Links Dump
drorzel | April 3, 2012Science teacher: Why kids love science anyway...
We grow beans and basil in class, edible stuff from the breath they exhale--at first they resist the idea, as any reasonable creature would, and I don't give them any particular reason to believe it, but some do anyway. Kids like this. Many of the hypotheses generated in class are as good as mine. A few are better. Now and again a child develops a spectacularly good idea, beyond anything I'd likely generate. Their ideas, crafted within the nature of science, count as much as mine. Kids like this. I am wrong a lot. Science teachers in general…
drorzel | April 2, 2012MacRecipes | Fathom
Have you ever wondered in how many different episodes MacGyver has made an arc welder (answer: 3 times in episodes 6, 52, and 87)? Or perhaps you forgot about your favorite episode (season 1, episode 12) when Mac escapes via a casket that transforms into a jetski. And how many times has Mac made a diversion? In order to placate all of your MacGyver-related curiosities, we offer you MacRecipes.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Should science journalists actually read the scientific paper before reporting? And other questions from UK science journalists…
drorzel | March 31, 2012Physics - Cultivating Extra Dimensions
The search for ways to unify and understand physical phenomena goes back to Kaluza and Klein, who in the 1920s tried to combine electromagnetism with gravity by adding a fourth spatial dimension to the usual three (plus time). More recent theoretical work has suggested that a theory of everything may need 11 spacetime dimensions. Boada et al. are suggesting an experimental strategy for investigating how matter behaves in extra dimensions. Their idea is to encode a fourth spatial dimension in an internal degree of freedom offered by atoms trapped in an…
drorzel | March 29, 2012The Virtuosi: Money for (almost) Nothing
I am not typically interested in lotteries. They seem silly and I am seriously beginning to question their usefulness in bringing about a good harvest. But this morning I read in the news that the Mega Millions lottery currently has a world record jackpot up for grabs. In fact, the jackpot is so big...
Tonight Show Audience: HOW BIG IS IT?
It is so big that I decided to do a little bit of analysis on the expected returns. Zing!
Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning
How did this captain know - from fifty feet away - what the father couldn't…
drorzel | March 28, 2012The Religious Frenzy of a Court You Can't Believe In - Esquire
There are better places on the Intertoobz than this one to look either for a general overview of what may happen in the Court over the next three days -- Ezra Klein's joint did a masterful job this morning -- and, if you're looking for pundits to support your own personal opinions on what should happen, you don't need me to help you find them. But this picture makes the whole affair ring a little hollow already. What exactly are these people praying for? Are they praying for a return to the way things were? For the denial of…
drorzel | March 27, 2012No More Mister Nice Blog
The paranoia of George Zimmerman had a large, race-specific fear component, but I'd say it also had elements of pleasure. I see this in what gun fans say all the time -- they like thinking of themselves as besieged, and as people who have the means to defend themselves if attacked. They really want their paranoid fantasies to come true, because it turns what's largely a matter of personal enjoyment (they like guns) into a matter of being heroes of society. They hope they get to stop scary hordes of "urban" marauders from committing horrendous crimes of violence. They…
drorzel | March 26, 2012Tutorial and Critique Services -- Debra Doyle, Ph.D.
Now-a-days, lots of folks are self-publishing. I'm doing it myself. If you're planning to self-publish, and if you haven't yet heard the advice that since you're now a publisher you need to hire an editor, well, you will. Other folks want to learn to write. A one-on-one session with an experienced teacher can teach you to fish. If you know what I mean. Therefore: I am putting my writing and teaching expertise up for sale. What I will do: Critique and line-edit your novel. A critique generally runs 3-5 pages, and covers structural and…
drorzel | March 23, 2012Not To Us, And To Us | Storied Theology
"Not to us" is an important step in biblical interpretation. We need to have ears to hear how a story would have resonated with Babylonian exiles; we need ears to hear how "Jesus is Lord" might have resonated, or caused dissonance, for a first century Roman. We need to know that when we read, "Expel the immoral brother!" that it is a word for a first century church and might not be God's word to us about, say, the man in our meetings with a flatulence problem. "Not to us" is a significant moment in our biblical interpretation.
Every scientist's worst…
drorzel | March 22, 2012CourtVision by Kirk Goldsberry
Some shots are easier than other shots; that's a basic tenet of basketball. Many factors influence the probability of a field goal attempt resulting in a made basket, but one factor in particular has been mostly overlooked in basketball analysis: location. The most common shooting metric in the NBA is field goal percentage, which measures the percentage of field goal attempts that result in made baskets. Usually this metric is applied in a non-spatial way to describe how effective a given player or team is at "putting the biscuit in the basket." However, despite…
drorzel | March 21, 2012Drug smuggler? Victim of scholar envy? UNC prof in Argentine jail - Crime/Safety - NewsObserver.com
A 68-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill physics professor with three degrees from Oxford University is being held in an Argentine prison on charges of trying to smuggle two kilograms of cocaine. Paul H. Frampton, who holds the title Louis D. Rubin Jr. Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, said in a telephone interview that he was arrested Jan. 23 at the airport in Buenos Aires after the drugs were found in his checked luggage en route to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Frampton said he…
drorzel | March 20, 2012Strange Quark Comics Mar 18, 2012
"Understanding doesn't matter. You've got to show confidence or no one will believe you're smarter than me."
