the front page of Slashdot last week, making a huge spike in the traffic here, and bringin this blog to the attention to this blog– I’ve had a half-dozen emails and comments from students and colleagues who hadn’t seen the blog before. Of course, after a blitz of posts associated… Continue reading SAT Challenge Update
Toward a Saner Sports Media Culture
About fifteen minutes from now, my Giants will take the field against the Redskins. The Giants are coming off a bye week (in which they somehow managed to trail by 10 going into the fourth quarter), so the big story leading up to the game has to do with the always-volatile Jeremy Shockey, who popped… Continue reading Toward a Saner Sports Media Culture
Physics Contains Multitudes
I finished Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics last night, and will write up a full review in the next couple of days. On the whole, I thought it was a well-done book, and he makes some good points. It’s not without its problems, though, chief among them being the fact that the title is… Continue reading Physics Contains Multitudes
The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
The new Hold Steady record, Boys and Girls in America was released on Tuesday, and I picked it up immediately at iTunes. I’ve listened to it straight through a bunch of times now, while doing onther things. So, how is it? The short answer is “Not as good as Separation Sunday.” At least, it doesn’t… Continue reading The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
You Should See the Picture
While I’m being cranky about graphics in the mass media, a quick Bronx cheer for the New York Times and their Mars rover story this morning, which opens: NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover spent 22 months trekking almost six miles to a large scientifically promising crater. Like a tourist who asks a passer-by to take a… Continue reading You Should See the Picture
How to Lie With Test Scores
Sean Carroll comments on an item in the Atlantic Monthly on test scores compared across nations. There are two things that really bug me about this item, the most important of which is the deeply dishonest graphic the Atlantic did to illustrate the item. Here’s the honest version of the graph, redone using data from… Continue reading How to Lie With Test Scores
An Enthusiastic Amateur is Worse Than Any Pro
Kate points me to a real head-scratcher from Slate, about Harry Collins posing as a physicist. Collins is a sociologist who studies expertise, and also has a very strong interest in gravitational wave detection experiments. Collins and co-workers collected a bunch of qualitative questions about gravitational waves and detectors, and got an expert in the… Continue reading An Enthusiastic Amateur is Worse Than Any Pro