Month: July 2007
Swimming The English Channel Just Got Tougher
…possibly thanks to climate change. http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/lone-shark-sparks-interest/2007/07/30/1185647815038.html
(an explanation)
The Braviad seems to be going OK, but it is more in the nature of a personal journal. There are still bits and pieces on policy and education and climate (and bikes) that arise from time to time, and they fit better here than there. So ‘Bravus’ will turn into something a bit more like…
An excellent result
This report from The Age says that wealthier parents are more often sending their kids to public schools: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/wealthy-embrace-state-schools/2007/07/22/1185042948477.html That’s an excellent thing, from my perspective, because (a) it means the public schools don’t end up as neglected ghettos for the poor and (b) it means the affluent are more likely to throw their considerable…
The Braviad
OK, having read all the comments from Friday (for which thanks to all of you), here’s what I’m thinking. I had particular goals and aspirations for the Bravus blog, which had to do with getting a bit more theoretical and talking about science and philosophy and religion and so on. I’ve done a lot of…
RIP
I think I’m gonna put this thing to sleep. It’s limping and coughing and in pain… better to just finish it clean. Maybe too busy, maybe all out of original ideas (or too scared of repeating myself though probably no-one notices 3 years later), I dunno. Anyway, no more posts here. Of course, I’m a…
D’oh!
Saw a share this morning before the market opened and, looking at its announcements and basics, thought ‘that’s gonna do well today’. Considered buying some, but I’m still (mostly) paper trading to gain confidence, so I didn’t buy any real shares, just checked it again at the end of the day. It rose by over…
The Key Thing
So one of my bags didn’t accompany me home from the conference – in fact, due to a complex saga, it may never be coming home at all. Annoying enough to lose some clothes and toiletries and the newly purchased computer power supply and so on… but the really bad bit is that my keys…
All Over In An Instant
Just got the response from the new job I’d applied for, and I didn’t make the shortlist, so that’s the end of that. A bit disappointing since it was such a great job and a great opportunity, but it’s definitely nice to have the uncertainty over… I’ve felt like I was living in limbo for…
Productivity
I presented the workshop with two friends and colleagues, Mike and Shaaron. Both are younger than me, and both have awesome careers. They’re probably both smarter than me too, but they also work a lot harder. I’d be the first to acknowledge that I’ve been lazy for the last few years… too much time on…
‘Quiet Information’
A speaker used the term ‘quiet information’ in talking about diagrams and pictures in textbooks the other day. By that he means that if you can add to a diagram extra info about things like the context in which something happens – partly faded out or blurred out so that it’s in the background and…
Jmol
Workshop this arvo on Jmol, a Java-based application for viewing molecules in Chemistry. Lots of fun, and really intelligently written to make it simple to use. I’d love to have shown it to you right here on the blog page – that would have been very cool – but unfortunately the blog code breaks the…
The Vulture Speaks
Two eminently sensible articles from The Register about the recent attempted car bombings in the UK: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/29/more_fear_biscuits_please/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/terror_idiocy_outbreak/
On Refusing To Be Intimidated
This is an interdisciplinary conference, so it includes people from all of the sciences – including demography and meteorology and geology as well as chemistry, physics and biology – presenting on their work. That often means I have to really struggle to understand the relevant science that their educational visualisations are designed to teach. It…
Back to the old style
The new theme was purty, I guess, but I made this one (with help from Cibby on the graphics), plus as Lorne has suggested I’m gonna start branching out more and commenting on other blogs, and this one has the blog-roll at the top instead of the bottom. I might tweak this theme a bit…
David Goodsell
Heard him speak, loved his images… which are in textbooks and other locations all over the place. I think I’ve talked before here about loving visual artworks that are too rich and complex to take in at a single glance. David Goodsell is a molecular biochemist who is also an artist, and these images are…
The Older I Get, The Better I Used To Be
I just looked back at July 2005’s posts to see whether I had written anything much about the previous GRC two years ago. I hadn’t, but I was kinda impressed with the quality and quantity of what I was writing back then, and depressed with what I’ve been doing with this blog recently – not…
NOT Reporting on the Gordon Research Conference
I’m at Bryant University in Rhode Island this week for the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Visualisation in Science and Education. The Gordon conferences (there are about 80 of them on different subjects each year) are unusual in that they are intended to allow scientists to present their cutting edge work, and it’s therefore forbidden…
Just One More Nail in the WMD Coffin
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/07/02/tenet_iraq/ They knew, they lied, they connived, they got what they wanted… and they still look like escaping unscathed.
Addiction is Expensive
(and so is carelessness) I remembered to pack my laptop, an adaptor to allow me to use American powerpoints, my mp3 player and its power adaptor… but didn’t end up packing my laptop power adaptor. Since my beloved kids had been watching movies and left the battery flat, it meant I had no access for…