It’s the Research that Matters

Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake notes an article in Science about a survey of undergraduate research. The actual article is behind a paywall, but you can get access to the survey reports from SRI directly, which is even better. The study finds a large number of benefits from undergraduate research, from increased confidence to improved […]

The Genius Gap

Kate was scheduled to argue a case Friday morning in Federal court in Manhattan, so we decided to make a weekend of it. I drove down after class on Friday, and we went to dinner with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on Friday night, and spent Saturday at the Met, getting some culture. Kate’s a […]

John Scalzi, The Last Colony [Library of Babel]

You might not have noticed, but John Scalzi has a new book out. The Last Colony is the third book in the Old Man’s War series. It’s narrated by John Perry from Old Man’s War, now happily married to Jane Sagan from The Ghost Brigades, and working as a colonial administrator on a planet called […]

Neal Asher, The Skinner [Library of Babel]

The Skinner is another book in the same Polity universe as Gridlinked, though it appears to be more or less self-contained. It doesn’t share any characters with the other book, though it does share bits of technology and a general attitude to the world. The book is set on Spatterjay, a planet with a complex […]

Faking Evolution is Hard Work

“The Fossil-Maker’s Blues”, by Steven Brust. Inspired by a comment in this post about paleoarcheology. It’s calcium and marrow and mix ’em fine I’m on the job from nine to nine Oh lord won’t someone set me free From the Devil’s Fossil Factory.

Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma’am

Over at Mixing Memory, Chris is annoyed with Larry Moran and PZ Myers for comparing themselves to suffragists: It’s difficult, at this point, to say anything other than, “Are you kidding me?” Watching white, middle-class, mostly ex-Protestant males (the dominant new atheist demographic) compare themselves to feminists, labor movements, gay and civil rights activists, or […]

Impossible Lyrics Answer

Pretty much all of the songs that I thought anybody might possibly guess were guessed, so I might as well reveal the answers. If you’d still like to try your hand, don’t click through to the rest of this post until after you’ve finished… Those of you who have given up can find the full […]

RSS Query

Over at Cognitive Daily, Dave asks about splitting articles in RSS feeds. The ScienceBlogs feeds do not provide the full text of our posts, just the “above the fold” portion, and this practice rubs some people the wrong way. The reason for this is that our Corporate Masters are trying to support the site by […]