The “Ankle-Breaker Crab” (Coenobita iversonii) is a species of carnivorous land crab found in the Caribbean Islands. It closely resembles the ordinary Caribbean hermit crab (Coenobita clypeatus), but is distinguished from its more common cousin by its habit of living in special titanium-reinforced shells, and its diet, which consists primarily of hikers. Coenobita iversonii are… Continue reading USVI: The Ankle-Breaker Crab
Month: August 2007
Residential Academia
While I was out of town, there was a nice article in the New York Times Education section about the Minerva House system that Union has set up recently.in an attempt to (among other things) reduce the dominance of fraternities over the campus social scene: “You’d see that these were very prominent places, and a… Continue reading Residential Academia
The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter
In case you can’t pick up his direction from the subtitle of The Theory of Almost Everything (“The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics”), Robert Oerter lays it all out for you in the second paragraph of the Introduction: the Standard Model has a surprisingly low profile for such a fundamental and successful… Continue reading The Theory of Almost Everything by Robert Oerter
USVI: All About the Beach
Here’s the second in a series of vacation-picture posts, this one providing pretty much what you would expect of a vacation in the Caribbean: it’s all about the beaches, baby: Well, actually, our trip to the Virgin Islands was really mostly about the snorkeling:
International Blog Against Racism Week 2
This week has been declared International Blog Against Racism Week, so if you’re looking for something serious and worthwhile to do with your blog, you might want to check out the many interesting things being posted, and even contribute something. Unless you post comments under the handle “Uncle Al,” in which case, I’d really rather… Continue reading International Blog Against Racism Week 2
Economics of Writing
While I was out, John Scalzi had an interesting post about the changing economics of short story writing. Back in the day, Robert Heinlein made a living selling stories at a penny a word: As I was reading this again I was curious as to what at penny in 1939 would rate out to here… Continue reading Economics of Writing
USVI: Mise En Scene
I took a rather large number of pictures on the recent trip, and I’m very happy with at least some of them. I’m uploading the raw images to Flickr, but I’m also cropping and tweaking them in GIMP for posting here. Because, well, it’s my blog, and if I want to try to make you… Continue reading USVI: Mise En Scene
What’d I Miss?
So, after an Internet-less week in St. John, USVI, I come back to find over 1600 articles in the RSS feeds of blogs that I follow regularly. And if you think I’m going to wade through all of that, well, you need to work on your thinking skills a bit. So what, if anything, do… Continue reading What’d I Miss?
Why I Haven’t Been Blogging
Because for the past week, this has been the view from my balcony: We’re back in the Capital District now, after a travel day about which the less said the better, but for a week there, damn, life was good.
Physics “News”: Bio and Astro
I’m on vacation this week, and taking this opportunity to clear out a large backlog of news items that I flagged as interesting, but never got around to commenting on. I’ll group them thematically, just to spread things out over a few days, and this post lumps together some results from biophysics and astrophysics that… Continue reading Physics “News”: Bio and Astro