Category: Links Dump

Science teacher: Why kids love science anyway… We grow beans and basil in class, edible stuff from the breath they exhale–at first they resist the idea, as any reasonable creature would, and I don’t give them any particular reason to believe it, but some do anyway. Kids like this. Many of the hypotheses generated in… Continue reading Links for 2012-04-03

MacRecipes | Fathom Have you ever wondered in how many different episodes MacGyver has made an arc welder (answer: 3 times in episodes 6, 52, and 87)? Or perhaps you forgot about your favorite episode (season 1, episode 12) when Mac escapes via a casket that transforms into a jetski. And how many times has… Continue reading Links for 2012-04-02

Physics – Cultivating Extra Dimensions The search for ways to unify and understand physical phenomena goes back to Kaluza and Klein, who in the 1920s tried to combine electromagnetism with gravity by adding a fourth spatial dimension to the usual three (plus time). More recent theoretical work has suggested that a theory of everything may… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-31

The Virtuosi: Money for (almost) Nothing I am not typically interested in lotteries. They seem silly and I am seriously beginning to question their usefulness in bringing about a good harvest. But this morning I read in the news that the Mega Millions lottery currently has a world record jackpot up for grabs. In fact,… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-29

The Religious Frenzy of a Court You Can’t Believe In – Esquire There are better places on the Intertoobz than this one to look either for a general overview of what may happen in the Court over the next three days — Ezra Klein’s joint did a masterful job this morning — and, if you’re… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-28

No More Mister Nice Blog The paranoia of George Zimmerman had a large, race-specific fear component, but I’d say it also had elements of pleasure. I see this in what gun fans say all the time — they like thinking of themselves as besieged, and as people who have the means to defend themselves if… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-27

Tutorial and Critique Services — Debra Doyle, Ph.D. Now-a-days, lots of folks are self-publishing. I’m doing it myself. If you’re planning to self-publish, and if you haven’t yet heard the advice that since you’re now a publisher you need to hire an editor, well, you will. Other folks want to learn to write. A one-on-one… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-26

Not To Us, And To Us | Storied Theology “Not to us” is an important step in biblical interpretation. We need to have ears to hear how a story would have resonated with Babylonian exiles; we need ears to hear how “Jesus is Lord” might have resonated, or caused dissonance, for a first century Roman.… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-23

CourtVision by Kirk Goldsberry Some shots are easier than other shots; that’s a basic tenet of basketball. Many factors influence the probability of a field goal attempt resulting in a made basket, but one factor in particular has been mostly overlooked in basketball analysis: location. The most common shooting metric in the NBA is field… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-22

Drug smuggler? Victim of scholar envy? UNC prof in Argentine jail – Crime/Safety – NewsObserver.com A 68-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill physics professor with three degrees from Oxford University is being held in an Argentine prison on charges of trying to smuggle two kilograms of cocaine. Paul H. Frampton, who holds the title Louis D. Rubin Jr.… Continue reading Links for 2012-03-21