The Empress of Eastern New York is dissatisfied: Why? Because at this point, my DonorsChoose Challenge entry has only raised $475 from 7 donors. A bunch of theorists are cleaning our clocks. This makes SteelyKid grumpy. And we don’t want a grumpy baby. To put things into perspective, this blog gets about 2,000 hits per… Continue reading The Empress Is Not Pleased
Author: Chad Orzel
Job Search Criteria: Fit Matters
Over at Terra Sigillata, Abel has a post on the limiting of job searches that is an excellent example of the problems with the academic mind-set: The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying themselves from even applying for certain positions because: 1. they don’t feel they meet the job description in… Continue reading Job Search Criteria: Fit Matters
Medicine Nobel for TLA’s
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was split three ways, with half going to Harald zur Hausen for the discovery that Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer. The other half is split between Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV, and won’t this make the denialists’… Continue reading Medicine Nobel for TLA’s
links for 2008-10-06
The politics of girliness – Ultrabrown "Last night, Palin winked at the camera, scrunched up her nose and added a smiley timbre before thrusting any rhetorical daggers. In these moments she resembled an anime character. Kawaii ne!" (tags: US politics stupid gender society blogs) slacktivist: Connections "[W]hen I say that these baseless and illegitimate attacks… Continue reading links for 2008-10-06
All the Giants-Seahawks Commentary You Need
Steelykid says “Touchdown!” (as does her shirt): And then goes to sleep.
Everything and More by David Foster Wallace
The best way– really, the only way– to sum up David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Brief History of ∞ is by quoting a bit from it. This comes from the middle part of the book, after a discussion of Fourier series, in one of the “If You’re Interested” digressions from the main discussion:… Continue reading Everything and More by David Foster Wallace
Longitude by Dava Sobel
Jennifer Ouellette’s pop-science book project post and the discussionaround it reminded me that I’m really shockingly ill-read in this area. If I’m going to be writing pop-science books, I ought to have read more of them, so I’ve been trying to correct that. Hence, Longitude, which I actually read a few weeks ago at the… Continue reading Longitude by Dava Sobel
links for 2008-10-05
…My heart’s in Accra » Cultural appropriation of the kick-ass kind The haka comes to Texas. (tags: rugby football culture society sports) VOTD: I Love Sarah Jane (Zombie Short Film) | /Film "Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way – bullies,… Continue reading links for 2008-10-05
The Metastable Xenon Project
Over the past several weeks, I’ve written up ResearchBlogging posts on each of the papers I helped write in graduate school. Each paper write-up was accompanied by a “Making of” article, giving a bit more detail about how the experiments came to be, what my role in them was, and whatever funny anecdotes I can… Continue reading The Metastable Xenon Project
links for 2008-10-04
Ideas: Prediction vs Explanation: A Puzzle "We do ten experiments. A scientist observes the results, constructs a theory consistent with them, and uses it to predict the results of the next ten. We do them and the results fit his predictions. A second scientist now constructs a theory consistent with the results of all twenty… Continue reading links for 2008-10-04