The Frakes Story

Back in the 25 things post, I alluded to a long-ago encounter with Jonathan Frakes in Williamstown. This has led to a number of requests for the full story, which I will put below the fold, for those who care:

Information Insecurity

I only started using FriendFeed a few months ago because other people at the Science in the 21st Century workshop were documenting the conference on it. I quickly became a fan of the service, which not only added an extra dimension to the meeting, but has also been a continuing source of interesting material from… Continue reading Information Insecurity

The Purpling of Blogdom

Williams has long held a dominant position in a number of categories of blogging: Dan Drezner on economics and politics, Marc Lynch on the Middle East, Ethan Zuckerman on the developing world and really cool conferences, Derek Catsam on history and Red Sox fandom, yours truly on canine physics. And I’m sure I’m forgetting several… Continue reading The Purpling of Blogdom

Half a Year!

SteelyKid is six months old today! To celebrate, here’s some video of her bouncing around in her jumper: (That’s spliced together from a bunch of shorter clips. You can here me babbling inanely in the background, because my brain turns to cheese whenever I’m within about five feet of her. I was tempted to mute… Continue reading Half a Year!

Twenty-Five Things

Since everybody I know on Facebook seems to have done this, it seems I’m obliged to post a list of twenty-five random facts. I wouldn’t want to have my Internet License revoked, or anything.

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Categorized as Personal

links for 2009-02-07

The Crowd-Sourced Reading List | The Loom | Discover Magazine "Last week I blegged for examples of great science writing from over the years, and you did not disappoint. Rania Masri, who teaches writing to scientists in Lebanon, asked if I could share the list. It’s the least I can do in exchange for everyone’s… Continue reading links for 2009-02-07

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Categorized as Links Dump

Two Cultures in Beginnings and Endings

Not long after I posted my comments about textbook prices, I went to a panel discussion on teaching, where a social scientist made an interesting observation about the ways different disciplines interact with books. In the humanities, the whole point of the class is to discuss the books. Nothing useful can be done until and… Continue reading Two Cultures in Beginnings and Endings

Science and Sociology of Dark Matter

There’s a new paper from the PAMELA dark matter search out that’s written up in Physics, including a link to a free version of the PDF. This paper is considerably less dramatic than one that appeared last year, leading Physics World to suggest that they’re backing off the earlier claim. What’s the deal? Sean Carroll… Continue reading Science and Sociology of Dark Matter

links for 2009-02-06

Textbooks have jumped the shark | Dot Physics "I have been afraid to really speak my mind on this issue because I don’t want to completely enrage the textbook publishers. They do send me free books sometimes. Oh well, first what is the chance they will read this? Second, I already have tons of books… Continue reading links for 2009-02-06

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Categorized as Links Dump