On Denialism and the role of science in America. (1) – By Chris Mooney and Michael Specter – Slate Magazine A fourpart discussion on science, the media, and American society, featuring the authors of _The Republican War on Science_ and _Denialism_. (tags: science politics media journalism society culture medicine) The Peril of Palatability – Reason… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-08
Great Moments in Targeted Advertising
We subscribe to Locus, the SF review and news magazine, and every month when it arrives, I flip through it quickly to look at the ads. This is a useful guide to what’s coming out from various publishers, but it’s also kind of fascinating to see how the different publishers market their stuff. In particular,… Continue reading Great Moments in Targeted Advertising
Links for 2009-11-07
WIPP Exhibit: Message to 12,000 A.D. “This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. This place is a message and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-07
Poll: A Question of Character
“It’s a question of character, of friendship. Hell, Leo, I ain’t afraid to say it, it’s a question of ethics.” –Giovanni Gaspari I’m back to lunchtime hoops after a two-week layoff due to teaching responsibilities. And this has reminded me of one of the great character tests that sports provide. Imagine that you’re playing basketball,… Continue reading Poll: A Question of Character
Poll: The Computers of the Future
Today’s Quantum Optics lecture is about quantum computing experiments, and how different types of systems stack up. Quantum computing, as you probably know if you’re reading this blog, is based on building a computer whose “bits” can not only take on “0” and “1” states, but arbitrary superpositions of “0” and “1”. Such a computer… Continue reading Poll: The Computers of the Future
Links for 2009-11-06
Philip K. Dick | Books | The A.V. Club “Why it’s daunting: Science fiction and fantasy get a lot of mileage out of taking their readers to new worlds, but most classic genre fiction is really about making new worlds seem like home. The Lord Of The Rings would lose a lot of its appeal… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-06
Thursday Baby Blogging 110509
For this week’s Baby Blogging, we have a shot of Kate helping SteelyKid with her new favorite game: It’s called “Take off my shoes, and put them back on.” She can play this for hours. It would be even cuter if she could do the putting on and taking off herself, but alas, she’s still… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 110509
Sports Poll: Yankees Win
I have a lab all morning, so I won’t get to more substantive blogging before this afternoon. The Yankees won their 27th World Series title last night, though, and given their status as the most polarizing team in baseball, this seems like a good excuse for a poll: What do you think about the Yankees… Continue reading Sports Poll: Yankees Win
Beyond Rocket Science
It’s not getting as much press as the “X Prize” for private rocket launches, but NASA has quietly been running a contest for work toward a “space elevator,” offering up to $2 million for a scheme to transmit power to a small robot climbing a 1km cable. Yesterday, the team from LaserMotive, including certified rocket… Continue reading Beyond Rocket Science
Links for 2009-11-05
TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine | My philosophy: Alan Sokal “Physicists, when they do philosophy, often do it badly. They’re often confused about the conceptual foundations of their own physics, because sometimes you can compute and get the right results even if you don’t understand conceptually very well what you’re doing. That’s a criticism that not… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-05