Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along: 1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations: # Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. # Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date… Continue reading Prizes for Science and Journalism
links for 2009-06-17
World Science Festivities | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine "Iâm back from the World Science Festival, which was a rousing success, leaving thousands of smiling attendees chattering excitedly about the mysteries of the universe as they dispersed through the streets of Manhattan. So naturally I want to talk about how it could be improved. Writing… Continue reading links for 2009-06-17
Comment on Commenting
The recurrent timeout problem in the comments has been dragging on and on, but I’m not sure how much of a problem it is for you, the end user, as opposed to me, the guy who has to endure six timeouts while clearing out Turkish dating service spam. Of course, I can’t very well ask… Continue reading Comment on Commenting
Academic Novels and a Comment Experiment
Female Science Professor is revisiting an old topic, namely, the academic novel: I was thinking about the general topic of academic novels because I was looking for some books to read and was looking through the lists in the links above. And then I wondered: Why do I want to read an academic novel during… Continue reading Academic Novels and a Comment Experiment
links for 2009-06-16
The dark side of animation "To test their hypothesis, the team recorded two versions of a PowerPoint lecture. The presentations differed only in the presence of animation to incrementally present information. They then showed students either the animated or non-animated lecture and then tested the students recall and comprehension of the lecture. The team found… Continue reading links for 2009-06-16
Finding Rainbows
Google the title phrase, and you’ll find a bunch of New Age twaddle. This is a physics blog, though, so here’s a reliable scientific method for finding the location of a rainbow, such as this one seen over Chateau Steelypips after the thunderstorms that went through earlier this evening (it was much brighter half a… Continue reading Finding Rainbows
Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance
The main speaker at yesterday’s Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama’s economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the… Continue reading Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance
Dinner with Martin Perl
Martin Perl, a 1995 Nobel laureate in Physics for the discovery of the tau lepton, was awarded an honorary degree yesterday at commencement. Perl actually has a significant Union connection– he started his career as a chemical engineer, and was working for GE making vacuum tubes when they sent him to take classes in calculus… Continue reading Dinner with Martin Perl
links for 2009-06-15
Flying Flux: The Dullness of Details "Short sentences; active voice; keep the audience in mind; draw clear diagrams; minimize jargon; use paragraphs; spell correctly; conjugate verbs; employ diacritics properly; use metric; resist idiomatic speech; avoid overusing semicolons; write in English. All very helpful tips that I’ve gathered over the years, if you want to totally… Continue reading links for 2009-06-15
Graduation Day
As the faculty started down the steps into the area where the families and friends of the Class of 2009 were seated, somebody in the crowd yelled “Thanks for passing most of our kids!” that may be my new favorite audience comment. Last night, it was looking as though we might need to go to… Continue reading Graduation Day