I was up until almost midnight grading labs, and I have forty-odd grant proposals to read today, so I’m going to be unplugging from the Internet and working on, well, work. For entertainment while I’m paying for my procrastination, here’s another two-word lyrics quiz. These two-word phrases each uniquely identify a pop song (I hope). […]
Month: October 2009
Links for 2009-10-20
Myth Confirmed. : Built on Facts “[U]ntil relatively recently, no one had ever actually done the experiment. It’s difficult, both in terms of dropping the bullets properly and making sure the gun fires exactly horizontally. Horizontal fire is critical, because if there is an initial vertical velocity for the fired bullet, the equation will be […]
Can Kids These Days Write?
Via Michael Nielsen on Twitter, a Wired article and a research group website for the Stanford Study of Writing. As the Wired piece reports, the group has done a large study of student writing, and finds that modern college students write more and are better writers than students in the past. This is a little […]
With Polymaths Like These…
It’s hard to say exactly why I found Edward Carr’s article on polymaths so irritating, but I suspect it was this bit: The monomaths do not only swarm over a specialism, they also play dirty. In each new area that Posner picks–policy or science–the experts start to erect barricades. “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists […]
Links for 2009-10-19
Patrick Welsh — To Explain the Achievement Gap, Examine the Parenting Gap – washingtonpost.com “My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria. And it wasn’t because the school system had failed them. They knew that […]
Links for 2009-10-18
Analysis Of A Roulette Strategy “As Hank explains in a recent article, when he visits a Casino he plays the Roulette. His simple strategy consists in betting on a single colour, doubling the bet every time he loses; when he wins, he starts back with the minimum bet. Such a strategy is not going to […]
Fastener Technology Puzzle
If you buy a loaf of bread, it comes in a plastic bag closed with either a metal twist-tie or a little plastic tab. Either of these may be re-used to close the bag again after you have used some of the bread. If you buy a bunch of carrots, they generally come in a […]
Links for 2009-10-17
Career Advice: A Regular Writing Routine – Inside Higher Ed “In this article, I’m starting a four-part series on developing a regular writing routine. In this column, I’ll discuss and debunk two popular myths about writing. In my next column, I’ll review two of my favorite articles, one on expert performance and the other on […]
DonorsChoose Poll: Big Incentives
This year’s DonorsChoose challenge has brought in a respectable $1,929 thus far, helping reach almost 1000 school kids. Thanks to all those who have donated thus far. We’ve been stuck at that level for a little while now, though, so it doesn’t look like we’re going to match last year’s total of more than $6,000. […]
Flash Forward, Left Behind
I’ve watched the first few episodes of “Flash Forward” more or less as they aired– I’ve been DVR-ing them, but watching not long after they start, so I can fast-forward through the commercials, and still see it. I could just let them sit on the DVR, but at least for me, the DVR tends to […]