I'm ambivalent about all these news stories about shuttle launches being delayed. On the one hand, it's good that science is getting press. On the other hand, there's a reason why there aren't stories about United flight 512 being delayed: air travel is so commonplace that all the little failures and victories of the technology are treated like ( Read more... )

So apparently there was one man who practically ran infrastructure development in New York city during the 1930s through '60s. He's typically portrayed as more interested in power, especially control over what gets built where and the use of public funds, than (say) building communities. He also favored the car over public transportation, with ( Read more... )

... the saddest are these: it might have been.

Otaku contaiment field failing... (see panel 15 ( Read more... )

This is what happens when I'm waiting for scripts to finish running. In my attempt to impose organization on my life, at least the bits I can keep organized, I recently recategorized the webcomics I read (the list was kept here). Compared to (say) a year ago, I read fewer webcomics. This is because some that I followed slowed or stopped updating ( Read more... )

So I decided to finally get with the decade before it ended and started using an RSS aggregator (Google, natch'). I've been using LJ to do that for years, but not everything has an LJ syndication and almost everyone has an RSS (exceptions are people like the comic syndicators who don't have a decent Peanuts syndication, probably because they want ( Read more... )

Fall semester is around the corner, and I'm a GSI again. I dug up a passage of 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!' when he discusses the Brazilian science education system. Now that I reread it, I see some of it leaking into the US system, even at Berkeley. Troubling. Bears thinking about.

In regard to education in Brazil, I had a very ( Read more... )

Most nights, I can hear phones ringing in the lab. Sometimes it's next door, sometimes it's far off. The sound wanders around the otherwise quiet floor like some digital ghost. But what's actually happening is that, because all of our office phone start with the same numbers, a telemarketer is pinging them in turn. Maybe someone should have ( Read more... )

I've been trying to get through Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Trying. As fun as it is to see Summer Glau beat up people, I'm on episode 3, and every time I watch it for even 5 minutes I'm overwhelmed by how... right wing it is. I can't find my old post with notes from George Lakoff's lecture (this is what happens when I don't update ( Read more... )

Journal. Right ( Read more... )

Since becoming serious (well, more serious) about graduating, and my time management skills haven't correspondingly improved, I've been getting out less and less. Here's the run down: David, Jenn, and I went to a free day at the California Academy of Science but got there late to see what Roberts called, "the best parts." We also ate Burmese food ( Read more... )