I have a big stack of exams and lab reports to grade, so I need to go off someplace where I don’t have Internet access and do that. In my absence, here’s a Dorky Poll question inspired by recent news: Which Nobel laureate (in any field) is the craziest? There’s no real shortage of scientists… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Craziest Nobel Laureate
Category: Science
Life Cycle of Science PR
One of the fun things about EurekAlert is that it allows you to trace the full life cycle of the publicization of science in a way that used to be impossible for a regular person. For example, take the recent “Ring of Dark Matter” story. First, there’s a rumor of a result. This first stage… Continue reading Life Cycle of Science PR
A Billion Tons of Nickel
Via Toby, a detailed proposal for floating colonies on Venus. I heard Geoff Landis talk about this at Boskone a while back– the basic idea is that the Venusian atmosphere is so dense that you could easily build structures that would float high enough up in the atmosphere to be above the hellish temperatures. You… Continue reading A Billion Tons of Nickel
Dorky Poll: Presidential Questions
I was expounding on my dislike of the routine questions being asked of Wesley Clark last night (see previous post) to a colleague from Math, who suggested “Which do you prefer, C or Fortran? And if you use Fortran, do you declare all your variables?” as an alternative to boring policy questions that produce nothing… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Presidential Questions
Thrilling Tales of Astrophysics
Over in LiveJournal Land, James Nicoll is pining for the good old days: I’m going through one of my “I would kill for some new SF” phases, SF in this case being defined in a narrow and idiosyncratic way. In particular, I want the modern version of those old SF stories where SF writers, having… Continue reading Thrilling Tales of Astrophysics
Science Promotions on the Web
Two links to things promoting science on the web: 1) What’s the Greatest Innovation? Spiked online asked a bunch of famous people to describe the greatest innovation in their field, and compiled the responses. As with most of these things, there’s some interesting stuff in the responses, and a lot of predictable answers of the… Continue reading Science Promotions on the Web
Undergraduate Research: Why It Works
I wrote yesterday’s post about the undergraduate research study very quickly, basically just to note the existence of the survey. It’s sparked some good discussion, though, and I’d like to take another post or two to expand on what I think it means. Of course, the beneficial effect of undergraduate research seems almost obvious if… Continue reading Undergraduate Research: Why It Works
The Genius Gap
Kate was scheduled to argue a case Friday morning in Federal court in Manhattan, so we decided to make a weekend of it. I drove down after class on Friday, and we went to dinner with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on Friday night, and spent Saturday at the Met, getting some culture. Kate’s a… Continue reading The Genius Gap
New Rocky Planet
I have two labs on Tuesdays, which is even more exhausting than it sounds, so I went to be early last night. And woke up to find a whole new planet. You guys need to give me some warning about these things… Anyway, the planet in question orbits a red dwarf star a mere 20… Continue reading New Rocky Planet
Dorky Poll: Science In Your Lifetime
I’ve got another long lab this afternoon, so I’m stealing an idea for an audience-participation thread from James Nicoll: Name five things we didn’t know in the year that you were born that make the universe a richer place to think about. This is actually a really interesting exercise for showing how rapidly the world… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Science In Your Lifetime