Saturday was a miserable cold and rainy day, and today wasn’t a whole lot better. I took advantage of a brief spot of sun in the afternoon to get a short ride in, but it was awfully windy with dark clouds on the horizon, so I just rode around on local streets, so as not… Continue reading Bicycling Report (Lame Edition)
Hot Fuzz
For the last several years, Schenectady has been trying to get a movie theater in the downtown area, as part of an ongoing urban renewal project. This week, it finally opened, and one of the first movies on the bill is Hot Fuzz, from the people who did Shaun of the Dead, which I wanted… Continue reading Hot Fuzz
In Defense of Fiction Reading
Eductaion reform is a contentious topic, and everybody has their own ideas about the best ways to improve the teaching of basic skills. Some people favor a “whole language” approach, others think we should go back to teaching phonics and memorizing grammar rules. I’ve heard people speak of “diagramming sentences” as absolutely the worst idea… Continue reading In Defense of Fiction Reading
Welcome to the Hellmouth
Jennifer Ouellette is coming to campus this week to give a talk about her book The Physics of the Buffyverse. Having never been a Buffy fan, and not seen more than snippets of a few episodes here and there, I figured I should at least watch a few representative episodes before the talk, just to… Continue reading Welcome to the Hellmouth
Myths of Science Writing
I’m mired in lab grading at the moment, which is sufficiently irritating that I usually have to decamp to someplace with no Internet access, or else I spend the day blogrolling instead. Or, really, just hitting “Refresh” over and over on Bloglines, hoping that somebody in my RSS subscriptions has posted something new. A big… Continue reading Myths of Science Writing
Basic Concepts: Fermi Questions
Closely related to the idea of order-of-magnitude estimates is the idea of Fermi Questions, a type of problem that demonstrates the power of estimation techniques. The idea is that you can come up with a reasonable guess at an answer for a difficult question by using some really basic reasoning, and a few facts here… Continue reading Basic Concepts: Fermi Questions
Mugged!
Dave at the World’s Fair is asking ScienceBloggers to show off their coffee mugs. I don’t usually have a camera at work, but my signature mug was bought via the Internet, so I snagged the image from the CafePress Store. It’s a “Still Not King” mug, a reference to the famous Very Secret Diary of… Continue reading Mugged!
Yeah, but What’s the Impact Factor?
Via Steinn, the Smithsonian’s Astronomy Abstract Service has an index entry for some book called De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by some Polish guy. They’ve got a scanned electronic version available for free, but the stupid thing is in Latin, and who speaks that these days? Also, it’s only got two citations, and both of those… Continue reading Yeah, but What’s the Impact Factor?
Basic Concepts: Estimation and Dimensions
Ages and ages ago, Jennifer Ouellette commented on the start of the Basic Concepts series with a list of topics she’d like to see done. One of these was “Size and Scaling:” First, let’s tackle the jargon problem: Just what the heck is an order of magnitude? I use the phrase all the time now,… Continue reading Basic Concepts: Estimation and Dimensions
Baghdad Update:A Light Crack
As regular readers know, my friend Paul is a journalist based in the Middle East, and spent a year working as a reporter in Baghdad. He finished that a little while ago, but he’s back, and has sent another of his intermittent dispatches. I’ve been posting these to the blog when I get them. This… Continue reading Baghdad Update:A Light Crack