Links Dump
drorzel | June 15, 2012In which we look at the job situation for different specializations, yet another dumb modest proposal to fix education, and a smackdown of NBA players who are ignorant of fashion history.
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Physics and Physicists: Job Advertisements For Theorists and Experimentalists In Physics Today Apr/May 2012
Anyone reading my blog on the Problem in Pursuing To Be A Theorist would have read comments that disputed my claim that there are less job positions for theorists to practice what they want to do versus that of experimentalists. To make a check on how far off (or on) I was, I did a quick…
drorzel | June 14, 2012In which physics tackles a burning question from the world of computing, a famous biologist says something idiotic, and the world's smallest violin plays for frequent fliers.
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Does Your Download Progress Bar Lie to You? | Wired Science | Wired.com
Different browsers do this differently. Some show a little bar to indicate how much of the file you have downloaded as well as an estimate of how much longer you can expect to wait. Well, now the time has come. I am going to check these download progress bars. Why? I have no idea.
"Was Einstein Right About Imagination?" - THE DAILY RIFF…
drorzel | June 12, 2012In which we look at a great commencement speech, the oversupply of mediocrity, the nominees for a science blogging award, and Facebook games distilled to their essence.
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Wellesley High grads told: “You’re not special” | The Swellesley Report
Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been…
drorzel | June 4, 2012In which we look at a prize for science blogging, a new book club, and the unhappy situation of associate professors.
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3quarksdaily: Sean Carroll to Judge 4th Annual 3QD Science Prize
As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open, and will end at 11:59 pm EST on June 9, 2012. There will then be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza…
drorzel | June 3, 2012In which we look at one of the great spoofs of all time, a clever twist on a viral physics video, one of the great cartoons of all time, the puzzling lack of relationship between violence and the NFL's popularity, the new approach of the US National soccer team, one of the greatest musicians of all time, and the diary of a Yankee.
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The Great Moon Hoax of 1835
In which Richard Adams Locke wins the Internet 150 years before it existed.
Day 170: Horizontally Dropped Slinky - Noschese 180
You probable know what happens when you drop a slinky vertically, but what happens when you…
drorzel | May 31, 2012In which we look at creepy fairytales, the writing of science books, when overfishing is actually okay, and what it means to be an experimental physicist.
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10 Creepy Details Glossed Over By Modern Versions Of Fairy Tales
A surprising number of these can still be found in SteelyKid's fairy tale books.
Making the leap from news to books: Critical questions |
Authors of science books often begin as writers of science news. As a science journalist who is looking to write a book, I’ve become very curious as to how other science journalists made the leap forward. I suspected that the…
drorzel | May 30, 2012In which we look at the evolution of Republican attitudes toward higher education, the early days of nuclear secrets, the science of communicating science, the amazing things you find in textbooks, and the unwritten rules of science journalism.
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Confessions of a Community College Dean: Thoughts on Romney and Higher Ed
Over the past decade or so, though, Republicans -- as opposed to conservatives, which they are not any more in any meaningful sense -- have shifted their position. Now they’re openly hostile to higher education, except in for-profit form. Rick Santorum’s “what a…
drorzel | May 29, 2012In which we look at relativistic rockets, scientific revolutions, and the mathematical connection between entanglement and nonlocality.
The Relativistic Rocket
Science fiction writers can make use of worm holes or warp drives to overcome this restriction, but it is not clear that such things can ever be made to work in reality. Another way to get around the problem may be to use the relativistic effects of time dilation and length contraction to cover large distances within a reasonable time span for those aboard a space ship. If a rocket accelerates at 1g (9.81 m/s2) the crew will…
drorzel | May 28, 2012In which we post a new collection of random links in an effort to see if the RSS feeds actually work now but aren't showing anything because I haven't posted anything.
