One final thought on the Big Science/ Space Chronicles stuff from last week. One of the things I found really frustrating about the book, and the whole argument that we ought to be sinking lots of money into manned space missions is that the terms of the argument are so nebulous. This is most obvious… Continue reading Exploring Space: Don’t Sell Robots Short
Author: Nathan
Links for 2012-05-09
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Adjuncts on Food Stamps The general idea isn’t new, of course, but the numbers are. The story notes a threefold increase just from 2007 to 2010 in the number of people affected. I have to admit that my first response was “there but for the grace of God.” Anyone… Continue reading Links for 2012-05-09
The Crappy Science of Comic-Book Movies
I go back and forth about the whole question of scientific accuracy in tv shows and movies. On the one hand, I think that complaining “Explosions don’t make noise in space!” is one of the worst forms of humorless dorkitude, and I’m generally happy to let bad science slide by in the service of an… Continue reading The Crappy Science of Comic-Book Movies
Ten Years Before the Blog: 2005-2006 (Part I)
Continuing the blog recap series, we come to the “split year” of 2005-2006. The blog was initially launched in late June, so that’s when I’m starting the years for purposes of these recaps, but ScienceBlogs launched in January 2006, so this year was half Steelypips and half ScienceBlogs. This post will cover the Steelypips half,… Continue reading Ten Years Before the Blog: 2005-2006 (Part I)
Links for 2012-05-08
A Visual Approach to Simplifying Radicals (A Get Out of Jail Free Card) | Reflections in the Why Consider a square with an area of 24. The side has length â24. This square can be divided into 4 smaller squares, each with an area of 6. The sides of these smaller squares have length â6.… Continue reading Links for 2012-05-08
For Extra Credit, Estimate Your Chances of Winning: Ballparking Giveaway
Some time back, I reviewed a cool book about Fermi problems by Aaron Santos, then a post-doc at Michigan. In the interim, he’s taken a faculty job at Oberlin, written a second book on sports-related Fermi problems, and started a blog, none of which I had noticed until he emailed me. Shame on me. Anyway,… Continue reading For Extra Credit, Estimate Your Chances of Winning: Ballparking Giveaway
We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Since I’ve gotten a bunch of questions via email and Twitter, this probably deserves its own post: Yes, I’m aware that the ScienceBlogs front page and the Last 24 Hours and ScienceBlogs Select RSS feeds have gone dead. Here’s the story: The crack technical team and ScienceBlogs Headquarters is working around the clock to upgrade… Continue reading We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Links for 2012-05-07
Confrontation with my grand dad-The difficult task of proving the earth is round! « lazychemist To have grown up with an idea that earth is not flat, it never occurred to me that I will ever need to prove that to anyone, at least not to someone in my own family. But given that my… Continue reading Links for 2012-05-07
Entangled In the Past: “Experimental delayed-choice entanglement swapping”
Enough slagging of beloved popularizers– how about some hard-core physics. The second of three extremely cool papers published last week is this Nature Physics paper from the Zeilinger group in Vienna, producers of many awesome papers about quantum mechanics. Ordinarily, this would be a hard paper to write up, becase Nature Physics are utter bastards,… Continue reading Entangled In the Past: “Experimental delayed-choice entanglement swapping”
Links for 2012-05-04
Amazon.com: The Best Science Writing Online 2012 (9780374533342): Jennifer Ouellette, Bora Zivkovic: Books Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way we think about science– from fluids to fungi, poisons to pirates. Featuring noted authors and journalists as… Continue reading Links for 2012-05-04