We had a couple of weeks of unplanned hiatus due to sick kids and day care closures, so the superstitious among you might’ve thought we would never get to the 13th episode of Encertain Dots. Rhett and I are scientists, though, so we powered through: Given the time of year, this is mostly about end-of-academic-year… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Lucky Number 13
Category: Blogs
Uncertain Dots, Episode 12
The last couple of days have been ridiculously hectic, but Rhett and I did manage to record another episode of Uncertain Dots, our twelfth: This time out, we talk about labs, undergrad research, kids doing chores, weather, student course evaluations, and I didn’t really rant about superheroes. Relevant to the weather thing, I offer the… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 12
Music Writing and Science Writing
No, this isn’t another blog post lamenting the fact that music writing gets far more attention than science writing. If anything, it’s a bit of an argument that science writing ought to be less like popular music writing. On Twitter this past weekend Jim Henley, one of the few bloggers I consider “old school” (the… Continue reading Music Writing and Science Writing
Uncertain Dots, Episode 11
We took a week off last week because Rhett was away on a Secret Mission, but we’re back and better than ever this week. More uncertain! More dotty! Or something! Topics for this week include oblique references to Rhett’s mission, some discussion of the Geocentric Janeway debacle, good and bad places to have a conference,… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 11
On Exclusivity
Yesterday’s frat boy post prompted some interesting discussion, one piece of which is a response from Matt “Dean Dad” Reed (also at Inside Higher Ed), who overlapped with me at Williams for a year, but had a very different reaction to the social scene there. His take mirrors mine from the other side, though, which… Continue reading On Exclusivity
Uncertain Dots, Episode A
In which we hit double digits, in base ten, anyway. This was mostly about teaching stuff, because I’m between terms, in that weird reflect-on-the-last term/ prep-for-the-next-term space. With a digression about training wheels, which are good as an analogy, but less good for actually learning to ride a bike…
Uncertain Dots, Episode 9
In which Rhett and I chat about the hot new discovery of primordial gravitational waves (maybe) very briefly before segueing into talking about LIGO, and Cosmos, and why “theory” is a terrible word, and the memorization of constants, and standardized tests, and time-lapse videos. You know, as one does. Miscellaneous items: — I’m a little… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 9
The Real Pi Day(s)
Today is March 14th, 3/14 in the normal American way of writing dates, so you’ll find a lot of silliness on the web today talking about “π Day” due to the coincidental similarity with the first three digits of π (see, for example, Rhett’s annual post). But, of course, this is an archaic and local… Continue reading The Real Pi Day(s)
Communication as Art and Science
I alluded to this on Twitter, and meant to leave that be, but the other thing I was going to blog today didn’t come together, and I probably shouldn’t leave a cryptic tweet as my only comment. So… One of the links getting passed around a lot in my social-media circles is this Tumblr post… Continue reading Communication as Art and Science
Uncertain Dots, Episode 8
In which Rhett and I talk about Cosmos. What, you thought there would be another topic? We have contractual obligations, you know… Okay, there were some other topics like Battlestar Galactica (both versions), why so much of what’s on Discovery Channel and TLC sucks these days, the flawed astrophysics of Firefly, speculation about how those… Continue reading Uncertain Dots, Episode 8