Liberals Started the Culture War, and We Should Be Proud of Continuing It | Mother Jones
We tend to mock conservatives for endlessly keeping the culture war alive, but the truth is that it was we liberals who started it. We're the ones who, among many, many other things, banned school prayer, legalized abortion, fought for gender equality, and are currently pressing to legalize gay marriage. You'll be unsurprised to learn that I think we were right to…
drorzel | March 19, 2012The Top Science Questions Facing America: 2012 Edition: New (71 ideas) - Customer Feedback for ScienceDebate.org
What do YOU think are the top science questions the candidates for president should answer? We've posted the original 14 from 2008, preceded by their question numbers, and users have added others. Vote for those you feel are most important, add comments, or add your own! Check back often to vote on the new questions.
At the PTA, Clashes Over Cupcakes and Culture - NYTimes.com
The Parent-Teacher Association's decision to raise the price of a cupcake at its monthly bake sale -- to $…
drorzel | March 16, 2012[1203.1895] Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard
We prove NP-hardness results for five of Nintendo's largest video game franchises: Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. Our results apply to Super Mario Bros. 1, 3, Lost Levels, and Super Mario World; Donkey Kong Country 1-3; all Legend of Zelda games except Zelda II: The Adventure of Link; all Metroid games; and all Pokemon role-playing games. For Mario and Donkey Kong, we show NP-completeness. In addition, we observe that several games in the Zelda series are PSPACE-complete.
Sixteen Things Calvin and Hobbes Said Better…
drorzel | March 15, 2012Ask Moxie: Welcome to Moxie Madness!
Welcome to Moxie Madness 2012: Misery Poker Tournament! 64 mothering calamities go mano-a-mano in a single elimination tournament like you've never seen before. Only one mothering problem can be the champion... Vote for which problem is worse in a series of shoot-from-the-hip head-to-head matchups that will leave you breathless. First matchups start Thursday. Final Championship Match April 2. Are you ready to rumble?
DOJ vs. book publishers: Who cares if Apple and publishers are colluding to raise e-book prices? - Slate Magazine
A bit buried in last week'…
drorzel | March 14, 2012Top Five March Madness Predictions - Grantland
There are so many things you can count on every year that the tournament has lost almost all of its renegade charm. It's a product now. As such, it is required to be safe and reliable, the way we want all our products to be. You make peace with that, or you find another event to love. I choose to stick with this one. Therefore, here are five predictions of what will ensue over the next month. I present them, as always, For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Watching the demise of a once-mighty basketball super-conference - Grantland
All weekend, there…
drorzel | March 13, 2012Fair Is Foul, But Fouling's Unfair - The Triangle Blog - Grantland
I would always prefer that the trailing team receive an opportunity to tie the game by hitting a shot from the floor. It's superior in every way: It doesn't force anyone to awkwardly miss a free throw on purpose, it's more dramatic than a bunch of guys trying to convert an offensive rebound, it entails more skill than chance, and it seems closer to the core principles of the game (i.e., making shots on offense and not creating contact on defense). This being the case, I think the NCAA (and perhaps the NBA) should consider a…
drorzel | March 12, 2012Opinion: The problem with software patents? They don't scale
Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft veteran who founded the patent-trolling giant Intellectual Ventures, loves to complain about the "culture of intentionally infringing patents" in the software industry. "You have a set of people who are used to getting something for free," he told Business Week in 2006. Myhrvold is right that patent infringement is rampant among software firms. But in demanding that this infringement stop, Myhrvold isn't just declaring war on what he regards as Silicon Valley's patent-hostile culture. He's declaring…
drorzel | March 9, 2012Still not as bad as Division I revenue sports § Unqualified Offerings
Still, at the end of the day, there's at least some notion of accountability and standards behind the assessment movement. I don't think it's been a very effective effort at accountability and standards, but somebody somewhere was clearly pushing for standards. However, I haven't heard a peep about assessment in more than a year. I have, however, heard all about graduation rates. Now, they swear up and down that they want to raise standards while raising graduation rates, and they've even put token money toward pilot…
drorzel | March 7, 2012Luis Alvarez: the ideas man - CERN Courier
Luis Alvarez - one of the greatest experimental physicists of the 20th century - combined the interests of a scientist, an inventor, a detective and an explorer. He left his mark on areas that ranged from radar through to cosmic rays, nuclear physics, particle accelerators, detectors and large-scale data analysis, as well as particles and astrophysics. On 19 November, some 200 people gathered at Berkeley to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Alumni of the Alvarez group - among them physicists, engineers, programmers and bubble-chamber…
drorzel | March 6, 2012Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"I honestly thought he was just playing up to the far-right voters, because that's what Republicans are supposed to do in the primaries," said Grand Rapids, MI resident Dan Banks, who explained he had dismissed as manipulative campaign rhetoric Santorum's assertion that President Obama would send Christians to the guillotine. "But now it's dawning on me that this guy means it, all of it. Every single thing he says is an accurate depiction of how he sees the…