Why is this dog sulking, you ask? (Answer below the fold)
Thank You for Grief-Pimping
Kate and I went to see Thank You for Smoking yesterday (Short review: About as good an adaptation of the original book as you could hope for, and much more my thing than Kate’s). The set of trailers we got was generally excruciating– lots of film-festival material about quirky families being awful to one another.… Continue reading Thank You for Grief-Pimping
Inside the Sausage Factory
As someone who reads a lot, I have a certain amount of interest in the way publishing works. It’s sort of fascinating to get to hear about the day to day operations, and how a manuscript becomes a book. In that vein, alg on LiveJournal (I’m hazy about whose names are public and whose aren’t,… Continue reading Inside the Sausage Factory
Most Shafted Physicist: A Biased Response
Over at the Seed editors blog, Maggie Wittlin asks who’s the most overlooked scientist: Which scientist (in your field or beyond) has been most seriously shafted? This could be taken two ways: Who deserves to be more recognized, revered and renowned today than he or she is? Who got passed over, ridiculed, etc. the most… Continue reading Most Shafted Physicist: A Biased Response
True Lab Stories: The Definition of Insanity
I’m still feeling pretty lethargic, but I hope that will improve when I get to lecture about the EPR paradox in Quantum Optics today (it’s going to be kind of a short lecture, unless I can ad-lib an introduction to Bell’s Theorem at the end of the class, but then I’ve been holding them late… Continue reading True Lab Stories: The Definition of Insanity
What’s On Your Syllabus?
When I teach introductory classes, I use a somewhat more complicated homework policy than most of my colleagues. As a result, my syllabus tends to run longer than theirs, by at least a page or two. I sometimes worry that this is excessive, but happily, Inside Higher Ed is here to prove me wrong: By… Continue reading What’s On Your Syllabus?
Web Comic Update
Everybody should read today’s Medium Large. In fact, you should read Medium Large every day. Why aren’t you?
Alea Iacta Est
The official letter from the department requesting the formation of an ad hoc committee for my tenure review was sent in yesterday. This is the official start of the process– I’m still a little fuzzy on the timeline from here out, but by September, I’ll have to provide the committee with a huge amount of… Continue reading Alea Iacta Est
Random Ten
I’m not feeling especially inspired, blog-wise, this morning, and I’ve got another couple of busy days on tap, so you get the fall-back post of the uninspired blogger: Ten random tracks from my iTunes library (the four-and-five-star playlist), with commentary. I’m tempted to just steal Kate’s musical range idea, but she thought of it first,… Continue reading Random Ten
Rawr!
I retain just enough of my childhood fascination with dinosaurs to be interested in a headline like “A Meat Eater Bigger Than T. Rex Is Unearthed”. Of course, most of the information you would really want is right there in the headline: New dinosaur species, really big, carnivorous, next story please. Subsequent years of scientific… Continue reading Rawr!