Matt McIrvin reminds me to look at the nifty Saturn pictures on the Cassini-Huygens Mission page. The hot image of the moment is the big storm at the south pole, but there’s lots of good stuff, like this: (Explanation of the ring shot here.)
Academic Poetry
Via The Little Professor, a poem sure to touch most academics, Tom Wayman’s “Did I Miss Anything?”: Nothing. None of the content of this course has value or meaning Take as many days off as you like: any activities we undertake as a class I assure you will not matter either to you or me… Continue reading Academic Poetry
Subtle Battlerstar
I spent a while idly channel-surfing after we watched the final couple of episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico last night, and ran across the new Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel. Lots of smart people like the show, but I didn’t get into the premiere, and the occasional attempt to watch it in sub-optimal circumstances… Continue reading Subtle Battlerstar
Thanksgiving
This isn’t actually another political post, though Allen conceding to Webb is certainly happy news, and something to be thankful for. No, this post is about the holiday of Thanksgiving. Specifically, the fact that Kate and I will be hosting Thanksgiving at our house for both sets of parents, plus my sister, my grandmother, and… Continue reading Thanksgiving
Maryland vs. Vermont
No, this isn’t a post about a big Bernie Sanders/ Babara Mikulski throwdown. the University of Maryland played the University of Vermont Wednesday night in basketball, and I’m just getting around to writing about it. Much to my surprise, the game was on tv. Of course, that was the day I had my tenure interview,… Continue reading Maryland vs. Vermont
Broken Things
I would post some sort of wrap-up about the Lisa Randall chat yesterday, but Discover is broken. They don’t have a link to a transcript on the site– in fact, they haven’t updated the front page to reflect the fact that the chat was yesterday, and is now over. There was a link that would… Continue reading Broken Things
Wikipedia vs. Aquaman
John Holbo comes a little unglued, but it’s entertaining reading. Or, possibly, I need to get out more. Also, what does Fictional Jimbo Wales think of this?
PowerPoint Examples
Having talked at length about my theories of how to do an effective PowerPoint talk, I probably ought to provide some examples. These are converted to PDF because it’s more generally readable than PPT, and because the files are slightly smaller. The conversion is done using CutePDF writer, which does something to the files that… Continue reading PowerPoint Examples
Election Round-Up
Well, it’s not really much of a round-up, as that has a connotation of completeness, and this is pretty scattered. But, really, if I’m your only source for political links on the Web, you need to get out more. This is just a collection of links to a few things that I thought were particularly… Continue reading Election Round-Up
Extra Dimensions in Web Chat
Discover magazine is hosting a live web chat with Lisa Randall this afternoon at 2 pm. Randall is famous for developing some ideas relating to the physics of extra dimensions, and has recently published a popular book (Warped Passages) on the subject. This is supposed to be a one-hour live chat, with questions taken from… Continue reading Extra Dimensions in Web Chat