Swans on Tea

Physics, tech and humor. Because science and learning are cool, and life’s too short not to laugh.

Entries Comments


Category: Science-general

No Confidence

19 March, 2010 (03:00) | Math, Science-general | No comments

Odds Are, it’s Wrong
They seem to be looking specifically at medical (and related) research; I don’t know if there is a greater prevalence of an underlying problem — not publishing null results — in those fields as compared to elsewhere.
Over the years, hundreds of published papers have warned that science’s love affair with statistics has [...]

The Top 29

15 March, 2010 (03:00) | Blog Compendia, Science-general | No comments

Eureka’s Top 30 Science Blogs
It’s not April 1 or anything, but somehow a climate denial site is listed at #30 (the list is alphabetical — can you guess watt it is?). And there’s an aggregator site listed as well, so it’s really the top 28.

Mr. Ness, I Do Not Approve of Your Methods

13 March, 2010 (03:00) | Antiscience, Journalism, Science-general, science-y observation | No comments

The Unpersuadables

Beyond Googlbing

11 March, 2010 (03:00) | Science-general, Tech | No comments

100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars

Teach the Controversy

9 March, 2010 (03:00) | Antiscience, Cartoon, Satire, Science-general | No comments

Let the Kids Decide

Why the Science Media is Not Your Friend

5 March, 2010 (03:00) | Journalism, Science-general | No comments

Advice to Climate Scientists on how to Avoid being Swift-boated and how to become Public Intellectuals
Even though this is written in terms of climate science, it really applies in general to science and science reporting, but has added importance for any science that has political controversy attached to it — politics involves swaying public opinion, [...]

Newsworthy

2 March, 2010 (03:00) | Environment, Science-general | No comments

Several more global warming pieces have popped up on my radar recently.
Al Gore’s NYT op-ed We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
While I have pointed out before that you should not hold out much hope for science on the op-ed page, Mr. Gore’s piece has links to actual scientific work, which is generally more than [...]

Why?

1 March, 2010 (03:00) | Science-general | 1 comment

Feynman discusses the “why” question, and why he can’t give a satisfactory explanation of magnetic attraction/repulsion.
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
When you explain a “why,” you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise you are perpetually asking, “Why?”
I’ve pointed [...]

Say Cheese

22 February, 2010 (03:00) | Photos, Science-general | No comments

Caleb Charland photos
Science-y effects and interesting takes on science demonstrations.

No, You Can’t Have It

16 February, 2010 (03:00) | Antiscience, Science-general | 3 comments

I can recall one of the very first creationist types I met, way back when I was in the navy. He proudly proclaimed that he knew evolution was false, because a dog would never give birth to a cat. It floored me that someone with a tech background could have so completely failed [...]

Let’s Talk About Science

14 February, 2010 (03:00) | Physics, Science-general |

Nice description of science (physics in particular) from the JREF forums.
As it turns out, we know enough to make really incredibly detailed descriptions. So detailed, we can describe things that we can’t actually sense directly with our own senses. We can measure those things, and we can describe them, but we can’t see them. So [...]

Jiffy Pop

12 February, 2010 (03:00) | Language, Science-general, Tech |

Be there in a jiffy
There are five three formal/scientific/technical definitions of “jiffy.” How long it takes to make popcorn is not one of them.

« Older entries

 

This blog proudly hosted by ScienceForums.Net Blogs. Subscribe to our RSS Logo global RSS feed. FireStats icon Powered by FireStats