{"id":1295,"date":"2007-07-10T14:44:18","date_gmt":"2007-07-10T19:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/07\/10\/use-the-internets-to-learn-stuff\/"},"modified":"2007-07-10T14:44:18","modified_gmt":"2007-07-10T19:44:18","slug":"use-the-internets-to-learn-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/10\/use-the-internets-to-learn-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Use the Internets to Learn Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Links people have been passing to me:<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/fqxi.org\/community\/\">Foundational Questions Institute Community Site<\/a> now has a handy RSS feed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"feed:\/\/www.fqxi.org\/community\/rss.php\">feed:\/\/www.fqxi.org\/community\/rss.php<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If, like me, you read your blogs in a newsreader (like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloglines.com\/\">Bloglines<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/reader\/view\/\">Google Reader<\/a>) rather than the old-fashioned way of actually visiting every damn blog, this is a godsend.  Anthony Aguirre has an interesting post, inspired in part by the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/06\/19\/the-alternative-science-respectability-checklist\/\">Alternative-Science Respectability Checklist<\/a>, on <a href=\"http:\/\/fqxi.org\/community\/forum.php?action=topic&amp;id=71\">How Do We Fund Einstein Without Funding Crackpots?<\/a>  (To a large extent I think the present system does a pretty good job at that, actually.  I would love to see much more flexibility in how researchers with a good track record get to use their funding, and much less onerous reporting requirements, but I haven&#8217;t seen any non-anecdotal evidence that the next generation of Einsteins is being denied their fair share of grants.  I&#8217;d be interested in hearing otherwise.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m on a new American Physical Society Committee on Informing the Public, and one of the things (the only thing, really) I was able to help them with was some suggestions on improving their website.  The APS runs a public-outreach site, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physicscentral.com\/\">Physics Central<\/a>, that occupies some prime internet real estate &#8212; it&#8217;s a top-ten result when you do a Google search on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?source=ig&amp;hl=en&amp;q=physics&amp;btnG=Google+Search\">physics<\/a>.  One of the things I suggested to keep the page current and lively was a regular update on interesting articles to appear on physics blogs &#8212; and lo and behold, they now have a regular <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physicscentral.com\/news\/highlights.html\">Physics Blogosphere<\/a> feature.  From there, for example, you might be directed to <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2007\/07\/faster-than-a-s.html\">Cocktail Party Physics<\/a>, to learn about speeding Priuses, cloud chambers, the Iron Science Teacher competition, Cute Child Syndrome, the Exploratorium, and some insight into Rush Limbaugh&#8217;s manifold shortcomings.  (That&#8217;s just in one post, of course; there are others.)  It&#8217;s sort of like Seed&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seedmagazine.com\/news\/2007\/07\/seeds_daily_zeitgeist_7102007.php\">Daily Zeitgeist<\/a>, but just for physics.  Now if we could only get them an RSS feed&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Terri Yu points to a series of podcasts by MIT physicist <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/physics\/facultyandstaff\/faculty\/peter_fisher.html\">Peter Fisher<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/scripts.mit.edu\/~podcast\/wordpress\/\">Life as an Academic<\/a>.  A good example is this episode on <a href=\"http:\/\/scripts.mit.edu\/~podcast\/wordpress\/2007\/06\/27\/sequence-2-episode-1-imposter\/\">imposter syndrome<\/a> &#8212; the nagging feeling that you don&#8217;t belong here among all of these actually-smart people.  For the most part, they don&#8217;t either, so don&#8217;t worry about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Links people have been passing to me: The Foundational Questions Institute Community Site now has a handy RSS feed: feed:\/\/www.fqxi.org\/community\/rss.php If, like me, you read your blogs in a newsreader (like Bloglines or Google Reader) rather than the old-fashioned way of actually visiting every damn blog, this is a godsend. Anthony Aguirre has an interesting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}