We’ve been thinking for a while now about moving to a new place–and kind of living paycheck-to-paycheck in terms of certainty about the future–but now circumstances have conspired to pick the date for us: by the end of February, we will be out of this particular beige shoebox-shaped living space. God only knows [...]
Just something that I’m working out in my head right now….
Stale: not up-to-date, item used to be true but now is not.
Incomplete: some items unknown.
Inaccurate: some items are wrong; “noise” or “static”.
Imprecise: information present, but fuzzy.
Trivial: true, but not useful.
Uneconomical: costs too much to find out, or too much [...]
I haven’t been following the story of the faster-than-light neutrinos, because I figured that probably there would turn out to be some errors in the experiments somewhere. Faster-than-light particles would require some major revisions to today’s physics.
Yesterday I did skim through their preprint on Arxiv, and was happy to discover that they were at [...]
…at least in physics: The U.S. produces at least two physics Ph.D’s for every physics Ph.D-level job. There are no recruiters beating down my door offering me shiny cars and ponies to come and think for them. Once upon a time, I wasted many precious hours trying to get various large companies [...]
This is from my experience of writing SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) proposals, but most of it also applies to writing grant proposals and business proposals.
1. Look for opportunities in unlikely places. SBIR opportunities are distributed over a wide variety of federal departments. You can also partner with another company on a [...]
Gas prices have eased up slightly, to about $3.69 per gallon around here. I’ve calculated the cost of gas to get to the places we go most often. These are round trip costs:
Work $1.23
Church $9.43
Grocery stores $0.41, $1.23
Library $1.23
Garden $1.64
Arboretum $2.46
Co-op $1.64
Grandma’s house $24.60
Rest of the family (vacation) $307 and up
MFH tells me [...]
I’ve been coming across a few articles lately about how getting a higher degree is a colossal waste of time and money. 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School states the issues well, it is focused on humanities and social sciences degrees, but nearly all of the reasons hold true for the sciences [...]
I was amused to read the comments to this Vox Day post on vaccines, after reading the comments to this BoingBoing post the other day.
Many of the BoingBoing commenters essentially used this argument: Vaccines come from Science, Science is Good, therefore people who don’t get themselves or their children vaccinated must be [...]
This WSJ article was short but interesting:
In recent years, however, scientists have begun to outline the surprising benefits of not paying attention. Sometimes, too much focus can backfire; all that caffeine gets in the way. For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between daydreaming and creativity—people who daydream more are also better at generating [...]
(Following up to this post.)
Dawkins, and many of the BoingBoing commenters, assume that Christian faith and science are so incompatible that Christian scientists (small s) must be practically insane from the cognitive dissonance. They are wrong.
It is perfectly possible (and reasonable) to proceed with scientific research under the working assumption that no supernatural entities [...]