Links Dump
drorzel | June 13, 2011
Maru the Cat does dimensional analysis : Built on Facts
"Here is a picture of (I think) Maru the cat playing in a bag. He loves bags.
Here is the same picture of Maru, at half the size:
Now imagine that Maru is a physicist and the pictures are not pictures but instead windows into the universe he occupies, separate from ours with (possibly) its own unique set of physical laws. The only difference between the two universes is that one has the lengths of everything reduced by a factor of 2.
Can the parallel versions of Maru tell which universe they're in - the smaller or the larger? "
(tags:…
drorzel | June 11, 2011
The National Oral History - Grantland
"The National Sports Daily, on the one hand, is a long-dead and short-lived newspaper that, for 18 months, between January of 1990 and June of 1991, attempted to cover sports in a way that no other American publication would, could, or had ever even imagined. On the other hand, the paper is emblematic of the parts of culture and media that were not yet ready to converge. Typewriters and satellites. Mexican titans of industry and American daily news. Content in too many forms. Born from an impetuous whim only a billionaire would call a business plan, the…
drorzel | June 10, 2011
Chuck Klosterman: How an obscure junior college basketball game in North Dakota made history - Grantland
"[S]omething crazy happened in this particular game.
In this particular game, a team won with only three players on the floor. And this was not a "metaphorical" victory or a "moral" victory: They literally won the game, 84-81, finishing the final 66 seconds by playing three-on-five. To refer to this as a David and Goliath battle devalues the impact of that cliché; it was more like a blind, one-armed David fighting Goliath without a rock. Yet there was no trick to this win and there was…
drorzel | June 8, 2011
What is morally off-limits in pop culture? | Music | The Big Questions | The A.V. Club
"What I can't relate to as I read the defenses written by Powers and Barthel is the implicit denial that anything might offend them. This is where the argument that morality always should (or can) be kept separate from artistic judgments falls apart for me, because while I instinctively side with the Non-Moralists, I know there are times when I must switch sides. It's difficult for me to believe that we all don't switch sides from time to time. This is not easy to admit, because acknowledging that…
drorzel | June 7, 2011
Career Advice: Advice for Grad Students - Inside Higher Ed
"Some of the greatest catastrophes in graduate education could have been avoided by a little intelligent foresight. Be cynical. Assume that your proposed research might not work, and that one of your faculty advisers might become unsupportive -- or even hostile. Plan for alternatives."
(tags: academia education science inside-higher-ed jobs)
Views: Telling It as It Is - Inside Higher Ed
"One of the stories on a recent episode of The MacNeil/Lehrer Report featured a 2010 graduate with a degree in anthropology who could only find a…
drorzel | June 6, 2011
Book Review: ESPN - WSJ.com
"The modest idea of Bill and Scott Rasmussen--a failed hockey broadcaster and his college-dropout son--ESPN is now, according to James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, "the most important component of the Disney empire, worth more than the entire National Football League, worth more than the NBA, MLB, and the NHL put together." It is also a relentlessly vacuous admixture of forced humor, sentimentality and petty corruption. There is of course no contradiction here, but if there is any surprise on offer in "Those Guys Have All the Fun," an oral history of the network…
drorzel | June 5, 2011
Bulb In, Bulb Out - NYTimes.com
"Over the past few years, in conditions of strict secrecy, a multinational team of scientists has been making a mighty effort to change the light bulb. The prototype they've developed is four inches tall, with a familiar tapered shape, and unlighted, it resembles a neon yellow mushroom. Screw it in and switch it on, though, and it blazes with a voluptuous radiance. It represents what people within the lighting industry often call their holy grail, an invention that reproduces the soft luminance of the incandescent bulb -- Thomas Edison's century-old technology…
drorzel | June 4, 2011
"Gone For Goode" | Homicide: Life On The Street | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club
"Homicide is not The Wire. But, maybe because so many of the people who were central to its creative team had developed their skills somewhere else besides television, it was something that no one had ever quite seen on TV before: an experimental cop show. By definition, experiments don't always work, and among the reasons the show never became a popular success, there are some good ones. The editing, with its reliance on jump cuts, could be mannered, and so could the dialogue, which sometimes strained to be…
drorzel | June 3, 2011
Practical Tips on Writing a Book from 23 Brilliant Authors | NeuroTribes
More or less what you would expect: idiosyncratic, largely contradictory, but with a few general patterns.
(tags: writing books business publishing blogs science)
drorzel | June 2, 2011
Mpemba's baffling discovery: can hot water freeze before cold? (1969) | Skulls in the Stars
""My name is Erasto B Mpemba, and I am going to tell you about my discovery, which was due to misusing a refrigerator."
With those words, Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba entered scientific history, and also sparked a scientific mystery and controversy that remains ongoing today, some 40 years later!
