http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091116.html

What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M83?

CrossFit today:

Run 375m
9 pushpress, 60k
12 box jumps

Repeat 3x for time

12:26


What was interesting is that the instructor has decided that part of functional fitness includes a certain amount of defensive skill. The notion of CrossFit, as he sees it, is that the goal is to provide 'functional' fitness...we move heavy objects, run distances, increase stamina, etc, etc, because those are things that we do in real life. In the real world we move heavy boxes, carry backpacks up hills, run distances, engage in fatiguing tasks, etc. part of being fit enough to perform life's functions includes being fit enough to perform the functions of defense. So, he's incorporating some bagwork into things. Today we learned to wrap our hands/wrists, put on the gloves and practice our punches on the heavy bag. 100 per hand. And, oddly, it was quite enjoyable. And cathartic. And just plain makes-me-feel-good. I'm sure as it becomes more work than play that will change, though.

Originally published at Notes from the bunker.... You can comment here or there.

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog had a link to this interesting little article. It seems someone (and I’ll give you one guess who) has discovered that tungsten is close enough in density to gold that faked gold coins and bars might pass some inspection. I forwarded the link to a buddy, and he emailed me back with a link to an outfit that has a bit more detail (ahem) about the subject. I link it not because I want to encourage you to stock up on fake gold to rip folks off. (Passing off non-valuable tokens as having an intrinsic value is the .gov’s job.) I mentioned it because I think being aware of this stuff is the first step towards protecting oneself from this sort of predation. I’m not sure about the tinfoil hat statement in the previous article about how the US Mint has bars of this stuff in Fort Knox and is quite aware of its non-gold composition. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put anything past the .gov especially when it comes to giving the impression that Ft. Knox really is full of gold. On the other hand, that’s the sort of conspiracy that if proved would cause some serious head rolling at some pretty high levels.

Anyway, my point about all this is that, just like paper currency, theres some counterfeits out there and it may pay to be extra vigilant when you’re purchasing metals.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091115.html

It looks like a ring on the sky.

http://xkcd.com/663/

Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway?

The panel found little if any credible evidence supporting the teaching philosophy and practices that math educators have promoted in their ed-school courses and embedded in textbooks for almost two decades.

...

The mathematics educators’ response to the panel’s report came as no surprise. The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast, a journal put out by an NCTM state affiliate, was the first to declare the party line in its July 2008 issue, which featured highly critical essays by five mathematics educators. Issue editor Greer declared in his overview that the panel’s report offered nothing useful, since it had “restricted” itself to scientific research and ignored the “rich reflections” of educators, who, in his judgment, had produced the “deepest work in the field.”

Anecdotes over data - and these people want to teach math?

Tags: mathematics, teaching

This is a random question, but I was wondering: what sorts of tips, tricks, and programs do you use in order to organize collections of journal article PDFs? I'm undertaking a rather large undergraduate thesis this year, and I'm already gathering a rather large collection of literature to refer to as I'm working for that. Right now what I'm doing is tagging stuff in the file name along with a brief description of the title (example: [ecdysone][fat]inducible-functions), but that's still missing stuff like authors and years which would be useful, but I find when I use file names like that I end up opening a lot more files to find what I need. Even the system I'm using now I usually end up opening more files than I'd like to find what I want. And I hate going through and renaming files after I go on an article downloading spree...

I just downloaded Mendeley Desktop and it seems rather nice, but almost a little too overpowered for what I want to do right now. I want to be able to find the articles I need at a given moment, but I don't really need to annotate them digitally, as I print out the articles I want to take deeper notes on, and I don't need an online backup of them or anything as I have multiple backups on my own external drives. Are there any other programs of a similar sort that are OS X compatible?


Also, another random question but I figured I'd tack it on. I'm planning on applying to graduate school while taking a year off next year. It would be for a Ph.D in some sort of molecular biology program; I'm particularly interested in epigenetics (and I'm aware of all the silliness that undertaking a Ph.D entails, what with lack of employment and misery). I've started talking to my advisors here about possible schools, but I was wondering how all of you who have gone through the graduate admissions process have approached making that list? My grades are quite good, I haven't taken the GREs yet but I will be studying my ass off for them during winter break, and I'll have a solid two years of continuous research on the same project complete by the time I graduate along with the aforementioned thesis. The professor who I do research with suggested I could probably get into a top tier school, and I know a lot of the schools doing research in epigenetics are top tier or very close to it. How did you manage to balance your own interests and institutional reputation?

(If this isn't an appropriate place to ask such a question, tell me and I'll edit it out of the entry. I was going to try applyingtograd but they seem to be much more humanities driven.)

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1251

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: "I am going home" - originally published 11/13/2009 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!