Comments for Perils of the Ice Queen

Comment on Thoughts on DAMA/LIBRA by Geoffrey Tweedale

Geoffrey Tweedale — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:02:55 +0000

You have my support!

Comment on What Team Do You Support? by Steve

Steve — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:10:17 +0000

I think that closed primaries are exactly designed around that “Rah, rah,go team!” mentality. By locking the primary, it ensures a candidate that appeals to the party faithfuls, likely the base. This shuts out moderates quite early on. Pandering to the base is the only way, it seems, to secure nomination.

Comment on The Politics of Fear by Steve

Steve — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:59:49 +0000

One thing that always gets lost in this discussion, it seems, is the fact that most of the prisoners in the federal prison system are FAR WORSE than the people who are stuck in Cuba. Even under the . . . er . . . liberal assumption that every one of those at Gitmo is, in fact, guilty of something, I’d wager that the average prisoner in U.S. federal prison would shred them in the first few minutes of their incarceration. The number of absolutely terrifying criminals in federal lockup probably outnumbers the prisoners at Gitmo 10 to 1. Why are we so afraid of having these people in our prison system, already home to some of the world’s most vicious criminals, grown right here in the U.S.?

Comment on Grammar Woes by Nicole Ackerman

Nicole Ackerman — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:26:30 +0000

My response on #6:

There should never be a paragraph made of one sentence. It sounds like you have a 5-sentence paragraph that has been bound up by punctuation. Let it free!

Comment on Grammar Woes by Steve Sekula

Steve Sekula — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:46:40 +0000

No offense, but if this is the kind of thing you are worried about you guys have either succeeded, or you don’t have enough science to keep you busy. Just choose one.

On BaBar, we would say 0.X events – plural. Otherwise, you have to talk about “fractions of an event”, such as “we expect 0.X of an event” (or a photon, etc).

For numbers less then 10, my rule of thumb is if the number has units, write it as a number. Otherwise, use a word. For instance, if you say “Our detectors are make from one layer of X and another of Y” then use “one”. If you say, “Our detectors are 1 inch in diameter”, then use “1″.

You only hyphenate when you use a phrase as an adjective. For instance, “We use 1-inch thick detectors.” You only hyphenate the “1-inch” part, as that describes the thickness.

Three semicolons and a colon are too much, unless the semicolons are used to delimit a list.

Comment on Thoughts on Science Education by Jodi

Jodi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:01:51 +0000

I’m not sure if that effect was present or not. Certainly not all of my teachers were as negative as this particular English teacher. I never picked up on any gender discrimination at my school.

The first time I ever noticed any different treatment because of my sex was my first year of graduate school. At the time, I found it very upsetting. However, I later came to realize that it was the Professor was honestly trying, but just didn’t get it.

Comment on Thoughts on Science Education by Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:45:03 +0000

I totally agree with you, but I think there’s another component. I really think girls are discouraged from math/science at an early age almost automatically, and that has pretty much always been the case. Do you think that had any effect on your situation in high school?
(PS. I met Steve on the DC trip and linked over from his blog where I was searching for physicist punk rock. The title of your post just caught my eye since it’s something I’m generally cranky about.)