The flip side of the pretty colors I posted about yesterday is that all those nicely colored leaves fall down. Which isn’t a big deal with the little ornamental maple in the front yard, but when the fifty-foot oak tree in the back drops its leaves, it kind of makes a mess. We deal with… Continue reading The Other Side of Fall
Wikipedia Brown
I’ve been way behind in my blogreading the last few weeks, owing to a huge amount of, you know, actual work for my day job, so this may have been all over the Internets already. On the off chance that it hasn’t, via Ethan Zuckerman, a link to Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the… Continue reading Wikipedia Brown
Inside the Writer’s Studio
I scan the titles reviewed by the Onion AV Club through their RSS feed every week, and only click over there for things that look particularly interesting. I don’t regularly check their feature stories, which is why I’m a week late in noticing that they have an interview with Donald Westlake, one of my very… Continue reading Inside the Writer’s Studio
Nerd Holidays
Steve Cook suggests a holiday for computer nerds: Far better than World Hello Day would be Hello World Day, celebrating 32 years of every programming manual’s stock first example. Global diversity could be honored by recognizing our rainbow of programming languages, from Pascal to Brainfuck, and when we were done we could all sing a… Continue reading Nerd Holidays
Fall Colors
Not much commentary required here. This is the ornamental maple in front of our house, taken a couple of weeks ago. It’s also a reminder of why fall in New England is one of my favorite seasons, at least when it’s not miserably cold and raining…
The Secret to Dealing with Missionaries
PZ links to a video of a couple of guys dressing like missionaries and knocking on doors for atheism in Salt Lake City. Like most ambush comedy, the concept is better than the execution– in particular, there’s an opening rant about Mormons that goes on way too long. There’s some moderately clever stuff, but it’s… Continue reading The Secret to Dealing with Missionaries
Fire Is Cool
There’s a nice article in the Times today about Mythbusters as science television. As is typical of the Times, it sort of overreaches with some of the conclusions: Their delight in discovery for its own sake is familiar to most scientists, who welcome any result because it either confirms or debunks a hypothesis. That sense… Continue reading Fire Is Cool
How Predictable
New Scientist has decided to commemorate their 50th anniversary by asking a large number of scientists to predict what will happen in the next 50 years. As you might have predicted, the list of responses includes a large number of short essays of the form: Exciting new developments in my own field of research will… Continue reading How Predictable
UnSuggestions
Following up on the weekend’s reading suggestions, I should point to John Horgan’s list of the Ten Worst Science Books. These aren’t obscure self-published tracts on the Theory of Everything, either– Stephen Jay Gould, Malcolm Gladwell and E. O. Wilson make the list, and there are more best-selling suggestions in the comments.
Wieman on Science Teaching
Inside Higher Ed has a short piece today on a lecture given to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching by Carl Wieman on how to teach science. Though, from the sound of it, it was mostly about how not to teach science. During the talk on Friday, Wieman said that traditional science instruction… Continue reading Wieman on Science Teaching