I’m deep in book revisions at the moment, which largely accounts for the relative blog silence. This is expected to continue for a while yet, broken by the occasional post when something comes up that is irritating enough to push me to write about it. Such as, well, now. In the chapter on the Copenhagen […]
Month: June 2008
links for 2008-06-24
George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com Say a prayer to Joe Pesci in his memory. (tags: comedy society culture) Law Blog – WSJ.com : In Texas-Arkansas Spat, Judge Orders Parties to Midfield “Surely Defendant’s corporate representative, a resident of Arkansas, would feel great humiliation by being forced to enter […]
links for 2008-06-23
Postcards from Nowhere “It is the artists, and a certain line of thinking about art, that have given the people with the cash permission to buy and sell what amounts to nothing, and to do so for ever larger and more insane sums of money.” (tags: art culture society stupid humanities)
Demon Bunny Made of Cheese
By request: Below the fold, video evidence of its demonic nature:
links for 2008-06-22
Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say – NYTimes.com A new safety review says that the LHC won’t really kill us all. I’m sure this will put the whole issue to rest for good…
Emmy-saurus, Courtesy of Spore
“What’cha doin’?” “Huh? Oh, I’m playing with the Spore Creature Creator. It’s a videogame thing, that lets me design little computerized critters.” “What sort of critters?” “All kinds of things. I could even make one that looks sort of like you. Here, take a look.” “Oooh! That’s neat. I should have bigger claws, though.” “Well, […]
links for 2008-06-21
Experimental Realization of an Optical One-Way Barrier for Neutral Atoms “[A] realization of Maxwell’s demon [that] has important implications for cooling atoms and molecules not amenable to standard laser-cooling techniques.” (tags: physics articles science experiment news atoms optics) Spatially Resolved Observation of Dipole-Dipole Interaction between Rydberg Atoms A possible mechanism for making a quantum computer […]
links for 2008-06-20
Redefining Where Salary Gaps Linger :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs “[M]en and women are being hired at four-year colleges at comparable salaries as they start their faculty careers, but there is one significant exception: research universities. At research universities, even controlling for variables such as discipline a […]
The Self-Justification of Elite Nerds
A bunch of academic bloggers have been talking about the American Scholar essay by William Deresiewicz. The always-perceptive Timothy Burke offers some insightful comments about the general problems of elite education. Burke is also a lot kinder to Deresiewicz than I’m inclined to be. Because, frankly, the piece pisses me off, from the very first […]
links for 2008-06-18
June 18: Polar Land and Life Day Happy birthday to me… (tags: animals environment science news education biology geology) Halo: The Cole Protocol (and welcome to all you new readers) at Tobias Buckell Online “Project X” revealed. (tags: books games SF blogs) The Giant’s Shoulders A monthly science blogging event about classic science papers. (tags: […]