SteelyKid is now in day care five days a week. This is good for us, in that it lets Kate and I both go back to work full-time, and good for her, in that she gets to meet new people, and spend the whole day playing with interesting toys. Of course, it has its bad… Continue reading The Joys of Day Care
Author: Chad Orzel
links for 2009-01-22
Legoland California’s depiction of Barack Obama’s inauguration | World news | guardian.co.uk (tags: politics news silly pictures toys) Let My Students Drink: College presidents say it’s time to lower the drinking age – Reason Magazine "Q: Why lower the drinking age? A: Weâve had a law on the books for 24 years now. You donât… Continue reading links for 2009-01-22
Academic Poll: Classroom Atmosphere
I went to a panel discussion yesterday about teaching issues, and was struck by both the strength and the range of opinions regarding classroom atmosphere. Some people are very laissez-faire about what students can do in class, while others have very strict codes of classroom behavior. One colleague even referred to a “code of professional… Continue reading Academic Poll: Classroom Atmosphere
Buddhists Are Citizens Too
Lots of people are giving Obama props for the shout-out to atheists in his inaugural address, but I’m deeply concerned about what he said. Or, rather, what he didn’t say: We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. Where are the Buddhists? He left out a major world religion!… Continue reading Buddhists Are Citizens Too
Point Spreads, Again
I’m listening to “Mike and Mike” on ESPN radio, as I usually do in the morning, and they just spent the better part of five minutes talking about the point spread for the upcoming Super Bowl. The opening betting line has Pittsburgh favored by seven points, but some Las Vegas organization or another told them… Continue reading Point Spreads, Again
links for 2009-01-21
Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 5 (2009): Lauren E. Kost, Steven J. Pollock, and Noah D. Finkelstein – Characterizing the gender gap… "Binned by quintiles, we observe that males and females with similar pretest scores do not have significantly different post-test scores (p>0.2) . The post-test data are then modeled using two regression models… Continue reading links for 2009-01-21
“Let all those who do justice and love mercy, say amen.”
Joseph Lowery wins the Inauguration. Obama’s speech was no slouch, either, but anybody who gets a hundred thousand people to yell “Amen!” wins. I’m wearing a T-shirt today that says “I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.” And I can’t really express how happy I will be… Continue reading “Let all those who do justice and love mercy, say amen.”
links for 2009-01-20
A Sample Book Proposal: Newton and the Counterfeiter | ScienceOnline09 "I donât mean to suggest that this is a generalizable model, just an example of one approach that worked in the marketplace. As noted in the Wiki page for the session â to be moderated by David Munger and myselfâbesides the fact that this proposal… Continue reading links for 2009-01-20
Students Know What Physicists Believe, But They Don’t Agree
This is flagged as a ResearchBlogging post, but it’s a different sort of research than I usually write up here, as this is a paper from Physical Review Special Topics– Physics Education Research. This is, however, a legitimate and growing area of research in physics departments, and some of the findings from the PER field… Continue reading Students Know What Physicists Believe, But They Don’t Agree
Checklist: Check!
SteelyKid was delivered by Caesarean section (MacDuff won’t stand a chance…). They let me in to the operating room just before the moment of delivery, and I stuck around while they cleaned her up and did the early tests that they do on newborns, before they brought her over for me and Kate to see.… Continue reading Checklist: Check!