Blogs
drorzel | August 1, 2008The Borg assimilates another quality blogger: Built On Facts is joining ScienceBlogs. If you haven't been reading Matt's blog, it's one of the best basic physics blogs around, with math and everything.
It'll be good to have another non-philatelic scientist around. Update your blogrolls accordingly.
drorzel | July 31, 2008"The Internet is silly!"
I turn around from the computer. "Yes it is," I say to the dog, "But what, specifically, makes you say that?"
"All these posts about physics theories. Comparing them to women and men and stupid wizards, and relationships. It's silly."
"Yes, well, it does seem to be the diversion of the moment."
"Anyway, they've got it all wrong. Physics theories are like my toys."
"oh, god..." I was afraid of this.
"Go on, name a theory, and I'll tell you how it's like my toys."
"Do I have to?"
"Yes! Go on, name a theory!"
"Fine. Classical mechanics."
"Oh, that's easy. Classical…
drorzel | July 27, 2008A question raised in comments to yesterday's rant about humanities types looking down on people who don't know the basics of their fields, while casually dismissing math and science:
[I]t occurs to me that it would be useful if someone could determine, honestly, whether the humanities professors feel the same sense of condescension among science and engineering professors.
This is obviously not a question I can answer, but I agree that it would be good to know. So, how about it?
drorzel | July 27, 2008Over at bloggingheads, they've posted a video conversation between Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong and Sabine Hossenfelder of Backreaction. They talk about string theory a bit, as you might imagine, but also about a wide range of issues in math and physics, and math- and physics-blogging.
Sabine evidently had some difficulty getting a connection to work out, so the video quality is low. The video doesn't add all that much value, though, and it's a fairly interesting conversation.
The whole bloggingheads.tv thing is kind of an odd format, and I can't help wondering what it would be like. Maybe I…
drorzel | July 25, 2008I've hit a point in the book-writing where I'm sort of spinning my wheels: waiting for beta-reader comments, fiddling with figures, looking at dog pictures for potential illustrations (my contract calls for me to provide some number of reproduction-quality pictures of the dog). This would be the perfect time to do some blogging.
The problem is, there's nothing jumping out saying "Blog me! Blog me!" at the moment. I've got some longer-term ideas, and I may start those over the weekend, but there's nothing coming to mind for immediate blogging.
So, let's throw this open to the wisdom of crowds…
drorzel | July 15, 2008As you have no doubt noticed, my early-morning review of Randy Olson's Sizzle was part of a concerted effort to get blogs to review the movie all on the same day. It's an experiment of sorts in using blogs to promote the movie.
Unfortunately for Olson, it seems to be an experiment designed to test the old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell your name right." Most of the blog reviews collected at the ScienceBlogs page for the film were, um, less than glowing. My own kind of "Meh." review is one of the better ones on ScienceBlogs.
Having looked at a whole…
drorzel | July 9, 2008The Corporate Masters have launched a new group blog, Next Generation Energy, that will be providing regular commentary on energy issues and possible new sources of energy. The authors include a few people already on ScienceBlogs (William Connolley, James Hrynyshyn, and Sheril Kirshenbaum), along with some researchers on sustainable development and alternative energy.
They haven't posted about perpetual motion (view the source before commenting) yet, but the blog is still young...
drorzel | June 29, 2008Via Matt Yglesias, an interesting twist on the shuffle-play "meme":
1. Take out your iPod (or Zune, I guess...really, who buys a Zune?)
2. Press shuffle songs.
3. Answer the following: a) How many songs before you come to one that would absolutely disqualify you from being President? b) What is that song?
This sounds like fun. Whooosh goes the randomizer...
And I'm screwed. The first song up is "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" by Bob Dylan. He's a former hippie radical, much too divisive a figure to be associated with. Also the song is kind of a downer. And "Even the President of the…
drorzel | June 27, 2008Over at Science After Sunclipse, Blake has a very long post about the limitations of science blogs. Brian at Laelaps responds, and Tom at Swans On Tea agrees.
You might be wondering whether I have an opinion on this. Since I'm going to be talking about it at a workshop in September (first talk, no less...), I better have some opinions..
The original post is very long, but can probably best be summarized by the following paragraph:
My thesis is that it's not yet possible to get a science education from reading science blogs, and a major reason for this is because bloggers don't have the…
drorzel | June 16, 2008The Corporate Masters have posted a new Ask a ScienceBlogger question:
The question (submitted by a reader) is this: There are many, many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still, there are many, many more academics who don't. So, why do you blog and how does blogging help with your research?
