SteelyKid’s day care is closed today for a Jewish holiday, so she’s spending the day at home with her grandmother. It was a real struggle to get my mother to come up for the day… Something I’m sure is on the agenda is playing with her shape sorter box, which she was good enough to… Continue reading Putting Things Inside of Other Things Since 2009
Author: Chad Orzel
Mysteries of the Stock Room
Why do we have two meter sticks taped together back to back? What is the dark stain obscuring the markings between 30 and 70 cm on half of the meter sticks? Where the hell are all the stopwatches? Why are the demo magnets sticky? Why do we still have six meters worth of a rusting,… Continue reading Mysteries of the Stock Room
links for 2009-05-29
The Washington Monthly "This is one of the things I love most about blogs: Barack Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; I, a non-lawyer, wonder what her record is like, and find the summaries in newspapers much too shallow and focussed on the politics of her appointment rather than her record; but voila!… Continue reading links for 2009-05-29
Thursday Baby Blogging 052809
This week, a special Literary Edition: Those are the first pass typeset proofs for the book, which just arrived in the mail today. Aren’t they adorable? Oh, okay, fine. You’re just here for the conventional cute baby pictures:
Dorky Poll: Conservation
We’re having some technical difficulties on the ScienceBlogs back end, so this may be futile, but I’ve got a 9am lab class, so here’s a Dorky Poll in hopes that the comments will work well enough to be entertaining. Today’s lab is the “ballistic pendulum,” in which students use conservation of energy and conservation of… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Conservation
Three Quarks for Science Writing
I already mentioned this in a Links Dump, but there’s enough buzz that it’s probably worth a full post: the people at Three Quarks Daily have decided to offer prizes for blog writing: Starting next month, the prizes will be awarded every year on the two solstices and the two equinoxes. So, we will announce… Continue reading Three Quarks for Science Writing
links for 2009-05-28
Race and the Full Court Press at Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture A good piece on the creepy racial subtext of that Malcolm Gladwell article. (I can stop posting about that any time I want to. Really.) (tags: race culture sports basketball society) Confessions of a Community College Dean: Men "I… Continue reading links for 2009-05-28
Put the EmPHAYsis on the Right SyLABle
A thousand curses on Kevin Drum for making me read some idiocy from the National Review’s attempts to find things wrong with Sonia Sotomayor: Deferring to people’s own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural… Continue reading Put the EmPHAYsis on the Right SyLABle
Sigma Xi Talk: Tropical Glaciers Are Weird
Tuesday night was the annual Sigma Xi induction banquet on campus (I’m currently the president of the local chapter, and have been scrambling to organize the whole thing in between all my other responsibilities these past few weeks). Sigma Xi, for those not familiar with it, is the scientific research honor society– like Phi Beta… Continue reading Sigma Xi Talk: Tropical Glaciers Are Weird
This Isn’t Basketball
It’s that time of year when I check in to the giant methadone program that is the NBA, to help ease my way from college basketball season into the long, dull, summer when nothing worthwhile happens, sports-wise. Thus, I watched the second halves of most of last week’s playoff games (I didn’t get back to… Continue reading This Isn’t Basketball