Fish Food « Easily Distracted "Let me add to the âStanley Fish is just kind of patheticâ dogpile a bit here. In many ways, Fishâs latest column kind of reveals just how naked the emperor has become when it comes to hack complaints about the leftist intolerant academic-freedom abusing groupthink academy. " (tags: stupid academia… Continue reading links for 2009-02-11
Month: February 2009
Heads Talking About Quantum History
I’m running a little behind this week, but I wouldn’t want this week’s Science Saturday bloggingheads to slip by without a mention. It’s a conversation between George Johnson and Louisa Gilder about The Age of Entanglement, which I liked quite a bit: The conversation is primarily about her book, the story it tells, and how… Continue reading Heads Talking About Quantum History
Essential Skills and Experiences?
Like a lot of physics departments, we offer an upper-level lab class, aimed at juniors and seniors. There are a lot of ways to approach this sort of course, but one sensible way to think about it is in terms of giving students essential skills and experiences. That is, i’s a course in which they… Continue reading Essential Skills and Experiences?
links for 2009-02-10
Backreaction: Singularities in your Kitchen "I was fascinated most by what I’ve learned since then about singularities in fluid dynamics – singularities that actually occur in the kitchen, every time a drop of water falls off the tap." (tags: science physics blogs liquids backreaction) Attack of the 50-Foot Baby blocks turn your toddler into a… Continue reading links for 2009-02-10
Physics Gets No Respect
Kind of a belated gripe, but something I was reminded of today that I forgot to blog when I first noticed it. I griped last year about the fomulaic nature of the “Best Science Writing” anthology, but I had no idea that the 2008 version would be worse. OK, I haven’t read it, but I… Continue reading Physics Gets No Respect
Book Report: Slouching Toward Production
The Book-in-Progress is slowly but surely moving toward being the Book-in-Production. There isn’t an officially official date yet, but I’ve gotten what should be the last round of edits, and been told that it should be out this fall, just in time for holiday gift-buying. Between the book and my class, I don’t have a… Continue reading Book Report: Slouching Toward Production
links for 2009-02-09
A physics history-mystery: magnetism from light? « Skulls in the Stars "Iâve been looking into Faradayâs contribution to the understanding that light is an electromagnetic wave. That investigation led me to some early work by other researchers on the light/magnetism connection, and led me in turn to a puzzler: how significant and accurate is that… Continue reading links for 2009-02-09
The Frakes Story
Back in the 25 things post, I alluded to a long-ago encounter with Jonathan Frakes in Williamstown. This has led to a number of requests for the full story, which I will put below the fold, for those who care:
Information Insecurity
I only started using FriendFeed a few months ago because other people at the Science in the 21st Century workshop were documenting the conference on it. I quickly became a fan of the service, which not only added an extra dimension to the meeting, but has also been a continuing source of interesting material from… Continue reading Information Insecurity
The Purpling of Blogdom
Williams has long held a dominant position in a number of categories of blogging: Dan Drezner on economics and politics, Marc Lynch on the Middle East, Ethan Zuckerman on the developing world and really cool conferences, Derek Catsam on history and Red Sox fandom, yours truly on canine physics. And I’m sure I’m forgetting several… Continue reading The Purpling of Blogdom