Today is my birthday– my age in dog years is now equal to the freezing point of water in Kelvin (to three significant figures). I’m celebrating by not reading anything that might piss me off, and by spending the day at home watching soccer (about which more later) and getting some stuff done around the… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Signing Tomorrow
Month: June 2010
Hugo Reading: Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
When the Hugo nominees were announced, Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest was the only one of the three Best Novel nominees I hadn’t already read that I was pretty sure I would read. I have very little interest in Robert Sawyer’s work, and I’ve read just enough of Paolo Bacigalupi’s short fiction to dread the thought of… Continue reading Hugo Reading: Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
Links for 2010-06-18
www.dumpert.nl – Hoe amerikanen voetbal kijken A good spoof of American sports television, applied to soccer. the titles are Dutch, but the video is in English. (tags: soccer sports world television silly) World Cup 2010: Brick-by-brick fussball – England 1-1 USA | Video | Football | guardian.co.uk “An animated recreation of England’s first match against… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-18
Thursday Baby Blogging 061710
No elaborate pose this week, just simple, classic Baby Blogging: A few months back, her weight had failed to increase as quickly as expected, so she had a couple of weight-check appointments scheduled. The latest was this week, when it was discovered that she had gained about three pounds since the last check-up (the proportional… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 061710
The Problem of Broader Impacts
Over at the Cocktail Party, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky has a post about the image of scientists that spins off this Nature article on the NSF’s “broader impact” requirement (which I think is freely readable, but it’s hard to tell with Nature). Leslie-Pelecky’s post is well worth reading, and provides a good deal more detail on the… Continue reading The Problem of Broader Impacts
Faculty Evaluation Is Really Complicated
There’s a paper in the Journal of Political Economy that has sparked a bunch of discussion. The article, bearing the snappy title “Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors,” looks at the scores of over 10,000 students at the US Air Force Academy over a period of several years, and… Continue reading Faculty Evaluation Is Really Complicated
Links for 2010-06-17
The Virtuosi: How Long Can You Balance A (Quantum) Pencil “In this post I’d like to address a fun physics problem. How long can you balance a pencil on its tip? I mean in a perfect world, how long? No really. Think about it a second. Try and come up with an answer before your… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-17
World Cup: First-Round Statistics
So, how do things stand with the Uncertain Principles World Cup Contest at the end of the first round? We have completed the first set of 16 group play games, and to this point, we have 6 ties. Extrapolating from that to the final result (because, of course, you always start with a linear extrapolation)… Continue reading World Cup: First-Round Statistics
The Elusive Digital Native
Inside Higher Ed featured one of those every-so-often articles about the awesomeness of the demographic subgroup of the moment, this time Athur Levine’s panegyric about “digital natives”, who “grew up in a world of computers, Internet, cell phones, MP3 players, and social networking,” and how they’re too cool and tech-savvy for current universities: They differ… Continue reading The Elusive Digital Native
Links for 2010-06-16
The A-Team steers clear of Hill Street and avoids St Elsewhere and Cheers “The A-Team premiered in 1983, a year after Cheers and St Elsewhere, two years after Hill Street Blues, a year ahead of Miami Vice, the fall after M*A*S*H said goodbye, farewell, and amen. There had always been well-written, well-directed, and well-acted television… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-16