The recent congressional legislation on credit cards (expected to be signed by President Obama, including a totally unrelated measure to allow concealed handguns in national parks) limits advertising that credit card companies can do towards young people. It would require, for anyone under 21, either a parent cosigner or demonstration of ( Read more... )

The Atlantic has a fantastic article out about a longitudinal study tracing the path of 200-odd graduates from Harvard in the 1930s. They've been studying them through the present-day, doing surveys and interviews, physical examinations, and more ( Read more... )

As you may know, I'm a fan of the fascinating but flawed TV series Babylon 5. Well, its creator J. Michael Straczynski is going to be speaking at MIT a week from Friday. Admission is $10. I plan to go, and would love to go with anyone else who's interested.

A while back, I posted a request for coteachers for an astrophysics class that I was planning to teach this spring at HSSP. The class is now done, and it was a great success. Not perfect --- there are definitely changes that I would make --- but the students were able to recreate deep astrophysical results on their own, sorting through data and ( Read more... )

I haven't written anything here in months, nor have I read anyone else's LJ. I should --- I really should --- be writing here about Learning Unlimited and the great successes we're having there. But somehow, it was clear to me after coming home today from seeing Star Trek at an IMAX theater that I need to write about this movie ( Read more... )

I've been reading the blog of Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary, because I quite like his insights into the show from the music and his stories of coming up with it. However, one of the most recent entries showcases an intriguing misperception of science and scientists, a kind of "grass is greener on the other side" idea that comes from ( Read more... )

It really happens!

I came across this handout on "Common Mistakes in Algebra." All well and good, except for #14, which is not wrong! Or, if it is, it's wrong for a very different reason than the solution gives.

#14 claims that it is false to say that sqrt(-x) * sqrt(-y) = sqrt(xy).

If both x and y are negative, then this is totally correctIf ( Read more... )

On NPR's Morning Edition today, there was a story about the No Child Left Behind law in which they went to a high school debate competition in Washington, DC where the topic was NCLB itself. The arguments presented were mostly boilerplate, and they tended to feature mostly arguments against the law: that states allow their standards to fall to ( Read more... )

In a previous entry, I described the nonprofit organization that I'm trying to start. While so many aspects of this organization have come together beautifully, finding a name has been surprisingly hard ( Read more... )

I'm currently in the planning stages for a fantastic HSSP class on astronomy and astrophysics. (HSSP is an eight-week version of Splash, where students can take courses in a huge variety of topics that go into more depth than a few-hour-long seminar.) I'm currently coteaching it with dfarhi (aka Meta to the Mathcamp folks), but we're not sure if ( Read more... )