Swans on Tea

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

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Category: science-y observation

Mffle Wffle Hmm?

14 June, 2009 (03:00) | Lab Stories, science-y observation | No comments

Eating al desco
I was recently eating lunch ‘al desco’. While I was eating-working, a student walked in my office to ask me a question, saw I was eating lunch at my desk, and said “Oh, I’m so sorry for interrupting your lunch. I’ll come back later.”
I was stunned. This has never happened to me before.
I’ve [...]

Let’s Teach Adults, Too

13 June, 2009 (03:00) | Education, Politics, Science-general, science-y observation | No comments

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 [...]

Periodic Table Announces, “We’re Pregnant!”

11 June, 2009 (07:33) | Other science, Physics, science-y observation | No comments

Periodic table gets a new element
More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery.
The team, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research, must propose a name for their find, before it can be formally added [...]

Doo Doo Transpires

16 May, 2009 (03:00) | Books, Science-general, science-y observation | No comments

The Science of a Really Bad Day
Interview with Peter J. Bentley, PhD, the author of The Science of Why Sh*t Happens

I Don’t Know the Answer, but Neither Do You

26 April, 2009 (05:06) | Other science, Science-general, science-y observation | No comments

Unqualified Offerings: A lot of ignorance needn’t stop you from offering contradictory theories
I have no particular opinion on why there is a gender gap in certain fields of science. I have a lot of skepticism for various theories offered, but I have no theory of my own. And it isn’t just because [...]

Spicing it Up

13 April, 2009 (03:42) | Books, science-y observation | No comments

Green Eggs and Toast
Changing standard storytelling as an exercise in challenging kids. Plus, it’s fun. I’ve done these and similar things with my nieces. The fill-in-the-last-word is something I learned from someone with a background in child development, and the replace-a-word I do just because I love kids’ sense of the absurd [...]

Getting Your Scorecard

2 April, 2009 (05:48) | Business, Politics, Tech, science-y observation | 1 comment

Wrong Tomorrow
When someone makes a prediction, people post it to the site along with a brief description and a URL. We monitor it and change its status to true or false when appropriate.
They want significant, empirically testable predictions made by public figures, that have no more than a five-year horizon. Topics (thus far) are [...]

It’s Pure … Something

27 February, 2009 (04:58) | Journalism, Sports, science-y observation | No comments

Tiger Woods’ game after surgery may be pure physics
Woods’ swing has been the envy of golfers around the world ever since he burst onto the professional scene in 1996.
His action is pure efficiency, combining hip, shoulder and wrist motion to exert the greatest possible force on the ball.
Pure efficiency? Does that make him the [...]

Modern Urawaza

25 February, 2009 (04:39) | Science-general, Tech, science-y observation | No comments

Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems
“In postwar Japan, the economy wasn’t doing so great, so you couldn’t get everyday-use items like household cleaners,” says Lisa Katayama, author of “Urawaza,” a book named after the Japanese term for clever lifestyle tips and tricks. “So people looked for ways to do with what they had.”
Popular urawaza include picking [...]

Quality Time

2 February, 2009 (04:53) | Video, science-y observation | 1 comment

Meet Entropy Jones. Four hours of a baby play, condensed into about two minutes of time-lapse video.
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
via

So That’s Where it Started …

11 January, 2009 (08:12) | Cartoon, science-y observation | No comments

Non Sequitur: The Invention of Ideology
Answers don’t come before the data are in. Couldn’t agree more.

We Lost … to Mathematicians?

9 January, 2009 (04:52) | Business, Other science, Science-general, science-y observation | No comments

Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs
The study, to be released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.
[…]
According to the study, mathematicians fared best in part because they typically [...]

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