Yesterday’s post about how nobody cares about condensed matter physics produced a surprising number of comments of the form “I was really hoping you would post about topological insulators,” which surprised me a bit. Anyway, since people asked for it, I’ll give it a shot. The important caveats here are that 1) this isn’t my… Continue reading What’s a Topological Insulator?
Month: July 2010
The State of Science Blogging and Expectations Thereof
The fallout from the Pepsi incident continues to suck all the oxygen out of science blogging, with the latest news being the departure of Bora Zivkovic. If you don’t have time to read his farewell novel, here’s the short version: Seed Media Group management are insufficiently attentive to the blogs, and stuck in an old-media… Continue reading The State of Science Blogging and Expectations Thereof
Links for 2010-07-20
NASA Mercury Messenger Finds Surprises – NYTimes.com “On its third swing past Mercury, NASA’s Mercury Messenger spacecraft discovered an unexpectedly young lava plain, rapid rufflings of the planet’s weak magnetic field and an unanticipated dance of elements in the thin atmosphere. “I think the biggest surprise for the community is that the planet is turning… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-20
How Do You Make People Care About Topological Insulators?
I had planned to spend some time this weekend trying to make sense of this new result on topological insulators, and maybe even write up the relevant paper for ResearchBlogging. Family life intervened, though, and I didn’t have the time. I get enough of it to understand the basics of what’s going on, but there’s… Continue reading How Do You Make People Care About Topological Insulators?
Launch Pad for Quantum Physics
Over at Jeff Vandemeer’s blog, Rachel Swirsky has a series ofm guest posts (start here if you prefer direct post links) about the recently completed Launch Pad workshop. this is a NASA funded workshop bringing a group of writers together for six days of lectures on modern astronomy from working astronomers. From the workshop web… Continue reading Launch Pad for Quantum Physics
Links for 2010-07-19
Language Log » The “pound sign” mystery “Yesterday, in discussing Kevin Fowler’s song Pound Sign, there was some debate about the origin of the term “pound sign” for the symbol #. I suggested that it all started with the substitution of # for £ on American typewriter keyboards, but others argued that # was a… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-19
Bonus Toddler Blogging: Balloon Basketball
SteelyKid has clearly inherited her father’s fondness for basketball. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite understand how to play, yet. She does know that involves throwing a ball up in the air and jumping, though: She’ll get the rest of it eventually.
Recent Pop Music
I bought a bunch of stuff recently, and as is my usual practice, iTunes has been shuffle playing the recent purchases for the last couple of weeks. The albums in question: Janelle Monae, the Arch-Android. Not usually my sort of thing, but I saw a bunch of absolutely rapturous reviews calling it groundbreaking, etc, so… Continue reading Recent Pop Music
Links for 2010-07-18
Physics Education Research Group (UMD) / Scientific Community Labs “Scientiifc community labs (SCL) are designed to give students the experience of participating in a model of a realistic scientific community at an early stage in their scientific training. In traditional labs, students often receive very detailed guidance, allowing them to complete the lab and get… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-18
Science v. Religion: Time to Try (Social) Science
There are lots of reasons why Josh Rosenau is one of the few writers blogging about science-and-religion issues that I still read. This morning’s post on what you ought to do to determine effective approaches is an outstanding example: Rather than looking at national polls, which are crude instruments and can miss shifts within small… Continue reading Science v. Religion: Time to Try (Social) Science