Category: Links Dump

Q and A – What Happened to the Golf Ball the Astronaut Hit on the Moon? – Question – NYTimes.com "Alan Shepard actually hit two balls on the Apollo 14 mission of 1971, and they are still on the Moon, he said in a 1991 interview on the Academy of Achievement Web site for students."… Continue reading links for 2008-10-14

Swans on Tea » Grad School Camp It’s crazy, but it just might work. (tags: academia silly education blogs) The Reality-Based Community: Palin at the Flyers: What the @#$%& Were They Thinking? Alternate title: "We Booed Santa Claus, and Governor, You’re No Santa Claus." (tags: US politics stupid) Kevin Drum – Mother Jones Blog: Troopergate… Continue reading links for 2008-10-13

nanoscale views: What’s interesting about condensed matter physics "It’s amazing how many complicated phenomena result from just simple quantum mechanics + large numbers of particles, especially when interactions between the particles become important. " (tags: physics science materials blogs) PHD Comics: Undergradese "Translation: ‘Can I do my homework in your office?’" (tags: academia silly education… Continue reading links for 2008-10-12

slacktivist: They need help "The reason I’ve been writing about/obsessing over things like the P&G rumor or the usefulness of Snopes is that I’m trying to figure out how to liberate the captives of unreality. " (tags: politics psychology US society culture education) Images of the 2008 TC3 fireball from space! – The Planetary Society… Continue reading links for 2008-10-11

slacktivist: False Witnesses 2 "Far more interesting than those greedy sleazeballs, though, are the members of the much larger group of gossips who enthusiastically spread [rumors about Satanism at Proctor and Gamble]. This larger group has no financial interest at stake, so what’s in it for them? What motivates someone to accept the invitation to… Continue reading links for 2008-10-10

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008 – Speed Read A two-minute explanation of this year’s prize. (tags: physics particles Nobel news science theory) The Collapse of Peer Review « The Scholarly Kitchen "Is peer review in decline? Glenn Ellison, an economist at MIT, is beginning to question the added value of being published in top… Continue reading links for 2008-10-09

The full story of Earth-impacting asteroid 2008 TC3 – The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society "All in all, I think the episode of 2008 TC3 has proven that the world’s astronomical community, at least, is prepared to respond when an object on a collision course is detected. Within just a few hours of… Continue reading links for 2008-10-08

The politics of girliness – Ultrabrown "Last night, Palin winked at the camera, scrunched up her nose and added a smiley timbre before thrusting any rhetorical daggers. In these moments she resembled an anime character. Kawaii ne!" (tags: US politics stupid gender society blogs) slacktivist: Connections "[W]hen I say that these baseless and illegitimate attacks… Continue reading links for 2008-10-06

…My heart’s in Accra » Cultural appropriation of the kick-ass kind The haka comes to Texas. (tags: rugby football culture society sports) VOTD: I Love Sarah Jane (Zombie Short Film) | /Film "Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way – bullies,… Continue reading links for 2008-10-05

Ideas: Prediction vs Explanation: A Puzzle "We do ten experiments. A scientist observes the results, constructs a theory consistent with them, and uses it to predict the results of the next ten. We do them and the results fit his predictions. A second scientist now constructs a theory consistent with the results of all twenty… Continue reading links for 2008-10-04