Category: Links Dump

Pimp My Novel: Two Households, Both Alike in Dignity “The sample sizes aren’t quite identical yet, folks (232 votes this round compared to 342 last round), but currently 54% of those of you who responded own an e-reader, as opposed to only 42% in June 2010. Granted, this is an entirely unscientific survey, but it… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-13

Cocktail Party Physics: i think that i shall never see / a carbon offset as lovely as a tree “I heard a NASCAR broadcaster make the following claim: “NASCAR offsets 100% of the carbon emissions from this race via their tree-planting program.”  Anytime someone says “100%” or “always” or “without exception”, my ears perk up.… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-11

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion Of Your Thesis Defense. “Q: What does it mean if I get a small snake that is also very strong? A: Snake-picking is not an exact science. The size of the snake is the main factor. The snake may be very strong, or it may be very… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-10

Graphic Stories for your Hugo 2011 Nomination Consideration | Tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts “As I noted the last time around, there seems to be a trend for Hugo nominators to stay comfortably inside their reading boxes–comics by folks already famous in other corners of SFF, like Neil Gaiman or Paul… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-09

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com) “A medium has a niche. A sitcom works better on TV than in a newspaper, but a 10,000 word investigative piece about a civic issue works better in a newspaper. When it arrived the web seemed to fill all of those niches at once. The web was… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-08

The decline of the serial killer. – By Christopher Beam – Slate Magazine Serial killers just aren’t the sensation they used to be. They haven’t disappeared, of course. Last month, Suffolk County, N.Y., police found the bodies of four women dumped near a beach in Long Island. Philadelphia police have attributed the murders of three… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-06

To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor – NYTimes.com “Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country.  Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians.  Poverty has fallen during that time… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-05

nsf.gov – SRS The End of Mandatory Retirement for Doctoral Scientists and Engineers in Postsecondary Institutions: Retirement Patterns 10 Years Later – US National Science Foundation (NSF) “Mandatory retirement in postsecondary educational institutions ended in 1994. In this paper, examination of retirements in 1993 (just before the end of this practice) and again 10 years… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-04

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems “I know what you’re thinking : crystallographic and thermodynamic data of ternary alloy systems is a such a hackneyed plot device. But Landolt-Börnstein work their magic in such a subtle and layered way that at 3am when you are reading just one more page, you suddenly… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-03

What’s stats got to do with it? – Expression Patterns Blog | Nature Publishing Group “I recently learned that I have an above average number of legs. This is no cause for concern: most of you do, too. It was something I first learned when watching Hans Rosling’s The Joy of Stats BBC documentary. He… Continue reading Links for 2011-01-02