Starship Kimchi: A Bold Taste Goes Where It Has Never Gone Before – New York Times “Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would not put off non-Korean astronauts […]
Month: February 2008
Random Oscar Thoughts
There was some back-channel talk about the Academy Awards this past week, in which another ScienceBlogger opined that the Oscars were stupid and that we, as Serious Intellectuals, ought to have better things to talk about than a pop-culture award show. I think that’s well over on the “pompous ass” side of things, so here’s […]
Sunday Mighty Hunter Blogging
Here we see the mighty hunter returning from a successful pursuit of the elusive Red Snow Squid.
links for 2008-02-24
The Field » Texas Early Voting Wave as Reaction to Systemic Disenfranchisement Prairie View students shut down a highway in order to march seven miles for early voting. (tags: academia politics race US) Unruled Notebook » Blog Archive » Guilty of Plagiarizing Seventy Research Papers A chemist published seventy plagiarized papers in three years, despite […]
Greetings, Gentlebeings!
Because I’m a Bad Person: (Context here, here, and here, Flickr group here.)
Spencer Crew, The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley
I had to do a couple of tests yesterday that required me to start something in the lab and then leave it alone for an hour, so I wandered over to a talk sponsored by the History department. Spencer Crew, the former director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, OH was in […]
links for 2008-02-23
sillybean » Translation from Aburt-speak to English of selected portions of his SFWA presidential platform[1] “I don’t understand why people on the internet are so mean to me, but I fully expect that my patronizing approach will bring them to their senses.” (tags: SF writing silly politics) Why We Banned Legos – Volume 21 No. […]
Literary Poll: Nanotechnology in Fiction?
A reader writes in with a literary query: I was asked to teach a 400-level course on Nanotechnology at my U. In addition to the usual technical content, I would like to include a critical view of how nanotechnology is portrayed in popular culture. So I am looking for suitable works that can be examined. […]
Prospective Hugo Nomination Update
The Hugo Award nomination deadline is fast approaching, so I’ve been doing a bunch of reading to make sure I’ve covered a reasonable range of potential nominees. I’ve been really bad about book-logging recently, but I thought I’d at least post some brief comments on my crash reading here, for those who are just dying […]
Those Who Have No $&%#@! Idea, Go Into Administration
Inside Higher Ed reports on this week’s candidate for Dumbest Administration Ever: Arkansas Tech: After the Virginia Tech murders a year ago, Yale University banned the use of stage weapons in a student theatrical production — infuriating actors and educators who believed audience members could distinguish drama from real life. After a few days of […]