The Paper of Record today features an interview with Eric Mazur of Harvard, a physicist who is probably best known for his pedagogical work. He talks aabout how typical science teaching sucks, and why we need to change it: From what I’ve seen, students in science classrooms throughout the country depend on the rote memorization… Continue reading Peer Instruction
The Canon by Natalie Angier
The Powers That Be at Seed were kind enough to send all the ScienceBlogs bloggers copies of the new book by Natalie Angier, The Canon, which is being pushed fairly hard by the publisher. I’ve been reading a lot more pop-science stuff recently, for self-interested reasons, and this was pretty attractive, so I carried it… Continue reading The Canon by Natalie Angier
What’d I Miss?
Kate and I went out to Michigan this past weekend, to unwind a bit at the summer home of some friends from college. It was an Internet-less weekend for me– there was Internet access at the house, but I fought through the incipient datastarve, and resisted the temptation to log in. (This means that a… Continue reading What’d I Miss?
Peter Watts, Blindsight [Library of Babel]
This is the final Best Novel Hugo nominee of this year’s field, and given James Nicoll’s immortal description of Watts’s writing (“When I feel my will to live getting too strong, I pick up a Peter Watts book” or words to that effect), I wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about picking up Blindsight. I was on something… Continue reading Peter Watts, Blindsight [Library of Babel]
Science Rock
“Darkmatter,” Andrew Bird “21st Century (Digital Boy),” Bad Religion “Some Fantastic,” Barenaked Ladies “Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Bonnie Tyler “Gravity Fails,” the Bottle Rockets “Protons, Neutrons, Electrons,” The Cat Empire “Alien,” Chris Whitley “Under the Milky Way,” the Church “White Russian Galaxy,” the Crimea “Ziggy Stardust,” David Bowie “Monkey to… Continue reading Science Rock
Outrage is Good
Via Big Media Matt, a video that’s too good not to share: I have a lot more respect for Pat Leahy now. I wouldn’t’ve been able to respond to that without a few F-bombs.
Small Talk, High Stakes
Inside Higher Ed today features an opinion piece by a lecturer about the excruciating awkwardness of job interviews: [T]he banal yet innocuous questions faculty members do ask — “Where was I from?” “How did I get interested in this topic?” — become loaded with a significance out of proportion to their actual content. Together, my… Continue reading Small Talk, High Stakes
Revenge of the Humorless Dorks
Via Backreaction, I find that there’s a paper on the Arxiv titled “Hollywood Blockbusters: Unlimited Fun but Limited Science Literacy,” whose authors feel that the best way to counter bad pop-culture science is with equations: (That’s from a section discussing the bad physics in the ending of the first Spiderman movie. There are places where… Continue reading Revenge of the Humorless Dorks
Water, Water, Everywhere
There’s a new paper in Nature announcing the detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of a “hot Jupiter” orbiting a distant star. There’s also a story on Physics Web and a press release from the Spitzer Telescope group, if you’d like some stuff you can read without a subscription to Nature. The idea here… Continue reading Water, Water, Everywhere
What’s Up With RHIC
Peter Steinberg is lecturing at a summer school in Florida, and has posted the slides for the three lectures he gave about recent work at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. The first lecture is linked from that post, and the other two are available (at the moment) from links on the sidebar.… Continue reading What’s Up With RHIC