NPR last week had a story about the changing kilogram: More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the […]
Month: August 2009
Links for 2009-08-25
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Making Lists: Mindblowing SF by Women and People of Color “[S]ince someone always finds a way to claim that they just don’t know where to find such or who the women and/or people of color writing in the genre are, I hope that this list […]
Even the Queen
“So what do I need to do, again?” “First, you have to pick a username. So people know who you are.” “OK. How about ‘Emmy the Magnificent, Queen of Niskayuna and Surrounding Regions.’ That should do the job.” “Ah, no. That’s 64 characters. Nobody would ever reply to you with a username that long. How […]
You Say You Want a Revolution?
I’m suffering through a wretched cold at the moment, which will limit my blogging activity. If you’re looking for something to do, though, you might want to check out the Revolutionary Minds blog set up by the Corporate Masters. This is basically a short-form online version of a feature from Seed, in which they ask […]
Links for 2009-08-23, 2009-08-24
Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Goodbye, Dortmunder: Donald Westlake’s Get Real “There couldn’t really be a conclusion to these books — what could it possibly be? The gang will just keep on forever looking for one more job to keep them going. The regulars in OJs will keep on having […]
Karl Schroeder, The Sunless Countries [Library of Babel]
Jo Walton has a very nice review of Karl Schroeder’s Permanence over at Tor.com, which contains a terrific summary of what makes Schroeder great: The problem with talking about Permanence (2002), or any of Schroeder’s work really, is that it’s too easy to get caught up in talking about the wonderful ideas and backgrounds and […]
What’s Missing From This Art Project?
Via Bora on FriendFeed, a cute little art project from MIT that takes a name, scans the Web for mentions of that name, and produces a color-coded bar categorizing the various mentions of that name. Here’s what you get if you put my name in: You can click on it for a bigger image, that […]
Links for 2009-08-22
Dan Brown tops Oxfam’s chart of most-donated books | Books | The Guardian “But as secondhand bookshop shelves flood with battered editions of Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress, Brown can comfort himself with the fact that he’s also Oxfam’s second most bought author: there are, apparently, still readers out there who have yet to […]
How to Choose a College
It’s that time of year again, when the US News rankings come out (confirming my undergrad alma mater as the Best in All the Land) and everybody in academia gets all worked up about What It All Means. There are always a few gems in there with all the pointless hand-wringing, though, and Timothy Burke […]
Let’s Hear It for the Staff
The Dean Dad had a great post about staff yesterday: Politically, hiring office staff is a harder sell than hiring faculty. Faculty are conspicuous, and the tie to the classroom is obvious. Back-office support staff are inconspicuous, and show up in public discussion as ‘overhead’ or ‘administrative bloat.’ But their work is necessary, as anyone […]