Links Dump
drorzel | February 16, 2011
Did you ever want to meet one of the Calaquendi? : EphBlog
"I don't remember exactly when I first read the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion, but it was at least 30 years ago. I've re-read them all (plus "Unfinished Tales" and the recently published "The Children of Hurin") dozens of times, and spent way more time than I would like to admit reading about Tolkien's world on various websites.
None of this time has gotten me anything other than some personal satisfaction and a nagging guilty feeling. But I now have another place to feed my Tolkien obsession. One enterprising…
drorzel | February 15, 2011
The Prodigal Academic: Quick tips for TT interviews
"It is interview season in my fields, and we have a few searches going on here at ProdigalU (and keeping me out of trouble). I know I've blathered on about interviews here, here, and here before, but more tips can't hurt, right? Here are a few things I've been noticing this time around:"
(tags: science academia jobs blogs)
Cocktail Party Physics: It's a Demo Doozy
"In college I volunteered to register students to vote (it was the year of a presidential election), but the alarming number of times I heard questions ranging from "You have to…
drorzel | February 14, 2011
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
"In the July issue of APS News we pointed out that Einstein's field equations for general relativity appear unexpectedly under the opening credits of the animated feature film "The Triplets of Belleville," directed by Sylvain Chomet of France.
We asked our readers for their interpretation, and offered copies of the book "Physics in the 20th Century" for particularly convincing explanations.
We received many intriguing replies. We reprint some of them here, and, at the end, a communication that may, in fact, resolve the mystery of how those equations…
drorzel | February 13, 2011
The Literature of Ideas; or, please stop laughing at me - pornokitsch
"I can understand the temptation - and seeing how widely used the phrase has become, clearly I'm not the only one. Being "the literature of ideas" gives science fiction the authority of science. Or broadening it out - it gives speculative fiction permission to speculate. Yours is the fiction of the kitchen sink, ours is the literature of the future. Your fiction cares only about petty, worldly things - Booker Prizes and the New York Times Book Review. Our fiction is concerned with more lofty matters - the future of the…
drorzel | February 12, 2011
Yemen: Protests Continue Away from International Media Eyes · Global Voices
"With the entire world watching Egypt as it celebrates the uprooting of its dictator, Yemenis are calling for help and the world's media attention.
On Twitter, the calls came loud and clear. A rally started in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, in celebration of the ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Soon, it turned into an anti-Saleh protest, calling for an end of Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule.
Police surrounded the protesters, and there were reports of fire shots. Wounded protesters, taken to hospitals, were arrested - at least that…
drorzel | February 11, 2011
College Inc. - Survey: Community college students prize Internet access over teachers
"More than than 70 percent of students surveyed "believe that it is important to have access to high speed Internet in order to succeed at community college," the report states. "In fact, students tend to believe that high speed Internet access is more important for success than having access to advisors or relationships with professors."
In other words, today's community college student considers an Internet hookup more important than any human on campus."
(tags: academia education internet technology…
drorzel | February 10, 2011
Beer Batter Is Better: Scientific American
"If you've ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips--the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp--odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a great base for batter because it simultaneously adds three ingredients--carbon dioxide, foaming agents and alcohol--each of which brings to bear different aspects of physics and chemistry to make the crust light and crisp."
(tags: science food chemistry physics)
Swans on Tea » Q & A
A nice…
drorzel | February 8, 2011
The Virtuosi: Life in the Infrared
"There's a place where TV remotes are flashlights, Wii's are torches, and Snuggies are translucent. It's our kitchen. We modified a 3 dollar webcam to view in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We'll show you how, and what you can do with it."
(tags: science physics optics experiment pictures blogs virtusoi)
Last Man Live :: The Mid-Majority
"It's become an annual Mid-Majority tradition. I try to be the last man in America to know who won the Super Bowl, and the last man in America to know the score of the game. Together, these two…
drorzel | February 6, 2011
Evolution in Science Education - Bill Nye on Evolution in Science Education - Popular Mechanics
"Science education: We should support it. Especially elementary school science. Nearly every rocket scientist got interested in it before they were 10. Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10. So we want to excite a new generation of kids--every generation--about the passion, beauty and joy--the PB&J--of science. These anti-evolution people…
drorzel | February 5, 2011
D-squared Digest -- FOR bigger pies and shorter hours and AGAINST more or less everything else
"There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaing potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you…
drorzel | February 3, 2011
Best Science Books 2010: The top books of the year!!!! : Confessions of a Science Librarian
More good science books than you have time to read.
(tags: books science blogs confess-science-lib)
Locus Roundtable » The Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List
More good SF books that you have time to read.
