All Blogs / Academics / Posts With Video

It Probably Wasn’t the Time of Your Life

When we get nostalgic, we tend to overlook bad times and focus on good memories. It’s like how Green Day’s “Good Riddance” ended up promoted under its subtitle, “Time of Your Life”… and then became the go-to ballad for every late 90s graduation, flashback, and farewell television episode. In a recent op-ed for the New [...]

Sandcastles in academia (part 3 – building and mobilities)

Carnivorous, Green Approach to Getting Malaria Mosquitoes

A progress report on a slow, steady approach to controlling malaria: “Using carnivorous plants to control malaria-transmitting mosquitoes,” Jasper Ogwal-Okeng, Mary Namaganda, Godfrey Sande Bbosa, James Kalema, Malaria World, 2013, 4, 10. (Thanks to investigator Bart Knols for bringing this to our attention.) The authors report: “This GCE project set out to develop a novel [...]

Sandcastles in academia (part 2 – the point)

Sandcastles, in general, don’t tend to last. They are transient. Maybe even a metaphor for transience. Suggesting, perhaps, the question ‘What’s the point of building one?’ Steps towards answers are provided in a paper for the scholarly journal The Senses and Society, Volume 4, Number 2, July 2009, pp. 195-210(16). Where author Dr. Pau Obrador-Pons PhD, [...]

A reminder: Dead Duck Day is June 5

Kees Moeliker reminds us that Dead Duck Day is coming: Wednesday June 5th it is Dead Duck Day again. At exactly 17:55h we will honor the mallard duck that became known to science as the first (documented) ‘victim’ of homosexual necrophilia in that species. Please join for this short open-air ceremony next to the new wing of the Natural History [...]

Sandcastles in academia (part 1 – Transience)

“A sandcastle is not fixed and given but is fluid and changing. Tunnels and towers may collapse as the sun shines; the fortifications may get undermined. The work of erosion and sedimentation may slowly alter the sandcastle or there may be sudden ruptures as the walls collapse.” So writes distinguished professor John Urry of the [...]

The Art of Making Mistakes – How and why mistakes help you to learn languages (Guest post by Luca)

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” —Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM Making mistakes is a fundamental part of every cognitive process, whether solving a math...Show More Summary

How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood

Jim Harper Justice Anthony Kennedy seems to be carving out his place as the Supreme Court justice who doesn’t “get” identity. Maryland v. King was the case issued today that shows that. His opener was the 2004 decision in Hiibel v. Sixth...Show More Summary

'What is time?' These grade-school explanations take the prize

The nature of time, like the nature of a flame, is easy to experience but tricky to explain scientifically — and that's exactly why the Flame Challenge took on time as the subject of its second annual contest for explanations that would make sense to 11-year-olds. Now, …

Oxymoron of the Day: 'President Obama'

A president presides over something. To preside over it, however, he must know something about it. But 'President' Obama seems to know little or nothing about what is going on in his government. He puts me in mind of Sgt....

Cultural- and Individual-Level Interventions Against Eating Disorders (Trigger Warning)

Cross-posted at Inequality by (Interior) Design. The problem: A Brazilian modeling agency, Star Models, recently released a new series of anti-anorexia PSA advertisements. They illustrate one of the ways ultra-thin body ideals characterizing...Show More Summary

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Which Country Has the Most Expensive Bureaucrats of All?

Daniel J. Mitchell I’ve complained endlessly about America’s bloated and expensive government bureaucracies. It irks me that people in the productive sector get slammed with ever-higher taxes in part to support a gilded class of paper...Show More Summary

Kids experience schadenfreude by age four, maybe earlier

Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are of would-be thieves getting their comeuppance, either knocked-out by brave store-keepers or caught out by their own dazzling ineptitude. Seeing a person deservedly suffer this way brings a special pleasure known as schadenfreude. Show More Summary

Science Tuesday – Ocean acidification and its impacts on coral reefs (video)

During the May 21, 2013 Boulder CIty Council meeting Dr. Joanie Kleypas, Marine Ecologist, NCAR delivered this presentation. Vimeo, 30 May 2013. Video.

Attack of the clones

by Leonard FinkelmanI need two things to start my average weekday. One of them is coffee. The coffee, of course, goes into a mug [1]. Mugs reflect our deepest-held values, proudly displaying the logo of a faceless corporate monolith or the title of that conference that you kind of remember attending two jobs ago. Show More Summary

Do not bargain with round numbers

When negotiating for a salary, most of us reach for a nice, round number like $65,000. Or $90,000. Or $120,000. But, by favoring all those zeros, we may be missing an opportunity to score a better deal, according to a new paper from researchers at Columbia Business School. They found that using more precise numbers [...]

On the trail of global warming’s equally evil twin

Ken Caldeira, climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, discusses the threat of ocean acidification, the so called equally evil twin of climate change. No Place Left from James Temple on Vimeo. The following story accompanies the full profile of climate scientist Ken Calderia, found here. Ocean acidification has been called the evil twin […]

Antiquity Trafficker Arrested in Peshawar

Peshawar police searched a Hiace van travelling to Islamabad from Peshawar ('near an Afghan colony on the Charsadda road') and recovered 29 antiquities described as "Gandharan". According to police, these artefacts had been smuggled from Afghanistan. Show More Summary

5-HT1A Receptors and the Effectiveness of ECT

Most people have heard of ECT: Electroconvulsive Therapy. A lot of people will immediately think of the scene during One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which doesn’t give you a very good picture. People think of ECT and think of horrible seizures, something terribly dangerous. But it’s not like that anymore. Now, ECT is usually [...]

The bouncer at the national door: the Australian citizenship test

The Australian citizenship test has been with us since 2007, but is it doing more than just quizzing future Aussies on their knowledge of our form of government, our sporting legends and our public holidays? Linguistics student Ben Purser asks some questions of his own.