I’ve got a silly pop-culture post planned, but we’ll put that off for a moment, because this is the 666th post to this blog, according to the counter on Movable Type. That would appear to demand something evil, so here you go: Behold the Evil! Evil!
Congratulations to Tom Renbarger
A little while back, I offered a Nobel betting pool, and promised to allow anyone who successfully predicted the name of at least one of the winners of the Physics prize to pick a post topic here: If you correctly predict the name of at least one of the winning physicists, I’ll post an article… Continue reading Congratulations to Tom Renbarger
Dynamite Money for COBE
Hot off the presses: The Nobel Prize in Physics goes to John C. Mather and George Smoot “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.” This is recent enough that they don’t even have much on the Nobel site, but happily for me, it’s something I know a… Continue reading Dynamite Money for COBE
SAT Challenge: They Sound Like… Bloggers
Visit the Official Blogger SAT Challenge site. After the grading was finished, a few of our volunteer graders made general comments about the essays they read. One thing that really jumped out at me about this was the way that the problems they described sounded like exactly the sort of thing you would expect from… Continue reading SAT Challenge: They Sound Like… Bloggers
SAT Challenge: My Entry
So, how did I score in the Blogger SAT Challenge? (Because this is all about me, after all…) Here’s my entry. I’m not terribly proud of it, but it got a score of 4 from the graders. Looking more closely, one grader generously gave it a 5/6, while the other gave it a 3/6, presumably… Continue reading SAT Challenge: My Entry
SAT Challenge: Bloggers Dumber Than High-School Kids
Visit the Official Blogger SAT Challenge Site The graph shows a histogram of the scores for the essays entered into the Blogger SAT challenge. It’s really a pretty nice distribution, with an average score of 2.899, a standard deviation of 1.28, and a standard deviation of the mean of 0.123 (so I’d make my students… Continue reading SAT Challenge: Bloggers Dumber Than High-School Kids
Blogger SAT Challenge Unleashed!
We’re very pleased to announce the unveiling of the official Blogger SAT Challenge web site. “We” in this case meaning “me and Dave Munger, plus some other people who know more about computers than we do.” The site, run on the ScienceBlogs framework, allows you to view each of the 109 entries submitted to the… Continue reading Blogger SAT Challenge Unleashed!
My Sister Was Bitten By a Radioactive Reindeer Once
The Editors, in a stunning revelation, provide the innocent explanation for the Mark Foley instant-message transcripts: Foley’s lines were real, but he was actually IM’ing the Editors about non-sexual topics. Sample passage, with the real responses restored: Maf54 (7:46:01 PM): well I better let you go do oyur thing Editorz (7:46:11 PM): yes I have… Continue reading My Sister Was Bitten By a Radioactive Reindeer Once
Boys and Girls in America
I’m a huge fan of the last Hold Steady album, Separation Sunday, and I’ve spent about six months (not consecutively) earwormed with “Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” so I’d be really remiss if I failed to note that there’s a new Hold Steady album coming out Tuesday. There’s also a nice article about the band in… Continue reading Boys and Girls in America
Statistical Mechanics of the Blogosphere
That BaconCat guy has two interesting posts this weekend on the detailed workings of blogdom. The first is a closer look at the blogs on Technorati’s Top 100, and the second is a look at Big Posts and how they affect traffic. I have a few responses to these, which probably aren’t terribly interesting to… Continue reading Statistical Mechanics of the Blogosphere