Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Free e-books from Will Shetterly and Emma Bull Two really good books, for free. What more could you want? (tags: SF books literature) D.F.W., R.I.P. :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs "For a young writer to discover Wallace… Continue reading links for 2008-09-18
Month: September 2008
Open Lab Notebook Software?
After talking to Cameron Neylon last week, I’m strongly considering setting up an online lab notebook for my research lab. Not so much for the philosophical reasons having to do with openness and the like– as a practical matter, I still don’t think my data will do anybody any good– but for reasons of sheer… Continue reading Open Lab Notebook Software?
Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
Another thing I thought was intriguing that came up at the Science in the 21st Century meeting wasn’t from a formal talk, but rather a conversation over dinner with Garrett Lisi and Sabine Hossenfelder about the future of publishing. Garrett was suggesting a new model of publishing, based on pulling things from the arxiv (or… Continue reading Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility
I have never been a huge proponent of the Open Access and Open Data movements in science publishing, because they’ve always struck me as wasted effort. I’ve never really seen what value is supposed to be added by either project. When I think about the experiments that I’ve been involved with (see, for example, the… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Open Access and Public Accessibility
Spherical Cows
Two new recent posts take up the question of “spherical cows,” the old joke term for absurd-sounding approximations that physicists make to turn intractable problems into easy ones. First, The First Excited State explains when N=N+1: Everybody who’s taken any sort of math class knows that a statement like N+1 = N is simply ridiculous.… Continue reading Spherical Cows
links for 2008-09-17
Wondermark by David Malki ! – 442: In which Beth keeps her Books "They will breathe with gills that make the sound of fluttering pages." (tags: internet comics books kid-stuff) Unsolicited Advice VII: Should I Have a Web Page? | Cosmic Variance Yes, but for the love of God, keep it professional. (tags: academia jobs… Continue reading links for 2008-09-17
Science21 Highlights: Peer to Patent and Government 2.0
(Over the course of this week, I’m going to post a handful of things about talks that struck me as particularly interesting at last week’s conference. The order will be chosen based on how much time I think I will have to write them up, given SteelyKid’s demands for attention…) On Thursday, the Science in… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Peer to Patent and Government 2.0
Who Is the Third?
Time for everybody’s favorite morbid pop-culture game: as we all know, it’s a standard joke that celebrity deaths come in threes. So, who completes this week’s triad: David Foster Wallace, Richard Wright, and …?
Pictures of Distant Worlds
Everybody’s all abuzz about this picture: This may be the first image of a planet around a sun-like star. May be, mind– it looks likely, but there are still a lot of caveats. If it is a planet, and not a dim background star, it’s got about eight times the mass of Jupiter, and is… Continue reading Pictures of Distant Worlds
links for 2008-09-16
Lithwick: Put Palin on the Supreme Court | Newsweek Dahlia Lithwick on Legal Issues | Newsweek.com "[I]f any branch of government is in need of a mother of five who likes shooting wolves from helicopters, the [Supreme] [C]ourt is it." (tags: law politics silly US) David Foster Wallace (Harper’s Magazine) Free downloads, in memoriam. (tags:… Continue reading links for 2008-09-16