The Numbers Game

Today finds Kieran Healy counting words, and Hedwig the Grrlscientist tallying visits, so that must count as a blog statistics meme. Or something. Out of curiosity, I checked the Google Analytics stats for this site, and was bemused to discover that as of sometime this morning, there have been 141,183 unique visits to this site […]

Get Your Flamewar On

It’s not really all that flame-tastic, but Janet has a nice post on the women in science thing, taking off from yesterday’s post, and my comment that I don’t really have the energy to wage a “women in science” flamewar at the moment. If you do have the energy, head over to Janet’s blog. But […]

The Scores Are Falling?

The science story of the day is probably the Department of Education Report on science test scores, cited in this morning’s New York Times. They administered a test to fourth, eight, and twelfth-graders nationwide, aking basic science questions, and compared the scores to similar tests given in 1996 and 2000. (Update: John Lynch has some […]

Nerdify the World

Scott Aaronson takes up the eternal question of why there are so few women in science. His contribution to the nature/ nurture side of the debate is particularly noteworthy: To put the point differently: suppose (hypothetically) that what repelled women from computer science were all the vending-machine-fueled all-nighters, empty pizza boxes stacked to the ceiling, […]

Quantum Computing for Undergrads

Dave Bacon asks, I answer. Well, OK, Dave was asking how one would go about teaching quantum computing to CS undergrads, while what I provide here is a set of lectures on presenting quantum computing ideas to undergrad physics majors in my Quantum Optics class. But, really, isn’t that almost the same thing (don’t answer […]

The Old Tunes Experiment

So, in our last installment, I had purchased a bunch of classical music off iTunes, and pledged to listen to it while away at DAMOP last week. I was pretty good about it, too– I kept the classical playlist going on the iPod all the way through the flights down there, and for listening during […]

Unfinished Business

The problem with scheduling something like last week’s Ask a ScienceBlogger for a time when I’m out of town is that any interesting discussions that turn up in comments are sort of artificially shortened because I can’t hold up my end of the conversation from a remote site. I do want to respond (below the […]

My Time Among the Nerds

I’m back from DAMOP, having spent a lazy day in Knoxville yesterday, waiting around to go to the airport. That was a much-needed respite from the non-stop conferencing of the previous few days, but I would’ve preferred to be home, rather than in Knoxville. Air travel continues to suck, particularly the waiting-around-airports phase. The meeting […]