.
Category: *
January 5, 2015
Super fast and epic summary of the Earth’s evolutionary history.
This is really nicely done*
Crash Course Big History episode with John Green, Hank Green, and Emily Graslie (link).
* I caught one small error during the lifting weights bit.
December 20, 2014
Ng Family Year in Review Mix Tape 2014
Once more, here is our Year in Review mix tape collecting our songs of 2014. These were played often in a way that (for my family) “informed” the year. As per usual, many of the songs on this mix are somewhere on this blog somewhere, and I’ve tried to provide links accordingly. Take a peek, click, listen and hope you enjoy. Hope you have a great holidays and a Happy New Year!
– – –
– – –
01. Recluse | Neil Finn
02. Wide Eyes | The New Pornographers*
03. I Want You Back | Lake Street Dive*
04. Lonsdale Line | Streets of Laredo*
05. Girls Chase Boys | Ingrid Michaelson*
06. This Is How I Let You Down | The Franklin Electric*
07. Get You Back | Meaghan Smith
08. All About That Bass (feat. Kate Davis) | Scott Bradlee
& Postmodern Jukebox*
09. Hot Tonight | Tokyo Police Club*
10. Just One of the Guys | Jenny Lewis*
11. I Wanna Get Better | Bleachers*
12. Moving On | James
13. Heart’s Content | Brandi Carlile*
14. Holding On for Life | Broken Bells*
15. Lotus Flower | Radiohead
16. Stay Alive | José González*
– In which Ben is now fully en francais.
– In which Hannah is now in High School land.
– In which Kate now has her new kitchen (mostly)
– In which Dave has accidently stumbled upon being an academic on games.
– In which the house happily adds 2 cats (plus several decapitated mice).
– – –
(previous mixes: 2013 | 2012 (includes the origin story and gist of these mixes)
December 9, 2014
Einstein to Curie: “don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptile for whom it has been fabricated.” #awesome
In which we see correspondence between Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, essentially telling her that she’s awesome and that she should “ignore the trolls” (or in this case, the “reptiles” – no offence to my herpetologist friends).
From The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein (Princeton).
December 5, 2014
Now hiring: “Women in Science” Game Content Designer. Looking for applicants! Please share within your #UBC networks.
JOB INFORMATION
Employee: AMBL, Michael Smith Laboratories, UBC (link)
Contract/Term Duration: ~12 weeks (January to March)
Hours Per Week: ~9
Job Title: Women in Science Game Content Designer
Job Sector: Education, Training and Teaching
Job Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver campus.
Job Description: These positions will require hires to research and design content towards the production of a playable card game that explicitly embeds a variety of important learning objectives around the subject of women in science and engineering.
We have funds to hire a team of 2 senior undergraduate or graduate students who will work part time with the lab (wage at approximately $15.91/hour over a one semester timeline), and using existing resources and game mechanics from another science card game project (http://phylogame.org).
Specifically, this team will be given the following objectives: (1) to research, evaluate and design the content presented on the cards; (2) to determine whether modification of existing game mechanics is required; (3) to produce a playable and playtested beta card game; and (4) to create a number of prototype lesson plans that can be used with the resource in light of existing provincially determined IRP requirements.
Job qualifications: Upper undergraduate or graduate students with knowledge or background around science culture and gender issues are preferred. Being a game enthusiast is also a plus, though not required in this case.
Please send cover letter and resume to David Ng at db@mail.ubc.ca by January 6th, 2015.
December 5, 2014
A Few Words From the Scientist Who Invented Wonder Women’s Invisible Jet.
By DAVID NG
First of all, I totally get it. You’re watching Super Friends or reading some Justice League of America comic book, and what do you see? Wonder Woman floating in mid air, in what is apparently an “invisible jet.” And for some reason, the fact that you know that it’s an invisible jet (because someone has gone to the trouble of outlining the jet with white phantom lines), is supposedly meant to make this OK.
