In a weekend wrap-up post, Dave makes a passing reference to one of the more uncomfortable aspects of basketball: Early in the day, I happened upon an NIT game on TV, where Mississippi State was playing someone. While I was watching, I saw a quick, aggressive Bulldog guard drive through the defense for an impressive… Continue reading Race and Hoops
The Real Oldest Profession…
… is astronomy, as the New York Times notes in explaining the equinox: Archaeological evidence abounds that astronomy is among the oldest of professions, and that people attended with particular zeal to the equinoxes and the solstices. The Great Sphinx of Egypt, for example, built some 4,500 years ago, is positioned to face toward the… Continue reading The Real Oldest Profession…
Bérubé is Back
Well, ok, he hasn’t posted anything yet, but Michael Bérubé will be joining Crooked Timber. This is good news indeed for the academic blogging community. I didn’t read his blog as regularly as it deserved the first time around, but he was one of the sharper writers out there, and it’s good to see him… Continue reading Bérubé is Back
Advertising Note
You may notice that there are some new ads on the site. They’re short videos done by DuPont, with an excessively perky anchor talking about science topics and the wonders of chemistry, and that sort of thing. We were promised that the ads would not auto-play or break people’s browsers, and as far as I… Continue reading Advertising Note
Dorky Poll: Research Adaptation
I’m giving an exam this morning, and I needed to get to work early to make copies, so I didn’t have time for lengthy, insightful blogging. So here’s a dorky poll. This one needs a little background. A post-doc in my old group at NIST used to say that he always wished he had a… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Research Adaptation
NCAA Tournament 2007: Not Quite Enough
The first weekend of the NCAA tournament wound down pretty much the way it started. There were a few good games, but almost all the higher seeds won. Only one of the top eight seeds failed to advance, and that was Wisconsin, who have looked shaky since the loss of Brian Butch. Purdue gave Florida… Continue reading NCAA Tournament 2007: Not Quite Enough
Crucial Questions of My High School Years
Over at Kurt’s Krap, there’s extensive discussion of the relative merits of Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth as the front man for Van Halen. You can also find them discussing a bunch of other songs, but the Hagar/Roth question is the important one. By a weird coincidence, I read Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City… Continue reading Crucial Questions of My High School Years
Liz Williams, Snake Agent [Library of Babel]
There’s been a copy of Snake Agent at the local Borders for a while now, but it kept narrowly losing out to other books. On a recent shopping trip, though, I was buying enough stuff that throwing another trade paperback on the pile was just a small perturbation, so I picked up a copy. The… Continue reading Liz Williams, Snake Agent [Library of Babel]
Belief Narratives
I’m always sort of fascinated by articles in which people talk about why they believe what they do, particularly in a religious context. I basically never find them persuasive (my own inclinations are Apathetic Agnostic– I don’t care if there’s a God or not), but when they’re done well, they’re really interesting reading, in sort… Continue reading Belief Narratives
Rob Thurman, Nightlife [Library of Babel]
Back at Boskone, I went to a panel consisting of a number of revieweres recommending books that we might not have heard of. Toward the end, one of the panelists rattled off a list of authors writing urban fantasy (what he described as “Laurel Hamilton without all the porn”), and Rob Thurman was on the… Continue reading Rob Thurman, Nightlife [Library of Babel]