Over the weekend on FriendFeed, Paul Buchheit posed an interesting question: Assume that I’m going to get rid of $20,000 and my only concern is the “common good”. Which of these is the best use of the money: give it to the Gates foundation, buy a hybrid car, invest it in a promising startup, invest… Continue reading Actions Are Less Fun Than Words
Category: Blogs
How Much Information Is Too Much Information?
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, we instituted a complicated emergency alert system, involving sirens, loudspeakers, text messages, and emails. The whole thing gets tested far more frequently than it really needs to– every few weeks, we get a barrage of emails warning us that a test is coming up, then another barrage… Continue reading How Much Information Is Too Much Information?
Now Intersecting Elsewhere
Chris and Sheril announced today that The Intersection has gone over to the Dark Side moved to Discover‘s growing collection of high-quality science blogs. They’re now available at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection. This is not entirely unexpected, but I wish them well in their spiffy new digs. They’re the second blog to move from ScienceBlogs to Discover (after… Continue reading Now Intersecting Elsewhere
Talk Like a Physicist
One of last year’s highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say “weirdly” because it wasn’t much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea. It’s that time of year again, and Tom’s back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don’t have much to add, but… Continue reading Talk Like a Physicist
Supporting Conversations About Race
The Flamewar That Ate LiveJournal continues its livejournophagy (I’ve only caught the edges of it, and that alone is a carnival of suck– if you want to know more, Jo Walton’s recent post gets the feel, and contains links to more). In one of several efforts to bring something positive out of this, Kate has… Continue reading Supporting Conversations About Race
The Open Laboratory 2008
The much-promoted science blogging anthology is now complete, and available in paper or electronic format from Lulu. If you’re dying to have dead-tree copies of the best science blog posts of last year, here’s your chance.
Wire Like a Physicist
One of last year’s physics majors is spending the year in rural Uganda working at a clinic/ school there. He’s keeping a blog, which is intermittently updated by western standards, but remarkably up-to-date given where he is. This week, he blogged about putting his physics education to use: I have been doing a lot of… Continue reading Wire Like a Physicist
What Do You Do Well?
ScienceWoman offers a good discussion question: You are in a room with a bunch of other female faculty/post-docs/grad students from your university. You know a few of them, but most of them are unfamiliar to you. The convener of the meeting asks each of you to introduce yourself by answering the following question: “What is… Continue reading What Do You Do Well?
Good Writing Needs Editing
Inspired by Leigh Butler at tor.com, I’ve been re-reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books. This happened to coincide with my recent vicious cold, which is good, because they’re great sickbed reading. Most of my re-reading has been done on my Palm, which miraculously came loaded with electronic copies of all the books. These are… Continue reading Good Writing Needs Editing
Asteroids Killed Newspapers, GIF at 11
This week’s Science Saturday on bloggingheads.tv features Carl Zimmer and Phil “Bad Astronomy” Plait: It’s a wide-ranging conversation, covering topics in astronomy, why people believe crazy things, how the Internet can help, and the death of newspapers and their eventual replacement by blogs. Plait is really energetic (he spends a couple of minutes talking over… Continue reading Asteroids Killed Newspapers, GIF at 11