Swans on Tea

Second European Positioning Satellite Launched
Galileo, which should be operational by 2013, will be both an alternative and a complement to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS.
There are some articles which call Galileo a competitor to GPS, which really isn’t the case; this article does a better job. I expect [...]

There’s an article in Seed entitled “So” and subtitled “The anatomy of a scientific staple” which purports to discuss the use of the word as a preface to scientific pronouncements in the classroom and, I presume, in conference talks as well. I thought perhaps the author was overanalyzing things, but there is this observation:
In [...]

Female Science Professor makes an observation about random scientific inquiries made to universities
In some cases, the questions are easy and quick to answer — for example, some people call with a question about something they heard on the news. In some cases, people stop by the department (with or without calling first) and expect assistance. [...]

Using examples to teach math
[C]ollege students who learned a mathematical concept with concrete examples couldn’t apply that knowledge to new situations. But when students first learned the concept with abstract symbols, they were much more likely to transfer that knowledge
In a third experiment, the researchers presented 20 students with two concrete examples and then [...]

Space pics: ‘Galaxies gone wild’
(Why should the particle physicists have all the fun, experimenting with massive bosons?)

A post over at The Quantum Pontiff reminded me of these mildly dyslexic terms in the title, one of which gets corrected at Google.

(I wonder, do dyslexics read “dyslexia” as “daily sex,” as in “I suffer from daily sex?”)

Just when you think things can’t get any sillier. Boeing Patent Shuts Down AMC-14 Lunar Flyby Salvage Attempt
Primarily this is because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - and Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped [...]

The Cup Stops Here
Former MLB player Mark Littel puts his balls on the line provides empirical data in a kinematics experiment to demonstrate the effectiveness of a cup.
Cinematic commentary: Neither the acting nor the dialogue are as good as in the classic “George C. Scott hit in the groin with a football”
You won’t hear [...]

Over at Skulls in the Stars, gg issues the challenge to science bloggers: read and research an old, classic scientific paper and write a blog post about it.
I’d love to do “The behavior of gauntlets under the influence of applied forces and gravity” by Juan Duelist.
Seriously, though, I already have one [...]

Metacognitive Miscalibration, or wicked problems and the desire to learn, and other reasons misinformed people think they are well-informed.
Why are the unintelligent or uninformed so arrogantly confident while the intelligent and well informed so often unsure and apprehensive? There is something very human to thinking you know more than you really do about a subject [...]

Bad Weather Makes for a Long Day
Changes in mass distribution affect the earth’s rotation rate. A little.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., occasionally adds a “leap second” to the atomic clocks used to standardize time. The last such update took place on January 1, 2006.
Arrg. And so do all [...]

How to make your own Pruno
Pruno, a prison wine created from fruit, sugar and ketchup
[...]
[Even though] it tastes so putrid that even hardened prisoners gulp it down while holding their noses, they’ll go to incredible lengths to make it