… to write a guest post at the Science and Entertainment Exchange blog. So I did, on science communication: I was asked to write a guest-blog post about “increased incentives for scientists to develop their communications skills.” I’m happy to oblige, but in typical ornery-blogger fashion, the first thing I want to do is take… Continue reading The National Academy of Sciences Wants Me
Category: Science
Why Are You Publishing a Comment, Anyway?
I tagged Steinn’s post on publishing a comment a few days ago, because I thought it was pretty funny. In the interim, it’s been picked up by the usual suspects as more evidence of the need to completely discard the current publishing model in favor of something more blog-like. None of the subsequent discussion has… Continue reading Why Are You Publishing a Comment, Anyway?
The Importance of Distraction
Kate recently signed up for Facebook, and I was talking to her earlier about some of the options for wasting tons of time entertaining yourself with Facebook, and mentioned the ever-popular trivia quizzes and “personality tests” and the like. Of course, I had to caution her that most of the quizzes are really lame, because… Continue reading The Importance of Distraction
Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
One of the blogs I hyped at the science blogging panel at Worldcon was Built on Facts, Matt Springer’s blog explaining introductory physics concepts. You might not think that you want to read a blog that goes through freshman physics problems in detail– I would’ve been dubious on the concept, had you explained it to… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Maxwell’s Equations
CSI: Ambiguous Sentences
The New York Times yesterday had a story with the dramatic headline DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show, explaining that, well, there are nefarious tricks you can pull to falsify DNA evidence, provided you have access to a high-quality biochemical laboratory. The story is a great boon to conspiracy theorists everywhere, especially with this… Continue reading CSI: Ambiguous Sentences
Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
The results of the estimation contest are in. There were 164 serious entries (I excluded the $12,000 and $1,000,000 “guesses” from the final data). The mean value guessed by commenters was $83.30, and the median was not far off, at $77.12. The standard deviation was high– $43.10– but as you would expect with a large… Continue reading Change Estimation and the Wisdom of Crowds
What You Might Not Know About (Biomedical) Journals
Via I-no-longer-remember-who (the tab’s been open for several days), there’s a list of What You Might Not Know About Scientific Journals, outlining some of the facts about scientific publication. There’s some good stuff, but as you can tell from my title, a lot of it is fairly specific to biomedical journals, and doesn’t really apply… Continue reading What You Might Not Know About (Biomedical) Journals
Estimation Contest: Guess the Total, Win a Book
This wooden box sits on top of my dresser, and every afternoon when I come home, I dump the change from my pockets into it. It’s getting close to full, as you can see: I’ve got a couple of extra galley proofs kicking around, so here’s a contest: Guess the total dollar value of the… Continue reading Estimation Contest: Guess the Total, Win a Book
Dorky Poll: Thermodynamics
I have a thousand things to do today, and blogging isn’t high on the list. So here’s a dorky poll to pass the time, because it’s been a while: What’s your favorite Law of Thermodynamics?(polls) We’re working in the classical limit, here, so you’re not allowed to choose a linear superposition of all four laws.… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Thermodynamics
Physics for Dragons
One of our poetry contest winners has been reading his proof copy of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and posted some comments. Actually, it was posted last week, but I was at Worldcon, and not dealing with much of anything else. The comments are pretty positive, but he asks a couple of questions… Continue reading Physics for Dragons