Author: Chad Orzel

DonorsChoose Update

ScienceBlogs Charity Liason Janet Stemwedel provides an update of the first two days of the ScienceBlogs fundraiser for DonorsChoose: over $8,000 in direct contributions, with our Corporate Masters at Seed agreeing to match up to $10,000. Not bad for two days, on a weekend no less. As for the local update, the Uncertain Principles challenge… Continue reading DonorsChoose Update

World Cup Update

I was awakened rather too early yesterday by the dog, so wound up dozing on the couch for a lot of the Portugal-Iran game. Which was pretty doze-worthy, actually– Portugal approached the game sort of like an NBA team, and played eleven loosely connected games of one-on-one, and while Iran was game, they just didn’t… Continue reading World Cup Update

Published
Categorized as Soccer

Every Child Left Behind

Via coturnix, the tremendously depressing resignation letter of a public school teacher in North Carolina. It’s a rotten note on which to discover what looks like a pretty good blog. The racist comments and inappropriate sexual remarks desribed in the letter are really pretty disturbing. I wish I could say it was surprising, but sadly,… Continue reading Every Child Left Behind

Published
Categorized as Education

Lazy Blogging Saturday

It’s been a while since I looked at the search engine keywords on Goggle Analytics for this site. It’s a little depressing to find that PZ Myers turns up three times (“pharyngula,” “Pharyngula,” and “PZ Myers”) before my own name. Worse yet, Aaron Bergman, who doesn’t even have a blog any more, also shows up… Continue reading Lazy Blogging Saturday

Cheer My Dog Up

Why is this dog sad? Because people aren’t donating enough to the ScienceBlogs fundraiser… Isn’t it worth a few bucks to cheer her up? (Actually, that’s not true– donations thus far are in excess of $3,000, and Seed has promised some additional matching funds. But how could I resist the opportunity for a shameless appeal,… Continue reading Cheer My Dog Up

The Plight of Upstate

The Dean Dad has some interesting comments regarding this depressing New York Times article about the departure of young adults from Upstate New York: From 1990 to 2004, the number of 25-to-34-year-old residents in the 52 counties north of Rockland and Putnam declined by more than 25 percent. In 13 counties that include cities like… Continue reading The Plight of Upstate

Published
Categorized as Politics

Simulate This

Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say “Amen!”, this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release): Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t bother doing simulations. This has been true… Continue reading Simulate This

With Great Traffic Comes Great Responsibility

At the suggestion of our resident ethicist, we’ve decided to try to use the power of ScienceBlogs to do some good. Thus, we present the first-ever ScienceBlogs Charity Fundraiser. Here’s the deal: An organization called Donors Choose solicits proposals from school teachers who want equipment that their districts can’t provide. They then accept donations toward… Continue reading With Great Traffic Comes Great Responsibility