Two new recent posts take up the question of “spherical cows,” the old joke term for absurd-sounding approximations that physicists make to turn intractable problems into easy ones. First, The First Excited State explains when N=N+1: Everybody who’s taken any sort of math class knows that a statement like N+1 = N is simply ridiculous.… Continue reading Spherical Cows
links for 2008-09-17
Wondermark by David Malki ! – 442: In which Beth keeps her Books "They will breathe with gills that make the sound of fluttering pages." (tags: internet comics books kid-stuff) Unsolicited Advice VII: Should I Have a Web Page? | Cosmic Variance Yes, but for the love of God, keep it professional. (tags: academia jobs… Continue reading links for 2008-09-17
Science21 Highlights: Peer to Patent and Government 2.0
(Over the course of this week, I’m going to post a handful of things about talks that struck me as particularly interesting at last week’s conference. The order will be chosen based on how much time I think I will have to write them up, given SteelyKid’s demands for attention…) On Thursday, the Science in… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Peer to Patent and Government 2.0
Who Is the Third?
Time for everybody’s favorite morbid pop-culture game: as we all know, it’s a standard joke that celebrity deaths come in threes. So, who completes this week’s triad: David Foster Wallace, Richard Wright, and …?
Pictures of Distant Worlds
Everybody’s all abuzz about this picture: This may be the first image of a planet around a sun-like star. May be, mind– it looks likely, but there are still a lot of caveats. If it is a planet, and not a dim background star, it’s got about eight times the mass of Jupiter, and is… Continue reading Pictures of Distant Worlds
links for 2008-09-16
Lithwick: Put Palin on the Supreme Court | Newsweek Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues | Newsweek.com "[I]f any branch of government is in need of a mother of five who likes shooting wolves from helicopters, the [Supreme] [C]ourt is it." (tags: law politics silly US) David Foster Wallace (Harper’s Magazine) Free downloads, in memoriam. (tags:… Continue reading links for 2008-09-16
We Are Science
If you listen to people talking about (or read people blogging about) new ways of doing things, you’ll frequently hear references to Science or Academia as if they were vast but monolithic entities existing in their own right. Statements like “The culture of Science does not reward open access…” or “Modern Academia does not reward… Continue reading We Are Science
Reading On-Line and in College
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about online literacy this week (time-limited link, look quickly), and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that the author is pessimistic. The article cites distressing findings from new research: In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The… Continue reading Reading On-Line and in College
Virtual Science Debate
As you might have guessed from yesterday’s tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama’s froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web,… Continue reading Virtual Science Debate
We Have a Gene for That
Via Brian and John, John Cleese’s take on genetic determinism: All the best social commentary comes from comedians, these days.