Category: Links Dump

Counting Crows’ Recovering The Satellites | Music | We’re No. 1 | The A.V. Club “Recovering The Satellites is easily my favorite Counting Crows album, precisely because it’s the record where Duritz went from wanting to be a big star (or so he sang in “Mr. Jones”) to equating his celebrity with slow-motion drowning. This… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-13

RESEARCH | MATTHEW B. THOMPSON Like many interesting scientific discoveries, this one was an accident. Sean Murphy, an undergraduate student, was working alone in the lab on a set of faces for one of his experiments. He aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds,… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-12

Thoughts on Cheating « Cooperative Catalyst “Don’t tell teachers, “whatever it takes,” and then act surprised when they follow that advice to its logical extreme.  Don’t tell the principal, “you’ll lose your job and we’ll shut down the school if it doesn’t make AYP,” and then act surprised when the leadership finds ways to cheat.… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-11

Lisa Bloom: How to Talk to Little Girls “”Maya,” I said, crouching down at her level, looking into her eyes, “very nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too,” she said, in that trained, polite, talking-to-adults good girl voice. “Hey, what are you reading?” I asked, a twinkle in my eyes. I love books.… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-10

Ironic Effects of Anti-Prejudice Messages The authors conducted two experiments which looked at the effect of two different types of motivational intervention – a controlled form (telling people what they should do) and a more personal form (explaining why being non-prejudiced is enjoyable and personally valuable).In experiment one; participants were randomly assigned one of two… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-09

Evil and Riddles: The Grey King | Tor.com I don’t need to re-read this, really I don’t. And yet… (tags: books sf review blogs tor nostalgia literature) Cheryl’s Mewsings » Blog Archive » Anthologies: Some Data “On Saturday I mentioned that I had been sent some data about gender splits in anthologies. I have since… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-08

The Slacktiverse: DragonRaid: moral teaching through roleplaying games? “In the mid-90’s a friend and I became fascinated by the “Christian adventure game” (similar to a roleplaying game) called DragonRaid, published by Adventures in Christ. (Details can be found at the DragonRaid website.) We never managed to actually play it, largely because we were living in… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-07

As Shuttle Program Ends, Dreams of Space Linger – NYTimes.com Most of the scientists I know would be thrilled to see humans exploring space, landing on Mars, for example — they just don’t think that science should pick up the check. Many of them were suspicious of the shuttle, both because of the cost drain… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-06

Performance and Recording: “Everyone sing the chorus–including intellectuals!” — Crooked Timber “I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy and Elijah Wald’s How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music […] Ong’s book is a classic. Out of date in some… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-05

The Virtuosi: Coriolis Effect on a Home Run “I like baseball.  Well, technically, I like laying on the couch for three hours half-awake eating potato chips and mumbling obscenities at the television.  But let’s not split hairs here. Anyway, out of curiosity and in partial atonement for the sins of my past [1] I would… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-04