Month: May 2011

Short Story Club: “The Jaguar House, in Shadow,” by Aliette de Bodard

As mentioned a little while ago, Locus is running a Short Story Club to discuss the award-nominated stories that are available online. First up is Aliette de Bodard’s “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”. Like her novels and other notable short fiction, this has a Central American theme, though it’s alternate-history SF rather than fantasy. This… Continue reading Short Story Club: “The Jaguar House, in Shadow,” by Aliette de Bodard

Links for 2011-05-21

SLR Camera Simulator | Simulates a digital SLR camera “Practice using an SLR camera… Experiment with the lighting, ISO, aperture, shutter, and distance settings while observing the readings in the camera viewfinder Click the “Snap photo!” button Review your photo!” (tags: technology pictures internet computing) Astrogator’s Logs » Blog Archive » Area 51: Teen Commies… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-21

Links for 2011-05-20

A career as editor « the Node “In 1993-4, I went on the job market, looking at standard faculty positions. I received some offers, including one from Vanderbilt University, where I am now. But I was resisting accepting a position, and some friends – who were also on the job market at the time –… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-20

Thursday Holy Land Blogging 051911

Earlier tonight, I was sitting at my computer, and SteelyKid came running over. “Let’s go to Israel. Pretend Israel.” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Why are you whispering?” I asked. “Do we have to whisper in pretend Israel?” “Yes,” she replied immediately. “Because there are bears.” The origin of this odd conversation was today’s… Continue reading Thursday Holy Land Blogging 051911

Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science

In keeping with this week’s unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there’s an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that’s prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would. I wouldn’t bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to… Continue reading Return of the Project for Non-Academic Science

Filtering Isn’t the Problem

Via Twitter, Daniel Lemire has a mini-manifesto advocating “social media” alternatives for academic publishing, citing “disastrous consequences” of the “filter-then-publish” model in use by traditional journals. The problem is, as with most such things, I’m not convinced that social media style publication really fixes all these problems. For example, one of his points is: The… Continue reading Filtering Isn’t the Problem

Links for 2011-05-19

News: What They Are Really Typing – Inside Higher Ed “The authors of two recent studies of laptops and classroom learning decided that relying on student and professor testimony would not do. They decided instead to spy on students. In one study, a St. John’s University law professor hired research assistants to peek over students’… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-19

Idle Historical Question: Why p?

Today’s lecture topic was position-space and momentum-space representations of state vectors in quantum mechanics, which once again brought up one of the eternal questions in physics: Why do we use the symbol p to represent momentum? I did Google this, but none of the answers looked all that authoritative. And, anyway, I’m sure that the… Continue reading Idle Historical Question: Why p?

Links for 2011-05-18

Book View Cafe – Exordium 01, by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge “Smith and Trowbridge describe the flavor of their five-book space opera Exordium as a cross between Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons with a touch of the Three Stooges. With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy and the deep places… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-18