Ben Franklin’s 200+ Synonyms for “Drunk” – Mental Floss Today we’re celebrating Ben Franklin’s 306th birthday. If you’re celebrating at home, perhaps one of these phrases from The Drinkers Dictionary will come in handy. The lengthy list of expressions meaning “inebriated” was first published by Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette on January 6, 1737. Feel […]
Month: January 2012
How to Present Scientific Data
In the same basic vein as last week’s How to Read a Scientific Paper, here’s a kind of online draft of the class I’m going to give Friday on the appropriate ways to present scientific data. “Present” here meaning the more general “display in some form, be it a talk, a poster, a paper, or […]
Links for 2012-01-19
What I Wish Wikipedia and Others Were Saying About SOPA/PIPA The blackout and other protests today are the result of a long, sustained, full-court press against legislation that’s being pushed through despite widespread opposition. Yet, Lamar Smith and many other members of the U.S. House and Senate have been plowing ahead full-steam. Why? Yes, in […]
On Blogs and Voices
The always interesting Timothy Burke has a post that’s basically a long links dump pointing to two articles about the state of humanities in academia, which includes a sort of aside that is more interesting to me than either of the linked articles: This leads me to the second piece I really liked in this […]
Links for 2012-01-17
1 job good, 2 jobs better? § Unqualified Offerings Inspired by FSP’s post on 2-body problems in hiring, i.e. situations where both members of a couple are seeking academic jobs, I’d like to pose some challenges to those of my readers with opinions on academic hiring. This topic is usually considered as a moral issue, […]
Science: It’s What’s for Breakfast
SteelyKid and I have developed a weekend routine: I make pancakes (with her help in mixing and occasionally measuring ingredients) on Saturday morning before we head out (usually to SoccerTots, but the last couple of weeks to birthday parties). On Sunday, we make French toast, before going to the Schenectady Greenmarket. Of course, while this […]
Links for 2012-01-16
Swans on Tea » The Scientists’ Dilemma I recently had an interesting discussion with someone who is interested in science, but without training or experience as a scientist. The question was, basically: Why don’t we (scientists) all just lie to each other? i.e. what compels scientists to truthfully share their research results? It’s a fair […]
Machine Translation Lets Me Down
It’s a sign of how good computers have gotten that I’m faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It’s only when the vanity search […]
Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 02
I reported on the start of this class last week, and sinc ethen, we’ve had three more class meetings. Since this whole thing is an experiment, I’ll keep reporting on it from time to time (heh). First, though, a quick answer to a request from comments: I’d like to hear more about your class on […]
Links for 2012-01-13
In Praise of Footnotes (Polar Bear Cub/Anything But The Republicans Dept.) « The Inverse Square Blog Exit, pursued by a [actual, live, polar] bear. OCD, Vampires, and Rants, oh my! – Men’s Versus Women’s Poses As mentioned yesterday, I took some inspiration from Jim C Hines’s Striking A Pose blog entry and figured I’d do […]