The second complete draft was sent off to my editor yesterday, and after a little bit of excitement regarding files that wouldn’t open, it was successfully delivered. There were only minor changes since the last update, mostly having to do with the figures and section headers and so on. I’ll put the table of contents… Continue reading Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Second Draft
Failing Schools: Better Than Nothing
You know, my opinion of “No Child Left Behind” style attempts to measure “failing” schools is as low as anybody’s, but even I think this new Ohio State study sounds ridiculous: Up to three-quarters of U.S. schools deemed failing based on achievement test scores would receive passing grades if evaluated using a less biased measure,… Continue reading Failing Schools: Better Than Nothing
ScienceBlogs: Now With More Facts
The Borg assimilates another quality blogger: Built On Facts is joining ScienceBlogs. If you haven’t been reading Matt’s blog, it’s one of the best basic physics blogs around, with math and everything. It’ll be good to have another non-philatelic scientist around. Update your blogrolls accordingly.
Blue Sky On Mars
Well, OK, that’s a stretch, but there is water, according to the latest Phoenix results: “We’ve now finally touched it and tasted it,” William V. Boynton, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and the lead scientist for the instrument that detected the water, said at a news conference… Continue reading Blue Sky On Mars
links for 2008-08-01 [delicious.com]
UKTV: About UKTV: The world’s ten oldest jokes "Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research." (tags: silly history) TAPPED Archive | The American Prospect "[D]id any other random black people who like Barack Obama say something that offended you today?"… Continue reading links for 2008-08-01 [delicious.com]
Email Passeth All Understanding
The other day, the Dean Dad remarked on one of the quirks of academic technology: Last week I saw another iteration of something I still don’t really understand. People who are perfectly civil in person are often capable of firing off incredibly nasty and hateful emails. Sometimes they’ll do that with cc’s all the way… Continue reading Email Passeth All Understanding
Physical Theories Squeak When You Chew Them
“The Internet is silly!” I turn around from the computer. “Yes it is,” I say to the dog, “But what, specifically, makes you say that?” “All these posts about physics theories. Comparing them to women and men and stupid wizards, and relationships. It’s silly.” “Yes, well, it does seem to be the diversion of the… Continue reading Physical Theories Squeak When You Chew Them
links for 2008-07-31
Cassini instrument confirms liquid surface lake on Titan ‘”We can see there’s a shelf, a beach, that is being exposed as the lake evaporates,” Brown said.’ (tags: astronomy science planets news space) Prelude to the Higgs: A work for 2 bosons in the key of Z “The properties of the ZZ diboson make its discovery… Continue reading links for 2008-07-31
Nothing But Uncertainty
Over at Backreaction, Bee has a nice post about uncertainty, in the technical sense, not the quantum sense. The context is news stories about science, which typically do a terrible job of handling the uncertainties and caveats that are an essential part of science. Properly dealing with uncertainty is one of the hardest parts of… Continue reading Nothing But Uncertainty
Ethics in Science Fiction
A colleague emailed me yesterday with the following question: As I have mentioned the other day, [Prof. Firstname Lastname] of Comp. Sci. is putting together an exciting course “Can Computers Think?” (Intro to Comp. Sci.), and she hopes to use Sci Fi short stories (and movies, and TV series) to bring ethics into the course.… Continue reading Ethics in Science Fiction