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j7uy5 | November 16, 2007The San Antonio Express-News
href="http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/114296">reports
that "Reviewers have found 109,263 errors in sample copies of math
textbooks to be used next fall in Texas."
One second-grade math book, for example,
has 4 plus 7 equaling 10.
OK, anybody can make a mistake. But at least own up to it.
Their explanation:
Many of the math book errors resulted in
faulty translations from English- to Spanish-language textbooks...
Uh, I think in Spain, 7+4 still equals 11.
j7uy5 | November 16, 2007
href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlzimmer/sets/72157601351535771/">
class="inset" alt="click" title="click for photoset"
src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1435/1173226117_faab61f1eb_t.jpg"
align="left" border="0" height="75" width="100">Carl
Zimmer has been
href="http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2007/08/06/branded_with_science.php">documenting
the results of various scientist's impulses to have themselves inked
with images related to science. The phenomenon is something
of an oddity, though, since scientists tend to be more on the
contemplative side, as opposed to being…
tfk | November 15, 2007I've had Jesca Hoop's stunning "Intelligentactile 101" stuck in my head for months, ever since an mp3blog posted it. It came up in iTunes today, and I checked to see if the album is out yet and it is. Awesome. "Intelligentactile 101" by Jesca Hoop from the album Kismet (2007, 4:20).
Fingertips introduced the song by writing:
"Intelligentactile 101" springs along with a finger-tapping boppiness, and in the boppy course of things Hoop rather casually gives us a generous array of melodies (there seem to be four distinct sections: verse, bridge, chorus, and something else) to capture her…
j7uy5 | November 14, 2007The all-new, completely free LOLCats calendar for 2008 is here. It is a 2MB PDF download.
j7uy5 | November 11, 2007This is a neat project; I hope more people participate.
The
map below shows the USA divided into regions, based upon their
emotional ties to particular areas. Thus it is not based upon
borders or any other typical geographic boundary.
I had to shrink it to fit, so it is hard to read.
The original, full size version is
href="http://www.commoncensus.org/maps/national_1280.gif">here.
The map is the result of a survey being conducted by the
href="http://www.commoncensus.org/index.php">CommonCensus
Map Project.
At this point, they do not consider it to be very accurate.
That is…
sb admin | November 9, 2007The Onion News Network brings us In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough? Satire of a talk show with pundits who promote more and better spying on people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Note: It's "people diagnosed with" (or just "people with") and not "schizophrenics" as people are more than their differences and labels. But that's not as funny, is it?
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007Medical/technical illustrators too often are forgotten.
They add value to publications, and need to be compensated.
So what will be the effect, as open-access publishing becomes
more common?
It is hard to know for sure, as the whole field is evolving so rapidly.
But Peter Suber, writing at
href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/11/does-oa-help-or-hurt-scientific.html">Open
Access News, thinks the OA movement will be beneficial to
illustrators. He links to an article by
href="http://www.medical-illustrations.ca/2007/11/02/open-access-and-medical-art/">Tim
Fedak, which…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2007I am glad to see this, because I have never played the game,
but have been curious. So I gather that the game is mildly
amusing, but gets old.
via
href="http://parody.videosift.com/video/What-Second-Life-is-REALLY-Like"
title="What Second Life is REALLY Like">videosift.com
j7uy5 | November 4, 2007Yes, it has come to this. Increasingly, college
graduates are trading their mortarboards for hard hats. Why?
Because that is where the jobs are. Plus, there is a looming
wave of retirements, as most current coal miners are in their 50's.
The story is at
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p01s05-usgn.html">Christian
Science Monitor.
Note: it is not as gloomy as it sounds.
j7uy5 | November 3, 2007A site called LibriVox
now has a catalog of over 1,000 free audiobooks. They are all
in the public domain; all have been read and recorded by volunteers.
It's a nice supplement to the 20,000+ free books in the
href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">Project
Gutenberg Online Book Catalog.
HT:
href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/11/librivox-releases-its-1000th-free.html">Open-Access
News
sb admin | October 31, 2007Another in the hilarious vintage BBC Look Around You series, this is 4 - Ghosts. Bwa-ha-ha.
j7uy5 | October 29, 2007A guy was sitting at a stoplight, minding his own business,
when a wrecking ball crashed into the trunk. The man was not
seriously injured.
The wrecking ball was being used in demolition, but apparently had a
defective cable.
HT: DNA
Lounge.
href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07191/800583-85.stm">Meadville
mishap defines wrecking ballOne breaks loose, goes on tear near college
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
By Steve Levin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Alex Habay was in his Ford Taurus, stopped
at a traffic light in downtown Meadville, Crawford County, yesterday
morning, thinking about nothing,…
j7uy5 | October 29, 2007When he said:
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain
search for absolute security.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
(source)
sb admin | October 29, 2007
You lol'ed at science education spoof Look Around You: Brain, and now for Halloween here's Look Around You: Ghosts. In this nine minute pseudoscience mockumentary you'll learn things like, "Ectoplasm is perfectly safe to eat, and tastes like pig's milk." Spooky!
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007From
href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/24/baloondog-anatomy.html">BoingBoing,
an illustration of the neuroanatomy of balloon dogs:
Original source:
href="http://freeny.deviantart.com/art/Pneumatic-Anatomica-53318794">Pneumatic
Anatomica.
sb admin | October 24, 2007 Omni Brain met its fundraising goal of $1000 for music education programs through DonorsChoose. Thank you to everyone who's donated. You rock! Now 30 kids will too.
But it'd be okay, you know, permissible (haha) to exceed our goal if you'd still like to help a Lisa Simpson. A few of the programs Omni Brain earmarked are still seeking fulfillment. Here, an Indianapolis music teacher describes his/her wish to teach kids science and music together:
I want to set up a program for fourth through sixth grade having students work on the scientific method of experimenting with sound. The resources I…
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007Most people expect a wait when they call tech support.
Knowledgeable users arrange to have something to do to kill
some time: a book, magazine, something like that.
This is the story of Timothy Scott Short, who is going to have to wait
a very long time.
Short stole a specialized printer, used to make driver's licenses.
When he got it home, he realized he'd need the printer
drivers. So he called tech support.
Two days after the theft, Digimarc's tech
help line got a call from someone named "Scott" who wanted to buy
software for the same model of printer that was stolen from the
Missouri…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2007When I was in junior high, I used to do this. I
don't know
why. Probably I was bored with something that is inherently
boring. It does not spice things up very much. But
some spice is better than none.
href="http://www.hourlylaff.com/15-amazing-ways-to-tie-your-sneakers/">This
article shows 15 idiosyncratic ways to ties one's shoelaces.
I did not do all 15, but I did do several. The Loop
Back was my favorite.
HT:
href="http://tipnut.com/15-amazing-ways-to-tie-your-sneakers/">TipNut.
Most of the tips on TipNut are practical. This one is not.
Even so, it is nice to know that…
sb admin | October 23, 2007You're seeing other ScienceBlogs readers donate, now join the love train*.
A rare serious post from Steve explains The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education with DonorsChoose. Playing an instrument has cognitive and developmental benefits.
That reason formed an episode of The Simpsons, too: Lisa's Sax. Homer wants to buy an air conditioner but Lisa needs help to nurture her brain with more than Springfield Elementary has to offer. Unsure what to do, he walks out of Moe's toward It Blows, with $200 in his pocket. He sees a music store and says, "Musical instrument?…
sb admin | October 18, 2007
Via The Neurocritic.
brainscannr by Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson. Try it with your name. Hot! :)