Taking these in the opposite order, how does blogging help with my research? The answer is simple: it doesn't. Not one bit.
I am an experimental physicist, so my research is done in the lab, not
in my office (well, data analysis, when I have data to analyze…
drorzel | June 10, 2008I'm giving the final exam in my E&M class tonight (from 5-7 pm, thank you oh-so-much, Central Scheduling), which you might think would bode well for blogging in the future. However, I also have two summer students starting on Monday, a baby on the way, and major book revisions to do that need to get done before the baby arrives, if that's possible.
Somethings's got to give, and the blog is it. There's just no way I can maintain the posting levels I have for the past several months, so I'm not even going to try. The site won't be going completely dark-- I've got a few things in the mental…
drorzel | May 28, 2008I made it to Happy Valley without incident, though it is Orange Cone Season in Pennsylvania, and I spent a lot of time dodging construction. Happily, there really wasn't anything important at the meeting last night.
So I skipped out on the welcome reception to have dinner and a few beers with Kevin and RPM and the world-famous Prof. Steve Steve. They're good guys, as stamp collectors go...
Kevin and RPM both posted pictures, but I'm too lazy to bother right now. Maybe later. I'll definitely post something about actual physics later, but for now, I need to run off to hear more talks, and look…
drorzel | May 26, 2008Most of my reaction to this weekend's Emily Gould article in the Times was "Gosh, who knew that writing for Gawker might have a corrosive effect on your personal life...," but there were some interesting bits. She did a nice job explaining how blogging can be sort of addictive, and also had some good bits on the phenomenon of blog fame:
I started seeing a therapist again, and we talked about my feelings of being inordinately scrutinized. "It's important to remember that you're not a celebrity," she told me. How could I tell her, without coming off as having delusions of grandeur, that, in a…
drorzel | May 25, 2008Via Lara, a "meme" calling for the posting of random quotes. Because why not?
"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe. "
Ray Bradbury (1920 - )
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. "
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988), Time Enough For Love
"Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions. "
Cullen Hightower
"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. "…
drorzel | May 12, 2008The Corporate Masters are holding a workspace photo contest:
Now hard at work on the next issue, Seed editors want to see the typical or not-so-typical places where you do science. For the chance to get your scientific work space featured in Seed, please send a photo of it to art@seedmediagroup.com by Tuesday, May 13th at 5:00pm EST. Please write "Where I Do Science Photo Submission" in the subject line, and send as high a resolution image as you can. In the body of the email, please include: your name; what kind of science you do; and the location of the photo.
My office is moderately…
drorzel | May 11, 2008Jacques Distler asks the question that every blog-reader has asked at some point:
Did all of this exist before the Web? Or have people just gotten a whole lot weirder in the past 15 years?
(I'm not even going to attempt to describe what triggered the question...)
I tend to think that the weirdness was always there, and the Internet has just made it easier for the weird people to find each other. You can find antecedents of the social Internet in things like mimeographed fanzines and nineteenth-century magazine letter columns, so I suspect that for any modern weirdness, there are probably…
drorzel | April 27, 2008Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled:
You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…
drorzel | April 22, 2008When I start to lecture, I go into Teaching Mode, which affects the whole way I present myself. I speak at a slightly higher pitch, and the whole cadence of my speech changes. I talk a little bit faster, but repeat myself more, and speak in a more formal style.
The funny thing is that I'll drop in and out of Teaching Mode during the course of a class (or a research talk, which gets a very similar treatment). When I respond to questions in the middle of a class, I usually do so in something closer to my normal tone of voice, returning to Teaching Mode when I return to my prepared lecture.…
drorzel | April 10, 2008I'm not sure whether he's making some kind of obscure point, or just trolling, but John Scalzi gave a recent installment of his "Big Idea" series over to the witterings of "Vox Day," talking about his book The Irrational Atheist. Curse you, Scalzi, for getting me to even look at that.
And it's not just me-- John undoubtedly has readers who had never encountered Mr. "Day" before. Don't you know that exposing innocent people to "Vox Day" has been classified as a war crime, and earnes you ten thousand years in Purgatory?
Anyway, having spent a bunch of time recently complaining about a lack of…