dirtcandy : HOME The third part of a series (with links to parts 1 and 2) on the making of an episode of Iron Chef America that will air Sunday night. (tags: food television blogs culture) Liberal Arts Chemistry: If Hemingway were a Chemist … There is a reason why some reagents and some chemical […]
Month: August 2010
Short Story Club: “The Things” by Peter Watts
Over at Torque Control, Niall Harrison is doing a Short Story Club, hosting discussions of SF short fiction. As I always vaguely regret not reading enough short fiction to make sensible nominations for the Hugos, this seemed like a good opportunity to read a selection of stories that a smart person with pretty good taste […]
More Adult Politicians, Please
I’ve never thought of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. I haven’t had to, since I don’t live in The City, so about all I remember about him is that his choice of party back when he was first running seemed awfully opportunistic. I was really impressed with his appearance on the Daily Show this […]
Links for 2010-08-28
Williams College – The Purple Cow goes national: ESPN College Football GameDay commercial looms “In 2007, when I was but a wee sophomore at Williams College, ESPN College GameDay visited our campus marking the first and possibly last time they visit a Division III school. I thought that would also be the last Williams College […]
Grenade Tossing About Grade Inflation
Via Thoreau, a paper from a physicist in Oregon that’s pretty much a grenade lobbed into the always-explosive grade inflation discussion: We use four years of introductory astronomy scores to analyze the ability of the current population to perform college level work and measure the amount of grade inflation across various majors. Using an objective […]
Dorky Poll: Favorite Force?
I’m pretty sure I’ve used this topic before, but not with PollDaddy. And while I really ought to do a ResearchBlogging post today to make it a clean sweep for the week, I just don’t have the energy. So here’s a poll: what’s your favorite fundamental force? What’s your favorite fundamental force?online surveys Those of […]
Two Responses to Hate
I’ve said before that I think Fred Clark of Slacktivist is the very best blogger writing about religion and politics in America today. It’s not even close. His recent series on things the government ought to be doing to help the economy is also outstanding– that link goes to the most recent, and you can […]
Belated Toddler Blogging 082710
Many apologies for posting this week’s cute toddler picture twelve hours late, but we had a little bit of a meltdown last night, thwarting my plans to get a cute picture after SteelyKid had her bath. She’s cutting some new molars (I swear, she’s part shark, with all the teeth she’s getting), and it’s hard […]
Links for 2010-08-27
6 Baffling Flaws in Famous Sci-Fi Technology | Cracked.com “For instance, when the main reactor fails in Star Trek they call it a “warp core breech” and it happens so often there’s an entire page listing times it has happened on the Star Trek wiki. Seriously, it was like every third episode. Their only safety […]
Measuring Gravity: Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thing
There’s a minor scandal in fundamental physics that doesn’t get talked about much, and it has to do with the very first fundamental force discovered, gravity. The scandal is the value of Newton’s gravitational constant G, which is the least well known of the fundamental constants, with a value of 6.674 28(67) x 10-11 m3 […]