I’m using Dava Sobel’s Longitude this week in my timekeeping class. The villain of the piece, as it were, is the Reverend Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, who promoted an astronomical method for finding longitude, and played a major role in delaying the payment to John Harrison for his marine chronometers. It’s a good story, with lots… Continue reading Critical Pronunciation Poll
Category: Science
The Arxiv Is Not a Journal
There’s been a lot written recently about academic publishing, in the kerfuffle over the “Research Works Act”– John’s roundup should keep you in reading material for a good while. This has led some people to decide to boycott Elsevier, including Aram Harrow of the Quantum Vatican. I’m generally in favor of this, but Aram says… Continue reading The Arxiv Is Not a Journal
It’s a Real Book!
I was going to write something about the politics of scientific publishing, but instead, I want to focus on what’s really important in modern publishing: That’s right, I got a couple of early copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in the mail this morning. It’s a real book, with pages and everything…… Continue reading It’s a Real Book!
A Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
The toy model of statistical entropy that I talked about the other day is the sort of thing that, were I a good computational physicist, I would’ve banged out very quickly. I’m not a good computational physicist, but by cargo-culting my way through some of the VPython examples, I managed to get something that mostly… Continue reading A Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
Notes Toward a Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
I’m fairly certain somebody has already done this, because it’s such an obvious idea. It’s a little beyond my cargo-cult VPython skills right at the moment, though (I can probably learn to do it, but not right now), and I none of the applets I Googled up seemed to be doing this, so I’m posting… Continue reading Notes Toward a Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
Difficult Problems in Automotive Thermodynamics
While clearing the cars of frost Thursday morning, I was reminded of a difference of opinion Kate and I have about the best approach to a cold car. I tend to start the car up, and immediately turn the defrost on full blast; she prefers to let the car warm up for a while first,… Continue reading Difficult Problems in Automotive Thermodynamics
How to Present Scientific Data
In the same basic vein as last week’s How to Read a Scientific Paper, here’s a kind of online draft of the class I’m going to give Friday on the appropriate ways to present scientific data. “Present” here meaning the more general “display in some form, be it a talk, a poster, a paper, or… Continue reading How to Present Scientific Data
Machine Translation Lets Me Down
It’s a sign of how good computers have gotten that I’m faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It’s only when the vanity search… Continue reading Machine Translation Lets Me Down
Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 02
I reported on the start of this class last week, and sinc ethen, we’ve had three more class meetings. Since this whole thing is an experiment, I’ll keep reporting on it from time to time (heh). First, though, a quick answer to a request from comments: I’d like to hear more about your class on… Continue reading Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 02
Concussions, Back Problems, and Odd Statistics
Jonah Lehrer has a big article at Grantland on concussions in high school football that paints a fairly bleak picture: The sickness will be rooted in football’s tragic flaw, which is that it inflicts concussions on its players with devastating frequency. Although estimates vary, several studies suggest that up to 15 percent of football players… Continue reading Concussions, Back Problems, and Odd Statistics