Category: Links Dump

…My heart’s in Accra » The Partisan Internet and the Wider World “I think the comparison between ideological isolation in media and in face to face encounters is more like comparing apples and hedgehogs. They’re thoroughly different types of interactions and we should have very different expectations for diversity and ideological isolation in each set.… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-25

Sunday Function : Built on Facts How hash functions can keep you safe if you find yourself part of the French underground fighting the Nazis. (tags: math science blogs built-on-facts) “Heretical” Copernicus Reburied as a Hero – CBS News “”There is no indication that Copernicus was worried about being declared a heretic and being kicked… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-24

Every Hug, Every Fuss – Scientists Record Families’ Daily Lives – NYTimes.com “[T]he U.C.L.A. project was an attempt to capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. The investigators have just finished working through the 1,540 hours of videotape, coding and categorizing every hug, every tantrum, every soul-draining search for a… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-23

News: Questioning Endowment Losses – Inside Higher Ed “High-risk, high-reward policies heavily influenced by Wall Street helped some college endowments grow to several times their original sizes, but they also did damage to employees, local communities and the global financial system, a new assessment of investment practices at Harvard University and five other New England… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-22

PHD Comics: Grading Rubric Sounds about right. Maybe a little too generous on the lower row. (tags: comics piled-higher academia education silly) Producing novel semiconductors en masse – physicsworld.com “John Rogers, working with colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a related company, offer a production method by adapting a transfer-printing technique that… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-21

The Virtuosi: Cell Phone Brain Damage: Part Deux “I thought I’d take another look at cell phone damage, coming at it from a different direction than my colleague. Mostly I just want to consider the energy of the radiation that cell phones produce, and compare that with the other relevant energy scales for molecules.” (tags:… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-20

Why just earn a degree when you can leave behind a legend? – CharlotteObserver.com “If you’ve spent significant time on the Davidson College campus the past four years, chances are you’ve at least heard of “the Name Tag Guy.” Or, less likely, Stephen Pierce. They are one. Both were among 427 seniors who graduated during… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-19

DLMF: NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions An Abromowitz and Stegun for the Internet age. (tags: math science software physics books internet) Blog U.: Is TED Making Us Stupid? – Technology and Learning – Inside Higher Ed “Pre-TED, I used to be able to sit through a boring lecture or presentation — diligently taking notes… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-18

Art – Lapham’s Quarterly It takes seven steps to get from Kevin Bacon to Mark Twain (tags: books literature history art music pictures movies culture silly) Shocking: Michael Faraday does biology! (1839) « Skulls in the Stars “These experiments are fascinating and paint an amusing picture: Faraday and up to three assistants sticking their hands… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-17

james_nicoll: Please plug the holes in my ignorance “China has its Four Great Classical Novels: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber. My impression, gained from minutes and minutes of research, is these are influential and the sort of thing any given Chinese person would… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-16