My birthday was two months ago, and SteelyKid’s was the weekend before last, so we’ve had balloons running around the house for a good while now. Meaning that when I came into the library yesterday, I saw the sad little image on the right: a half-deflated Mylar balloon floating at about chest height. Now, the […]
Month: August 2011
Imminent Death of the Book, Continued
A little more tab clearance: these are stories about the transformation of publishing that I’ve been meaning to say something about but haven’t got around to. First, some actual news: rumors of the imminent death of publishing may be somewhat exaggerated, as more books were sold for more money in 2010 than in a while. […]
Links for 2011-08-17
Is Rick Perry a ‘sucker,’ or was he just lying? | slacktivist "Maybe he really believed that. Maybe the single example of “stifling regulations” that he chose for his stump speech was some wild rumor that, despite being a state governor, he never bothered to check into or to have an aide check into. Maybe […]
It’s a Small World
Two “small world” items, involving people I know turning up unexpectedly, doing well for themselves: 1) As mentioned previously, I’ve been thinking a lot about physics education stuff (even though I have other things I ought to be doing), and reading a lot more education-oriented blogs. I was surprised, though, to find a physics-related post […]
What Does It Cost to Run a Small College Lab?
Over at io9, they have a post on the finances of running a research lab at a major university. It’s reasonably good as such things go, but very specific to the top level of research universities. As I am not at such an institution, I thought it might be worthwhile to post something about the […]
Links for 2011-08-16
Welcome to the Fall Semester | Wired Science | Wired.com "Sharpen your pencils and charge your laptops. It is time for the next semester to start. How about some tips to those that will be involved. Yes, I am talking to you. All of you." The Only Time the Conservative Politicians Ignore Warren Buffett « […]
The Status of Science: We Have No-one to Blame but Ourselves
Over in Twitter-land, Josh Rosenau re-tweeted a comment from Seattle_JC: It is a bad sign when the promotion of science and science education has been reduced to a grassroots movement in this society. It’s a nice line, but it doesn’t entirely make sense. When I hear the term “grass-roots movement,” I think of something that […]
Links for 2011-08-15
Bill Kirchen and Friends: Folsom Pinball Blues – YouTube "Bill Kirchen and whole collection of talent at SoHo in Santa Barbara, CA doing a delicate combination of Folsom Prison Blues and Pinball Wizard." Takraw: Thai Soccer – Thailand – YouTube This would be so much cooler to have on tv than baseball or preseason NFL […]
Lev Grossman, The Magician King [Library of Babel]
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians never got a full entry to itself, but as I said when I mentioned it in this round-up post, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s a magical school novel about recognizable American teenagers attending Brakebills, a sort of liberal arts college for the wizarding set, somewhere in the lower Hudson […]
Links for 2011-08-14
THE “Don’t Miss” Volume? | Tor.com "In the 1995 Hugos thread, Womzilla asked what was THE don’t-miss novel of Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. There has been much interesting discussion in the thread of the idea of a series novel winning the Hugo and specifically of which Bujold to read first, but I think the whole question […]