As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about what draws the most traffic here, I went through and pulled out the top 20 posts from the blog (by traffic) for the calendar year 2014 that were first published in 2014. Numbers after the links are the fraction of the total pageviews for the year that each… Continue reading Top Blogging Actually Done in 2014
Category: Science
The Golden Age of Blogging Was 2010
When I was writing up the state of blogging post last weekend, I thought about pulling together a Top Ten Posts thing, but didn’t have time. also, Google analytics moved a bunch of stuff since the last time I used it, so I had a hard time locating the right options. Having tracked it down,… Continue reading The Golden Age of Blogging Was 2010
Three More Things Every Human Should Know About Light
Rhett Allain has a list of 5 Things Every Human Should Know About Light, to tie in with the International Year of Light, and it’s a good list with lots of .gifs. Of course, there are some gaps, so let me offer some additional things that everyone ought to know about light: — Light Is… Continue reading Three More Things Every Human Should Know About Light
Science Story: Not a Bath House
(When I launched the Advent Calendar of Science Stories series back in December, I had a few things in mind, but wasn’t sure I’d get through 24 days. In the end, I had more than enough material, and in fact didn’t end up using a few of my original ideas. So I’ll do a few… Continue reading Science Story: Not a Bath House
The Big Picture of Eureka
No, not the little cover .jpg that I use as the “featured image” to tag these posts promoting Eureka. The post title refers to the Big Picture Science radio show from the SETI insitute. I’m one of the people interviewed in the latest episode, Maria Konnikova (author of Mastermind) and Louis Liebenberg. This is another… Continue reading The Big Picture of Eureka
The Bright Side of the BICEP2 Story
I’ve done yet another piece for The Conversation, this one expanding on something I’ve been saying in interviews promoting Eureka: that knowing the process of science can help people sort good science from bad. In this particular case, I take the somewhat #slatepitch-y angle that the recent high-profile unraveling of the BICEP2 experiment’s claim to… Continue reading The Bright Side of the BICEP2 Story
Stuff That Doesn’t Belong on Student Evaluations
This was a good week for “Chad bristles at side issues of massively reshared stories,” with the Vox and gender bias stories, and also this PBS piece urging parents to tell their kids science stories. That probably seems surprising, given what I do around here, but while I fully endorse the end of that piece,… Continue reading Stuff That Doesn’t Belong on Student Evaluations
Some Notes on Gender Bias in Elementary School Math
I’ve seen a lot of reshares of this report about the long-term effect of gender bias in elementary math, which comes from an NBER working paper about a study of Israeli schools. The usual presentation highlights one specific result, namely that on a math test graded by teachers who knew the names of the students,… Continue reading Some Notes on Gender Bias in Elementary School Math
Science Story: Impossible Conditions
(When I launched the Advent Calendar of Science Stories series back in December, I had a few things in mind, but wasn’t sure I’d get through 24 days. In the end, I had more than enough material, and in fact didn’t end up using a few of my original ideas. So I’ll do a few… Continue reading Science Story: Impossible Conditions
On Intelligence and Talent
Probably the dumbest person I’ve ever met in my life was a housemate in grad school. I didn’t do my lab work on campus, so I wasn’t living in a neighborhood where cheap housing was rented to students, but in a place where folks were either genuinely poor, or in the market for very temporary… Continue reading On Intelligence and Talent