alexandra_thorn

This blog post looks like a nice concise resource on how to acquire scholarly information quickly. It's short, and I recommend it.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/5me/scholarship_how_to_do_it_efficiently/

I'll add to the remarks on the usefulness of university libraries that I've heard from a librarian friend of mine that a lot of public libraries subscribe to databases of scholarly articles, so online access to otherwise ludicrously expensive (seriously, don't pay $20 for an article) information can often be had with the use of a city library card.

_The Army of the Republic_ (novel) by Stuart Archer Cohen:
http://www.amazon.com/Army-Republic-Stuart-Archer-Cohen/dp/0312383770

I'm listening to an interview with the author. It sounds like he's put some serious thought into democracy and activism, and the hazards of both corporate tyranny and of militant activism. I suspect that it is worth a read.

Interview (entitled "Taking on the State"):
http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/273/id/040407/tues-1-26-10-taking-state

A friend of mine who is working a postdoc in applied math just linked me to this article about salary and startup funds for beginning tenure-track faculty:
http://trainingprofessor.blogspot.com/2010/01/stuff-newprospective-tt-faculty-need-to.html

Slightly terrifying, I'd say. I'm glad I won't need to worry about these questions for a while...

Over the past three days I've spent many hours grinding samples (over 45 samples so far...), which means lots of time to catch up on podcasts. I've recently added Radiolab to my regular podcast cycle (many thanks to several of my Ecology Reading Group colleagues who made me aware of the show). Radiolab is delicious snuggly brain candy, and probably would come in a purple sparkly wrapper if you could buy it off the shelf. I guess I'd characterize it as philosophical pop science that is also humorous. Good stuff.

Anyway, one of the older podcasts I listened to today played some samples from a recently released album of remixes of Terry Riley's "In C" (http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/12/14/in-c/), through which I became aware of the existence of the cellist Zoe Keating (http://www.zoekeating.com/). Her version of the piece was all kinds of sparkly in its own right. Just listening made me happy.

I'm really going to have to make a point of checking out more of her stuff...

Edit: Interestingly, Zoe Keating evidently did the soundtrack for a documentary about ivory-billed woodpeckers... http://ghostbirdmovie.com/soundtrack.html

(via coslinks.livejournal.com):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM&NR=1

I'm finding this thought-provoking:
http://www.metafilter.com/85667/Hi-Whatcha-reading#2777344
(via http://coslinks.livejournal.com)

It's long, and I haven't quite finished. I expect I'll be mentally chewing on this one for a while, though.

My friend Ian has set the fascinating goal for himself of personally experiencing as much of the history of science and technology that he possibly can (http://grokproject.net/). He has started with the paleolithic era, and last week Tim and I met with him to help him learn how to make rope from plant fibers. We had a fun adventure, though there were a couple of disappointments as well.

He wrote about our adventures here (includes photos):
http://grokproject.net/2009/11/11/an-interesting-twist/