Step away from the curve § Unqualified Offerings "The ideal curve would have a mean of about 50%. If itâs too much above 50%, then most of what youâre putting on there is easy for everyone, so it should just be a given. If itâs too far below 50%, then most of what youâre putting […]
Month: March 2009
Starting is the Hardest Part of Writing
The Female Science Professor had a nice post about working with someone who was afraid to write a paper: Out of desperation, I told the graphophobe to meet me at a particular cafe at a particular time, with the latest draft of the manuscript and whatever other notes or references he needed. We met, I […]
Academic Poll: Breadth or Depth?
I fell behind on course reports from my modern physics class a few weeks back, but I do mean to get back to them, when I have more time. The material remaining is the end-of-term sprint through a bunch of topics in modern physics– three classes on atoms and molecules, three classes on solid state […]
links for 2009-03-25
Hulu – Cosmos All 13 episodes of Carl Sagan’s landmark series. Because if you’re going to watch video on your work computer, it might as well be something good. (tags: science astronomy television space video) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Humorous Humanist Armageddon: Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimanâs <em>Good Omens</em> […]
Cold Fusion Still Generating Heat
Steve calls me out for not commenting on new stories about “cold fusion”: Becky and I have been having much more regular access to the internet since the power was fixed. We check e-mail just about everyday and can even skim yahoo news. Or Professor Orzel’s blog. I heard on BBC radio yesterday that there […]
Physics Can Fix This
One of the NCAA pools I’m in has a copy of Obama’s bracket entered, and the last I checked, I’m a couple of games up on him. This means I’m as qualified as anyone else to offer a plan to fix the financial crisis, and I have just the plan we need. On the question […]
links for 2009-03-24
Ten photons per hour « A Quantum Diaries Survivor "The small speck of light shown in the upper left of the picture above, labeled as MGC 10-17-5, is actually a faint galaxy in the field of view of NGC3690. It has a visual magnitude of +15.7: this is a measure of its integrated luminosity as […]
Now Intersecting Elsewhere
Chris and Sheril announced today that The Intersection has gone over to the Dark Side moved to Discover‘s growing collection of high-quality science blogs. They’re now available at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection. This is not entirely unexpected, but I wish them well in their spiffy new digs. They’re the second blog to move from ScienceBlogs to Discover (after […]
Academic Poll: Drop It Like It’s Hot?
I handed in my final grades for the term this morning, and am now on “Spring Break” which is the misleading term for the week of frantic preparation for next term’s classes that our schedule allows. Here’s a poll question for you, though: We operate on ten-week “trimesters.” How late into the ten-week term should […]
Definitions
My computer is starting to run slow in that way that indicates that either Microsoft has released an important update, or it’s just been on too long without a reboot. Either way, I need to clear some browser tabs before restarting, and there are a bunch of articles that I thought were too interesting to […]