Against a Definition of Science Fiction — Paul Kincaid “When I called my collection of essays and reviews What It Is We Do When We Read Science Fiction, I was struggling toward something I could not fully articulate. I don’t know what is involved in reading science fiction, because I don’t know what science fiction… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-10
Month: May 2010
Ancient Aliens: Performance Art or Government Disinformation?
One of my many character weaknesses is a fondness for the kooky UFO programs run on the History Channel and other educational cable networks. The nuttier the better– there’s something about the credulity and self-delusion displayed by the “researchers” they trot out that I find really hilarious. I have to say, though, that they’ve outdone… Continue reading Ancient Aliens: Performance Art or Government Disinformation?
The Problem of “Theory”
When I was writing about the seemingly contradictory meanings of “adiabatic” the other day, I almost gave “theory” as an example of a word with nearly opposite meanings. After all, as anyone who has even glanced at the evolution-creation “debate” has heard, a “Theory” in science is something more exalted than a mere guess– it’s… Continue reading The Problem of “Theory”
Links for 2010-05-09
Jason Sanford: Living in a world where most writers suck I find bad writing to be cross-generational and not caused by someone loving video games or fanfic. If you turned Shakespeare loose on gaming or fanfic, he’d likely come up with some great stories. He’d also come up with some horrible stories–don’t forget that before… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-09
The Past and Future of the Laser
While it’s not aprt of the official LaserFest package of stuff, Physics World is marking the 50th anniversary of the laser with a couple of really nice pieces on lasers in science and popular culture: Where next for the laser interviews six laser experts– Claire Max of UCSC, Bill Phillips of NIST, Steven Block of… Continue reading The Past and Future of the Laser
Links for 2010-05-08
YouTube – Walk on water “Liquid Mountaineering is a new sport which is attempting to achieve what man has tried to do for centuries: walk on water. Or to be more precise: running on water. We are developing the sport from scratch. By accident we found out that with the right water repellent equipment you… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-08
Academic Poll: Talk or Poster?
The Steinmetz Symposium is today at Union, as mentioned in yesterday’s silly poll about fears (I love the fact that “Wavefunction Collapse” leads “Monsters from the Id” by one vote at the time of this writing– my readers are awesome). As a more serious follow-up, there were two presentation options offered to the students, and… Continue reading Academic Poll: Talk or Poster?
Links for 2010-05-07
Microsoft’s PowerPoint isn’t evil if you learn how to use it. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine I’ve seen more terrible slide presentations in my life than good ones, but that stat isn’t necessarily an indictment of the program–I’ve also encountered a lot more terrible books than terrific ones, and I’ve certainly seen more… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-07
Thursday Baby Blogging 050610
This week, we offer a shot from the forthcoming “Casual Living with SteelyKid and Appa” catalogue: If you look closely, you can see two things: 1) a small scrape by her right eye, from an accident at day care– even SteelyKid is bound by the laws of physics, and gravity is a harsh one, and… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 050610
Through a (Noble) Gas, Darkly
There’s a minor kerfuffle at the moment over the XENON experiment’s early data (arxiv paper) which did not detect any dark matter in 11 days of data acquisition. This conflicts with earlier claims by the DAMA experiment and recent maybe-kinda-sorta detections by the CoGeNT and CDMA experiments. As a result, a couple of members of… Continue reading Through a (Noble) Gas, Darkly