The phenomenon Mpemba found is now known as the Mpemba effect, and is the very counterintuitive idea that, under certain circumstances, a quantity of very hot/boiling liquid can freeze faster than an equal…
drorzel | June 1, 2011
I've Gone and Done It Now: What It's Like Without the Muslim Headscarf « Inner Workings of My Mind
"I experimented last week. I took off my hijab - the headscarf many Muslim women wear to cover their hair.
I have been wearing a headscarf when I leave the privacy of my home for 25 years, since I was 17. That's a long long time in human years.
I took my hijab off during a recent trip to Europe. I wanted to know what it would feel like. I wanted to know how people's perceptions of me would change and how my perception of myself would change."
(tags: culture world religion society blogs gender…
drorzel | May 31, 2011
Richard Dansky » Seven Questions That Need To Be Asked About Writing About Writing
"1-Why do so many writers spend so much time writing about writing?
Because deep down, many of us are still in thrall to the delightfully archaic notion of "Write What You Know" - which, in some form or other has been zombified since the first writer picked up a travel guide and said, "Gee, I guess I don't have to go to Sasketchewan to write this thing after all[i]". And since we all write, we all theoretically know about writing - as opposed to, say, the history of the Adams-Onis treaty, string theory, or…
drorzel | May 30, 2011
Guest Post from Author Nick Mamatas: "The Writer's Life: Actually, It's Awesome!" « Suvudu - Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, Movies, Comics, and Games
"In my new book Starve Better, I talk about writing short subjects--both fiction and non-fiction--with an eye toward writing effectively and efficiently and making some money. Not good money so much as fast money. Relatively fast anyway, if slower than a weekly paycheck. For ten years I played the full-time freelance game before deciding to take a full-time job, and though I love predictable cash flow and dental insurance and paid time off…
drorzel | May 29, 2011
"Literally Unbelievable"
Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook
(tags: silly onion internet blogs facebook stupid)
drorzel | May 28, 2011
Bob Dylan is turning 70: Let's take a look at some of the weird shit he's done | Music | The A.V. Club Twin Cities
"Dylan's musical brilliance is already a solidified fact, his onstage antics have already been covered, and plenty more ink has been spilled about his standing as a prickly interview subject, so why not, instead, honor the man with a list of some of his most randomly wacky moments?"
(tags: music culture history avclub blogs silly)
The story behind the world's oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago - io9
" In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered…
drorzel | May 27, 2011
The Power of Hunger and Stairs: House of Stairs | tor.com | Science fiction and fantasy | Blog posts
"House of Stairs may be one of the most disturbing and memorable young adult science fiction books ever. I first encountered it in junior high, and it left a chill that has never completely left. Written in the 1970s, in a period of deep distrust of government, it is a chilling tale of brainwashing, governmental power, distrust, and stairs, terrifying for its bleak visions of humanity and our future."
(tags: sf books blogs tor review)
drorzel | May 26, 2011
Career Advice: 10 Tips for Junior Faculty - Inside Higher Ed
The usual mix of sound general advice and "Thank God I don't work at a big university/ in the humanities."
(tags: academia jobs tenure inside-higher-ed)
6 Civil War Myths Everyone Believes (That Are Total B.S.) | Cracked.com
"Now, we know what you're thinking: What the hell is that "Confederate flag" everyone keeps fighting over today? It's a dark blue variant of the Second Confederate Navy Jack. Although occasionally used on the battlefield as just one of countless regimental colors, this particular version enjoyed renewed…
drorzel | May 25, 2011
News: Major Decisions - Inside Higher Ed
"For 15 broad categories of majors, such as engineering, physical science, and business, the report explores the median and quartile pay, the percentage of the major comprising women and minorities, and the percentage of individuals from that major who went on to get graduate degrees. The report also breaks down those groups and explores similar data for 171 individual majors.
Some of the results are to be expected. Science, engineering, and business majors tend to be better-off financially than majors in liberal arts and humanities, education, and…
drorzel | May 24, 2011
Is the Launch Speed in Angry Birds Constant? | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Does the Bird's Launch Speed Depend on the Angle?
If the bird is indeed shot from an elastic cord, then technically the bird should go faster when shot horizontally than when it is shot straight up. Why? Physics."
(tags: science physics education blogs dot-physics games computing)
The Clean Fossil Fuel? Natural Gas Under Fire | Txchnologist
"The good news is that it seems the effects of methane gas can be limited through action by industry. But the economics of drilling, mediated by the actions of regulators, will…
drorzel | May 23, 2011
Matt McIrvin's Steam-Operated World of Yesteryear - Children's/science museums north of Boston
"Boston has lots of great places to take kids to see/interact with cool stuff; there's the New England Aquarium, the Museum of Science, and the Boston Children's Museum, all of which are justly famous. But they're a long enough trip for us that we have to plan ahead a little to go there; closer alternatives are welcome for spur-of-the-moment visits. Here are some we like:"
(tags: kid-stuff science education outreach blogs)