Saturday, I went for a good long bike ride before it got hot, making it all the way to the end of the Erie Canal portion of the bike path. There’s a “detour” that takes you to further path via some dirt roads, but I opted instead for the quiet stretch of path along the… Continue reading Bicycling Report: Thank God for Cell Phones
BitterCon: Three Strikes and You’re Out
I’m not particularly pining for WisCon, but for those who are, let me throw out a movie topic for discussion: Three Strikes and You’re Out: Why Do Third Movies Suck So Much? It’s a well-known phenomenon in genre film: in a series of movies, the third movie is almost always where the series goes off… Continue reading BitterCon: Three Strikes and You’re Out
Welcome to Bittercon
There’s a popular science fiction convention going on this weekend in Madiscon, WI. Of course, not everyone can make it to these things, so some people in LiveJournal Land have put together BitterCon, and online event for those unable to attend WisCon. Kate’s jumped right in, providing space for a bunch of panels in the… Continue reading Welcome to Bittercon
Not Just Outside the Box, but Orthogonal to It
One of the many after-hours events contributing to my exhaustion this week was the annual Sigma Xi award and initiation banquet, at which some fifty students were recognized for their undergraduate research accomplishments. The banquet also featured a very nice presentation on visualizing a four-dimensional cube by Prof. Davide Cervone of the Math department here.… Continue reading Not Just Outside the Box, but Orthogonal to It
Cheery Friday Thought
Courtesy of EurekAlert: physicists Lawrence Krauss from Case Western Reserve University and Robert J. Scherrer from Vanderbilt University predict that trillions of years into the future, the information that currently allows us to understand how the universe expands will have disappeared over the visible horizon. What remains will be “an island universe” made from the… Continue reading Cheery Friday Thought
Irreverent Natural Philosophy
Philosophia Naturalis #10 is now up, providing all sorts of physics-bloggy goodness. I particualrly liked mollishka’s explanation of the Lyman-alpha forest and Scott Aaronson’s math-free explanation of Shor’s factoring algorithm is a classic, but there’s lots of good stuff there.
How to Survive the Tenure Process
Something old, something new, on the topic near and dear to every academic. The old is a post by Doug Natelson from a couple of weeks ago, giving advice on how to get tenure, as a response to the recent flurry of tenure discussions on science blogs. The new is an article by Lesboprof at… Continue reading How to Survive the Tenure Process
The Internet Is for Gluing Captions on Things
Via John Lynch, Fark brings us LOLPresidents: There’s some good stuff, along with the usual rubbish. I also liked this motivational poster:
To Automate or Not To Automate?
The Female Science Professor has a nice post about high and low tech data acquisition: An MS student has repeatedly questioned why he/she has to use a low-tech method to acquire, somewhat tediously, some data that could be acquired more rapidly with a higher-tech method. I say ‘more rapidly’ because the actual acquisition time once… Continue reading To Automate or Not To Automate?
Classic Edition: Master of None
A discussion in the back-channel forums reminded me about all the many things I’ve learned how to do badly in the course of my scientific training. My junior high shop teacher probably sprained something laughing the first time he heard that I was doing machine shop work as part of a research project, but it’s… Continue reading Classic Edition: Master of None