Here’s an extremely dorky Dorky Poll topic. I can’t believe I haven’t used this one before: What sort of particles do you prefer?(poll) Choose only one.
Category: Science
Communicating Science in the 21st Century
My panel on “Communicating Science in the 21st Century” was last night at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival at the Perimeter Institute. I haven’t watched the video yet– Canadian telecommunications technology hates me, and I’m lucky to get a wireless connection to stay up for more than ten minutes– but if the video feeds I’ve… Continue reading Communicating Science in the 21st Century
Taking Off for the Great White North
I’m heading to the airport right after my second class today (I’m doing two weeks of our first-year seminar class), to appear at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo. This promises to be a good event– I had a great time at the Science in the 21st Century workshop last… Continue reading Taking Off for the Great White North
CANNONBALLLLLLL!!!!!!
You sometimes hear people say that it’s good to make a splash when embarking on a new media project. David Sloan Wilson has apparently taken this to heart, and tucks himself into a tight ball as he leaps off the high board into the ScienceBlogs pool: Thinking of science as a religion that worships truth… Continue reading CANNONBALLLLLLL!!!!!!
Academic Poll: How Much Should Students Write?
I’ve been buried in lab grading for a lot of this week, but I’m finally down to the last few stragglers. The experience has me thinking a bit about what we’re doing here, and talking to people in other departments, and it seems like a good question for my wise and worldly readers. At the… Continue reading Academic Poll: How Much Should Students Write?
Can Kids These Days Write?
Via Michael Nielsen on Twitter, a Wired article and a research group website for the Stanford Study of Writing. As the Wired piece reports, the group has done a large study of student writing, and finds that modern college students write more and are better writers than students in the past. This is a little… Continue reading Can Kids These Days Write?
With Polymaths Like These…
It’s hard to say exactly why I found Edward Carr’s article on polymaths so irritating, but I suspect it was this bit: The monomaths do not only swarm over a specialism, they also play dirty. In each new area that Posner picks–policy or science–the experts start to erect barricades. “Even in relatively soft fields, specialists… Continue reading With Polymaths Like These…
A Brief History of Timekeeping
I gave a guest lecture this morning in a colleague’s sophomore seminar class about time. She’s having them look at time from a variety of perspectives, and they just finished reading Longitude, so she asked me to talk about the physics of clocks and the measurement of time. I’ve long considered using “A Brief History… Continue reading A Brief History of Timekeeping
Room Temperature Kook Signifiers
I was surprised to see Tom linking to a site claiming a superconductor at 254K. Not because the figure isn’t newsworthy, but because somebody sent me this about a week ago, and I decided not to link to it. It’s absolutely dripping with kook signifiers. The two biggest things tripping my kook alarm are: 1)… Continue reading Room Temperature Kook Signifiers
My Doomsday Weapon
In the time that I’ve been at Union, I have suffered a number of lab disasters. I’ve had lasers killed in freak power outages. I’ve had lasers die because of odd electrical issues. My lab has flooded not once, not twice, but three different times. I’ve had equipment damaged by idiot contractors, and I’ve had… Continue reading My Doomsday Weapon