(tags: books sf literature review magazines)
Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"According to political pundits, the showdown over whether to let the asteroid blast a 150-mile-wide, 20-mile-deep…
drorzel | February 2, 2011
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Meritocracy and Hiring
"Is academic hiring meritocratic? The author of this piece assumes that it is. As someone whose job it is to actually hire faculty, I can attest that merit is only a small part of the picture.
The single most important part of the picture is the existence of a position at all. In this funding climate, we can only afford to staff a few of the positions (whether faculty, staff, or administration) that we need. If the position doesn't exist, then the relative merit of the prospective candidates means exactly zero.
That may seem…
drorzel | February 1, 2011
Wait, Who Has Sinister Connections to Insiders That Influence Their Reporting? « Easily Distracted
"[...]Al-Jazeera! Al-Jazeera, with its mysterious (sinister!) agenda, its undisclosed connections, its desire to influence events!
As opposed to what? The New York Times, the Washington Post, the major US TV network news operations, with their still-largely cozy relationship to undisclosed inside sources, their unabashed mouthpiecing for American policy elites, their protected stable of hack editorialists and pet experts? Why is anyone still talking about Martin Peretz, for example, let alone…
drorzel | January 31, 2011
Rutherford's alchemy solved Atom's mystery
"He was the first to achieve the alchemists' dream of changing one element into another, yet he wasn't an alchemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but he wasn't a chemist. The work for which he received the Prize was carried out in Canada, but he wasn't a Canadian. He achieved the first man-made nuclear reaction, but he doubted nuclear energy could be controlled by man. He was Ernest Rutherford, pride of New Zealand, England, Canada and McGill University."
(tags: science physics history nuclear atoms biography)
The Urbanophile »…
drorzel | January 30, 2011
slacktivist: People power in Egypt
"We've been "promoting democracy" as though the first and most important step involved conducting elections. But the health and success of a democracy isn't determined as much by the things the public is able to decide by majority vote as by those things that cannot be voted away.
Democracy doesn't start with elections. It starts with a bill of rights. Unless and until the rights of minorities are guaranteed and protected by law, elections can be a threat to the safety, property and freedom of the losers. This is the dynamic that makes the Afghan and Iraqi…
drorzel | January 29, 2011
The 'scandal' of the kilogram (Blog) - physicsworld.com
"That's the name of the game in metrology these days - finding a way of defining mass without just resorting embarrassingly, as we do now, to a lump of metal in the basement of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) outside Paris and saying "that's a kilogram". After all, periodic inspections of the lump have shown it's been changing its mass slowly over time. As laser physicist Bill Phillips from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told delegates during one question-and-answer session on Monday, "…
drorzel | January 28, 2011
Promoting Science: MythBusters vs. Sport Science | Wired Science | Wired.com
"So, is Sport Science good for science? Is it even science? What about MythBusters? You know it and I know it - I am biased. However, let me pretend that I am not and compare Sport Science and MythBusters in terms of scienceyness."
(tags: science education television culture blogs physics dot-physics)
How to Make Trillions of Dollars | Raptitude.com
"I do encourage you to become a millionaire, if that's something that interests you. If it's billions you're after, I'm a bit suspicious but I'll give you the benefit…
drorzel | January 27, 2011
The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books
"If we are serious about improving our schools, we will take steps to improve our teacher force, as Finland and other nations have done. That would mean better screening to select the best candidates, higher salaries, better support and mentoring systems, and better working conditions. Guggenheim complains that only one in 2,500 teachers loses his or her teaching certificate, but fails to mention that 50 percent of those who enter teaching leave within five years, mostly because of poor working conditions, lack of…
drorzel | January 26, 2011
slacktivist: Anti-Missourian best-sellers
"When some polarizing figure publishes a book, the sales of that book do provide one useful way of gauging the popularity of that figure or that point of view.[...]
But say some less polarizing figure also publishes a book taking the opposite view and it doesn't sell anywhere near as well. Is that an indication that the opposite view has relatively less support?
That's one possibility. Generally, though, it's difficult to compare the two books head-to-head. One might have received a great deal more publicity than the other, might have more money or…
drorzel | January 25, 2011
Swans on Tea » Blogging: You're Doing it Wrong! (Part III)
"Completely unrelated to this was a session called "How Can We Maintain High Journalism Standards on the Web," and it was attended mostly by the professionals. Most of the session focused on ethics standards and disclosure and avoiding the appearance of bias, which means Pepsigate came up (surprise!) and other related subjects as well. I get that most responsible journalists don't want their work tainted by the appearance that they are endorsing a product or service, which can be questioned by links or undisclosed sponsorships or…