As part of the upcoming science blogging conference, Bora Zivkovic at A Blog Around the Clock has put together an anthology of the best science-related blog posts of last year. He’s titled it The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006, and it’s now available for purchase at Lulu, should you be interested… Continue reading The Open Laboratory
Month: January 2007
Ambition vs. Preparation
Inside Higher Ed had an article yesterday about a survey of student attitudes that they analyze in terms of gender differences, finding that women entering college are generally better prepared than their male counterparts, but men entering college are more confident in their abilities, particularly in math and science. As you might expect, this leads… Continue reading Ambition vs. Preparation
If Solar Sails Work, THEN SO TOO WILL MY LIGHT CANNON
Quick! To Professor Science’s house! (I’d do that experiment for three lab coats, and I don’t even wear lab coats…)
New Blogs
I make a habit of checking my Technorati search results regularly, partly because I’m just vain enough to care that other people are linking to me (my rank is holding steady in the 8,000’s, but it hasn’t updated in a while), but mostly because it’s a good way to find new blogs, and there are… Continue reading New Blogs
Extraordinary Claims and Universality
“Thoreau,” guest-posting at Unqualified Offerings, has a nice post commenting on a Physics Today article about the use of language in science, by Helen Quinn. The article is pretty standard stuff for anyone following the “culture wars” debates here– use of the word “belief” to describe scientific conclusions causes confusion, and attempts to put science… Continue reading Extraordinary Claims and Universality
How the Other Half Researches
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean has an idea for an Undergraduate [Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology] Theory Insitute, a six-week summer course that would cover a bunch of the basic tools and techniques of the field, and prepare students to do theoretical research in those fields. The proposed syllabus: Special relativity, index notation, vectors, tensors. Lagrangian… Continue reading How the Other Half Researches
Motivation
Tobias Buckell is experimenting with a new concept to keep himself on pace as he writes his next novel. He’s publicly stated a goal of 6,000 words per week, and pledges to donate a nickel for every word he’s short of that, to a charity chosen by his readers (a different one each week). How’s… Continue reading Motivation
Cheerleading for Title IX
You might think that the most interesting thing in this morning’s New York Times was the photo essay about the Large Hadron Collider, but you’d be wrong. The most interesting article is this story about cheerleading. Why is that, you ask? Because it’s written about my home town: Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading… Continue reading Cheerleading for Title IX
Conservatives on Campus
An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education has landed in my inbox, describing efforts to recruit students to conservative groups: Ryan J. Sorba stands before a table covered with mini-cupcakes and whoopie pies, calling out to students as they pass. A sign lists the prices: $6 for customers under 18; $3 for 19-year-olds; $1… Continue reading Conservatives on Campus
Kij Johnson, Fudoki [Library of Babel]
Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman, the story of a fox in Heian-era Japan who becomes a woman for the sake of love, was a beautiful and moving book, so, of course, I bought her next book, Fudoki immediately. And then, it took me three years to get around to reading it… There’s no real good… Continue reading Kij Johnson, Fudoki [Library of Babel]