Swans on Tea

The Big Picture: Recent scenes from the ISS

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists

“Filming in the lab” is the recent them at PhD comics, and this one grabs the essence. (Or you can start at the beginning, if you’re one of the type that needs to do that.)
I’ve been filmed in the lab and interviewed on TV once, and I’ve observed my colleagues being filmed and interviewed. [...]

John Hodgman at Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner
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weird things: surprise, surprise! everything is just a theory
Want to make a scientist groan? Listen to a lecture about cutting edge research in his or her area of expertise, then say the five dreaded words: “it’s all just a theory.”

Fingerprints and Grip - Wrong vs Incomplete
I saw the headline to one version of the linked story (Fingerprint grip theory rejected) a few days back. I didn’t delve too deeply into it, and this thought had not occurred to me:
What struck me, and what the article did not mention, is that glass is [...]

and the foolish consistency they represent.
Flying Flux: The Dullness of Details
I think it behooves writers to make technical documentation fun by embedding a few surprises here and there for the unsuspecting reader. Just like how chip designers used to embed artwork in their chips (I’ve done so myself), writers of technical documents should try [...]

Via the Heisenbergian one, I discover the Science Scout Merit Badges
The “I blog about science” badge. Obviously
The “science deprives me of my bed” badge (LEVEL II) Two week at Cornell’s Nanofabrication Lab (NNF)
The “broken heart for science” badge I just had to go to grad school …
The “non-explainer” badge (LEVEL I) [...]

How to Teach a Child to Argue
And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric [...]

why you should honor thy scientists
[I]t’s not just zealots who will equate scientific methodology with theistic dogmatism. In an attempt to appear completely objective and beyond any charge of bias, some writers will give equal importance to every opinion with seemingly no regard for whether it’s right or wrong. They think that by giving a [...]

Gendered expectations in teaching
[T]he expectations of how a male versus female instructor will behave are actually quite different. One of the papers I read discussed the fact that they interviewed students after they filled out evaluations (where a male versus a female teacher were rated and came out the same, quantitatively). It turns out that [...]

Until you do a CAT scan.
NYT: Autopsies of War Dead Reveal Ways to Save Others
Col. Howard T. Harcke, a 71-year-old Marine Corps radiologist who delayed retirement to read CT scans at Dover, noticed something peculiar in late 2005. The emergency treatment for a collapsed lung involves inserting a needle and tube into the chest [...]