College Inc. – Survey: Community college students prize Internet access over teachers “More than than 70 percent of students surveyed “believe that it is important to have access to high speed Internet in order to succeed at community college,” the report states. “In fact, students tend to believe that high speed Internet access is more […]
Month: February 2011
Thursday Dramatis Personae Blogging 021011
Appa appears in all the weekly Toddler Blogging pictures, but he’s not the only stuffed animal in Chateau Steelypips. the others were getting a little resentful of Appa’s blog time, so here’s the full cast of characters: In the back row, from left to right, we have: SteelyKid, Baby, Audrey, Appa, Dolly, Lorax, and Mommy. […]
Notes Toward “A Brief History of Timekeeping”: Kooks and Sticks
Barring a major disaster, I am scheduled to teach one of our Scholars Research Seminar classes next winter. I’ve been kicking the idea for this around for a while, with the semi-clever title “A Brief History of Timekeeping.” The idea is to talk about the different technologies people have used to mark the passage of […]
The Trouble With Foul Trouble (Syracuse-Georgetown)
Last night was Syracuse versus Georgetown in basketball, which is THE great historical rivalry in the Big East– these are the teams that made the league great in the 80’s, and while the Hoyas had a down stretch in the late 90’s/ early 2000’s, they’re good again, so it’s a huge game. Because of that, […]
Links for 2011-02-10
Beer Batter Is Better: Scientific American “If you’ve ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips–the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp–odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a […]
Talking Dogs Are Big in Italy
I haven’t been as relentless about flogging How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (now available in paperback!) as I was last year, because it gets kind of exhausting. I do have a vanity search set up on Google Reader that points me to the occasional review– this one, for example, so I still see […]
Academic Poll: Refereeing Ethics
The “peer reviewers get worse” item in this morning’s Links Dump drew an immediate comment elsewhere to the effect of “of course they do, because they start pawning reviews off on their students. This one was a surprise to me, so here’s a quick poll to see if my subfield of physics is really that […]
Links for 2011-02-08
The Virtuosi: Life in the Infrared “There’s a place where TV remotes are flashlights, Wii’s are torches, and Snuggies are translucent. It’s our kitchen. We modified a 3 dollar webcam to view in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We’ll show you how, and what you can do with it.” (tags: science physics optics […]
Against Pointless Racism in Children’s Stories
I’m taking some flak in the comments to yesterday’s book recommendation request post, so let me illustrate what I meant with an example. Lots of people recommended the Andrew Lang Fairy books, which are freely available online. I looked at the first story in the first book, which is plenty entertaining, but also has this […]
Links for 2011-02-06
Evolution in Science Education – Bill Nye on Evolution in Science Education – Popular Mechanics “Science education: We should support it. Especially elementary school science. Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10. Everybody who’s a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants […]