One of SteelyKid’s birthday gifts from my parents was a wheeled wooden penguin on a stick. If you roll it along the ground, the wings flap, with a very satisfying clacking noise. It took SteelyKid a little while to get the hang of it, but she’s got the idea now: Really, I don’t have anything… Continue reading March of the (Wooden) Penguins
Month: August 2009
Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
One of the blogs I hyped at the science blogging panel at Worldcon was Built on Facts, Matt Springer’s blog explaining introductory physics concepts. You might not think that you want to read a blog that goes through freshman physics problems in detail– I would’ve been dubious on the concept, had you explained it to… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
CSI: Ambiguous Sentences
The New York Times yesterday had a story with the dramatic headline DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show, explaining that, well, there are nefarious tricks you can pull to falsify DNA evidence, provided you have access to a high-quality biochemical laboratory. The story is a great boon to conspiracy theorists everywhere, especially with this… Continue reading CSI: Ambiguous Sentences
Links for 2009-08-18
slacktivist: The IndigNation “That’s an example of what’s often missing today in dealing with the IndigNation. These people are offended and outraged and so politicians and journalists respond by trying not to further offend or enrage them. As though that were possible. Indignation is their raison d’etre. They will take offense whether or not it… Continue reading Links for 2009-08-18
Why Our Living Room Looks Like a Tornado Came Through
Caught on video: It’s very difficult to decide which of the many, many toys in the toybox is the right toy…
Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
The results of the estimation contest are in. There were 164 serious entries (I excluded the $12,000 and $1,000,000 “guesses” from the final data). The mean value guessed by commenters was $83.30, and the median was not far off, at $77.12. The standard deviation was high– $43.10– but as you would expect with a large… Continue reading Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
What You Might Not Know About (Biomedical) Journals
Via I-no-longer-remember-who (the tab’s been open for several days), there’s a list of What You Might Not Know About Scientific Journals, outlining some of the facts about scientific publication. There’s some good stuff, but as you can tell from my title, a lot of it is fairly specific to biomedical journals, and doesn’t really apply… Continue reading What You Might Not Know About (Biomedical) Journals
Hey to Uganda
I mentioned a few times that one of our physics graduates from 2008 was spending a year in rural Uganda, working at a clinic and school there as part of a college-run fellowship program (with Engeye Health Clinic. Steve is back in the US now, and headed to graduate school in Seattle in Atmospheric Sciences.… Continue reading Hey to Uganda
Links for 2009-08-17
In a Queens Park, Duke Riley Leads a Battle on the Low Seas – NYTimes.com “This was an art exhibition — a term that perhaps conjures a more subdued event. But the art in this show, called “Those About to Die Salute You,” involved humans in motion, boats on water and those tomatoes. It was… Continue reading Links for 2009-08-17
Can’t-Miss Toy Idea: Roomba Baby
As a parent of a newly mobile one-year-old, I have a can’t-fail suggestion for a toy product that would fuse two popular technologies: realistic infant simulators (baby dolls that cry, wet themselve, etc.) and vacuum-cleaning robots. All you need to do is mount a baby doll on a Roomba chassis, and use the same random-walk… Continue reading Can’t-Miss Toy Idea: Roomba Baby