Craig Sager's Suits and Sideline Sartorial Disasters - Grantland
You've been blown off your couch and knocked from your barstool with disbelief — even though you know it's coming. The structure of an "NBA on TNT" broadcast never really changes, so you always know! Still: Cue the beer spit take and the salsa sliding off the nacho you can't remember to put into your gaping mouth. Because you can never bring yourself to believe…
drorzel | May 21, 2012Back of the Envelope Problems
A collection of classic estimation problems, with answers, written by E.M. Purcell for the American Journal of Physics back in the day.
nanoscale views: The unreasonable clarity of E. M. Purcell
Purcell had the insight that in a cavity, the number of states available for photons is not quadratic in frequency anymore. Instead, a cavity on resonance has a photon density of states that is proportional to the "quality factor", Q, of the cavity, and inversely proportional to the size of the cavity. The better the cavity and the smaller the cavity, the higher the…
drorzel | May 18, 2012The poor and their time are soon parted § Unqualified Offerings
Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because I read this article about how the poor get trapped in a system that rains shit down on them. No, I'm not here to offer the poor advice on how to find good prices. They know far more about that than I do. Rather, I do this to point out that good decision-making depends in part on having the time and space to make a good decision, somethign that is harder if you are caught in Catch-22 situations, things that pile one nasty consequence after another onto the smallest of mistakes.…
drorzel | May 16, 2012n+1: Lions in Winter, Part One
A very long and thorough history of the New York Public Library, how its current plans to gut the main research library came about, and what they mean for the idea of a public research library.
Correcting the Record on College Graduates and Job Prospects by Joshua Tucker | Washington Monthly
Using the same American Community Survey for 2009 and 2010 as Fogg and Harrington, but focussing on actual unemployment by major, Carnevale, Cheat and Strohl (Hard Times, Georgetown University, Center for Education and the Workforce, 2011) have similar findings (p. 7).…
drorzel | May 14, 2012Surviving the World - Lesson 1395 - Arguing
And, once again, the internet has been explained in under 20 words.
If Publishing Is Dead, What Happens to Non-Fiction? « Maureen Ogle
Consider: I started working on the meat book in early 2007. I finished it in early 2012. You do the math. I spent five years researching and writing the beer book, and of that, a great deal of money and time was spent on traveling to specialized libraries. The Key West book took me two years to research and write. How did I pay for that? By entering into a partnership with a traditional publishing house that…
drorzel | May 11, 2012Next Time, Fail Better - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Humanities students should be more like computer-science students. I decided that as I sat in on a colleague's computer-science course during the beginning of this, my last, semester in the classroom. I am moving into administration full time, and I figured that this was my last chance to learn some of the cool new digital-humanities stuff I've been reading about. What eventually drove me out of the class (which I was enjoying tremendously) was the time commitment: The work of coding, I discovered, was an endless round of…
drorzel | May 10, 2012A rare interview with former no. 1 overall pick Greg Oden about his injury-plagued career - Grantland
He was just ... Greg. For instance, as we were finishing our meal, three separate groups of fans approached him and asked for autographs and pictures. Like always, he granted their requests with an annoyed expression, didn't say any more than three words to anyone, and then shook his head as they walked away. "You're a fun-loving guy with a ton of personality," I said. "So why do you hate it so much when people approach you in public? Why don't you let your personality shine through and smile…
drorzel | May 9, 2012Confessions 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 who clings to the myth of the academic meritocracy is invited to explain the speed of the increase in people in this position. Yes, I work hard at my job, but so do plenty of other people; denying the role of luck is just ungracious. That said, though, I wonder if this article - and others…
drorzel | May 8, 2012A 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. Two of these lengths make up the side length of the large square, so â24 = 2â6. 24 can also be divided into 3 rectangles, each with an area of 8. Again, correct, but not helpful. How to simplify â45 as 3â5 and â72 as 6â2 are also shown above. Again, factors that are perfect squares are key.
Papercore
The number…
drorzel | May 7, 2012Confrontation 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 grand dad (a very religious guy), who never had any formal education and who never came out of a hilly village in a poor part of an already poor country, we finally had yet another science versus religious 'commonsense' confrontation. He, like many other elders of the village where firm that Earth is flat, and…
drorzel | May 4, 2012Amazon.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 well as the brightest up-and-comers writing today, this collection provides a comprehensive look at the fascinating, innovative, and trailblazing scientific achievements and breakthroughs of 2011, along with elegant and…
drorzel | May 3, 2012Is Cosmology in Shambles? « Galileo's Pendulum
I'll fill in more about each of these studies shortly, but note in both cases, the authors make very strong statements about the very existence of dark matter, including the quotations that begin this post. In fact, the National Geographic coverage of the second article states things even more strongly than the paper. Pavel Kroupa, the third author of the study, is quoted as saying, "It means that we have to completely and utterly rethink cosmology.... Cosmology is basically in a shambles now." You can probably guess already that I don't see…