Except that it doesn’t. You know this and I know this, and well, everybody knows this. Because the truth is: Wonder Woman looks kind of stupid floating in mid air. I mean, seriously, what is the point of having an invisible jet if the pilot—and a pilot wearing bright sparkly superhero colors—is so… well… visible?
So I get all the hate, I totally do.
But listen: I invented that invisible jet! That invisible jet is my research. It’s my baby.
And the reality is that the invisible jet was never meant to hide the pilot. It was just meant to be invisible on its own. If you don’t believe me, then by all means, look it up—my doctoral dissertation and my research publications are quite clear about this.
Wonder Woman totally got this. Actually, she was pretty amazing about it. She was like, “whoa… invisible jet… that’s pretty cool.” And then I was all like, “Yeah, but you know that it’s only the jet that goes invisible right? You know that you won’t be invisible when you sit inside it, right?” And she was like, “Yeah, I get it, but that’s OK, because well… invisible-freaking-jet!”
She basically said that it was totally fine to spend a whole bunch of her money on it because (a), it was a good way to support interesting science, and (b), well… it was just awesome.
Unfortunately, her Super Friends buddies were all idiots about it. They were all like, “Diana… you know we can still see you?” And Superman was prone to flying in a seated position and making steering motions and going, “look at me,.. who am I?” Meanwhile, Batman was all like “my utility belt is way cooler.”
But she knew what was going on. She knew that the reality was this: that the jet is a goddamn SCIENTIFIC MARVEL! Something that should be admired—because ingenuity, years of hard work, and significant research funds was all involved to develop that piece of technology.
Now, do I want to continue my research so that things entering the jet also become invisible? Sure—because that would also be pretty awesome. And maybe, one day, I will work on that research goal, and if I do, Wonder Woman is totally going to get first dibs on that piece of hardware.
Because listen, folks: this is how science works, one small step at a time. It’s not fast (like a speeding bullet), or able to make progress (in single bounds). It’s not about gimmicky quick fixes (like the kind you pack in a utility belt), and it takes serious investment (we’re not all caped billionaires with money for caves and batmobiles). This discovery stuff is slow and incremental, and that my friends, is the honest to goodness Lasso of Truth.
(Originally published at McSweeney’s)
December 5, 2014
Vortexes: still awesome, and now DIY in your pool. By @thephysicsgirl
This is remarkable for so many different reasons. Definitely worth watching. Definitely worth doing (going to see if I can mimic it in my lab with a large water basin).
By Physics Girl.
November 30, 2014
This short video on space and the possible future: in a word, perfection.
Like the link says: Watch this in the dark, full screen (definitely full screen), in HD, and with head phones. Truly gorgeous…
By Erik Wernquist, via io9.
November 22, 2014
Pretty sure this is the “peer reviewed” article with the most swear words ever.
Specifically:
“The International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology, a predatory open-access journal, has accepted for publication the marvelously titled paper “Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List.” According to Scholarly Open Access, researchers David Mazières and Eddie Kohler first prepared the manuscript in 2005, to protest spam conference invitations.”
Here’s a link to the actual paper (and back up link).
And this here, has to be the best figure EVER:
Via (including text) io9.com
November 22, 2014
October 30, 2014
I can’t even… So beautiful… So makes me wish I could go to space…
Wow (click on the image for a larger image).
This is:
“a near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan’s north polar seas. While Cassini has captured, separately, views of the polar seas and the sun glinting off of them in the past, this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.
The sunglint, also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o’clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan’s largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea.”
For a better look, please go to this link.
September 30, 2014
Who will die in Game of Thrones? The statistical (seriously) analysis…
Note: if you’re unfamiliar with the series, there are many spoilers in the journal article.
ABSTRACT: Predictions are made for the number of chapters told from the point of view of each character in the next two novels in George R. R. Martin’s \emph{A Song of Ice and Fire} series by fitting a random effects model to a matrix of point-of-view chapters in the earlier novels using Bayesian methods. {{SPOILER WARNING: readers who have not read all five existing novels in the series should not read further, as major plot points will be spoiled.}}
By Richard Vale. From Arxiv.org. Pdf here.
popperfont.net 