Over at Arcane Gazebo, Travis talks about commuting, based on an Ezra Klein post: Longtime readers know my obsession with the way we overvalue positional goods like money, prestige, and real estate and undervalue non-positional goods like social connections, walking to work, and health. But the evidence really is clear that you need to make […]
Month: February 2008
links for 2008-02-22
Scientists probe fireballs with X-rays – physicsworld.com “Theories put forward so far suggest that this “ball lightning” is either a moving electrical discharge or that it is some kind of self-contained object. Now, research from an Israeli group is making the latter seem more likely. “ (tags: physics science news experiment) The 2008 Tournament of […]
A Series of Tubes
Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel Pharmboy has live-blogged his own vasectomy. Why did he do this? Your guess is as good as mine. Why am I linking to it? Misery loves company. Until I figure out a way to scrub that knowledge out of my brain, the best I can do is make sure that […]
Questions of Ethics
Janet Stemwedel is blogging, as is her wont, about questions of ethical behavior in science. She had a post Monday giving advice on how to counter unethical behavior, which all seems pretty good to me. Unfortunately, the people who read and comment on blogs about academic culture tend to start at “corrosively cynical,” and get […]
links for 2008-02-21
xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe “What do you want me to do? LEAVE?” (tags: comics internet silly) Researchers create ‘self-healing’ rubber – physicsworld.com “If the material is snapped in half, the two torn pieces can be made to mend themselves simply by bringing the broken surfaces […]
Dorky Poll: Three Beeeeellion Dollars
Regular commenter Johan Larson writes with a suggested blog topic: The Human Genome Project (yes, you have to pronounce those capitals) cost about $3 billion. If $3 billion were yours to spend on scientific research, how would you spend the money? That’s a great question, and a great topic for a Dorky Poll. I’ll narrow […]
links for 2008-02-20
Can Scientists Dance? — Bohannon 319 (5865): 905b — Science A contest to see who could do the best interpretive dance based on their Ph.D. thesis. (tags: academia music science video silly) Conservatives Just Aren’t Into Academe, Study Finds – Chronicle.com “Conservative students, however, put more value on personal achievement and orderliness, and on practical […]
Heating vs. Warming
Another tidbit from Boskone. At the Sunday afternoon panel on global warming, one of the panelists brought up the fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics ensures that power generating systems always generate a great deal of waste heat. He wondered about how the waste heat released into the environment compares to the effects of […]
Nobody Expects Bose-Einstein Condensation
An interesting tidbit that occurred to me in thinking about the “unexpected uses of technology” panel (well, along with the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” thing): In a certain sense, my entire professional career is derived from unexpected uses of technology. I’m not talking about the physics-with-the-dog thing, though that’s pretty unexpected, but rather my […]