Category: Links Dump

What’s up in the solar system in April 2012 – The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society Lest you get too depressed about the mothballing of the Space Shuttles, a roundup of all the cool space probes out there producing real science. Yes, I Took My Ninth Grader on a College Tour (and It […]

A few thoughts on Hilary Rosen, moms and work But instead of engaging Rosen’s points, the media storm is about how Democrats Hate Mothers. Or, Democrats Hate GOOD Mothers — you know, the kind who stay at home. The women the Democrats like are those slutty Planned Parenthood sluts, or something. And while all the […]

Sparks Fly Over Shoestring Test Of ‘Holographic Principle’ ” “The beauty of it is that we have the people who can come up with this low-risk, high-reward experiment,” says Fermilab’s Raymond Tomlin. “It’s one shot, and if you discover something you go to Stockholm [to collect a Nobel Prize]. And if you don’t see anything, […]

Microsoft Word is cumbersome, inefficient, and obsolete. It’s time for it to die. – Slate Magazine Nowadays, I get the same feeling of dread when I open an email to see a Microsoft Word document attached. Time and effort are about to be wasted cleaning up someone’s archaic habits. A Word file is the story-fax […]

What Is Science? From Feynman to Sagan to Curie, an Omnibus of Definitions | Brain Pickings So, what exactly is science, what does it aspire to do, and why should we the people care? It seems like a simple question, but it’s an infinitely complex one, the answer to which is ever elusive and contentious. […]

Denim and Tweed: Asking permission Last May, the Republican-controlled state legislature voted to amend the Minnesota Constitution, adding a thirteenth section to the “Miscellaneous Items” of the Constitution’s Article XIII to declare, “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.” The Democratic governor’s veto […]

Gymkata proves that tiny gymnasts make tough heroes | Film | Films That Time Forgot | The A.V. Club Plot: At the height of the Reagan era, someone had the bright idea to turn diminutive, soft-voiced, mulleted gymnast Kurt Thomas into an international action star. How? By positing him as a master of “gymkata,” a […]

The murky water of chastising and celebrating NFL violence – Grantland Of course, it’s 2012 — the Year of Internet Self-Righteousness — which means we need to feign disgust, pile on the Saints, argue for Williams to receive the NFL’s death penalty and basically freak out that a football coach would ever do that. So […]

Texts from Hillary “So then I sent her a text saying I think I left my favorite sunglasses in the desk.” Swans on Tea » Do You Have My Back? So this whole “get back to doing science” kind of hits me where I live. I’ve seen budgetary fallout from recent events, and I know […]

The Gravitational Force in Angry Birds Space | Wired Science | Wired.com As anyone that has played the game can tell you, this air looking stuff surrounding an asteroid defines a region in which the angry birds will interact with the rock. If the bird is outside of this region, there will be no force […]