Posts tagged ‘media’
Podcast cannibalism
June 21st, 2010 at 7:06 am by Dr. Drang
Well here’s an unfortunate bit of convergence. The Science Show, a radio show about—you guessed it—science from ABC Radio National in Australia, has decided to rebroadcast episodes of Radiolab, a radio show about science from WNYC in New York. This is great for Science Show fans from the antipodes who listen over the air, because…
BBC bull leapers
June 14th, 2010 at 2:50 pm by Dr. Drang
My wife cut this Zits cartoon out of the Tribune a couple of weeks ago, thinking, I guess, that Walt Duncan and I have something in common. I don’t know what she’s on about. As I write this, my iMac is recording (via Audio Hijack Pro) a BBC Radio 2 documentary on David Frost, who…
Trussed up
June 11th, 2010 at 9:29 pm by Dr. Drang
June is Physical Science and Mechanics Month at Make magazine, and about a week ago Gareth Branwyn of Make asked me to answer one of the Ask Make questions a reader sent in: How do roof trusses distribute the load? This topic is, in fact, right in my wheelhouse, so after some guidance on how…
Long Bayes journey into night
April 28th, 2010 at 7:58 am by Dr. Drang
After reading this Science News article by Tom Siegfried last month, I planned to write a post on Bayes’ Theorem, which is mentioned in the article but not presented mathematically. Planned is the operative word; I never actually wrote the post. Then I saw this article by Steven Strogatz in the Sunday New York Times,…
A recommendation for Confederate History Month
April 7th, 2010 at 9:40 pm by Dr. Drang
In the wake of Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell’s idiotic declaration of April as Confederate History Month and the justified anger it caused, I’d like to recommend this iTunes U podcast series: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era: 1845-1877. It’s from Yale University’s History 119 class, taught by Prof. David Blight, and is really engaging. Blight…
What’s wrong with Roger Ebert’s blog
March 9th, 2010 at 12:21 pm by Dr. Drang
It’s not the content, of course, it’s the formatting. Have you tried to read his RSS feed on an iPhone? I started reading Roger’s latest blog entry this morning and ran into the same problem I always do when reading him on my iPhone. The screenshot above is from the MobileRSS feed reader, but I…
Headline Fallows
February 27th, 2010 at 9:27 pm by Dr. Drang
The Atlantic rolled out some big changes to its website a couple of days ago. Normally, I wouldn’t notice something like this, because even though I’m a regular reader of James Fallows’ blog, I almost never visit the site itself. As I do with all my favorite blogs, I subscribe to his RSS feed and…
BBC iPlayer site-specific browser
February 24th, 2010 at 10:00 am by Dr. Drang
As I’ve mentioned at great length in earlier posts, I use Audio Hijack Pro to record BBC Radio shows that are streamed over the internet but don’t come in podcast form. Until recently, I’d been using Safari to open the stream URL. Generally, this worked out fine, but if I wanted to browse while recording…
Unintended Consequences of Math
February 17th, 2010 at 11:30 pm by Dr. Drang
I thought last week’s episode of In Our Time was particularly good, even though I already knew most of the facts presented and disagreed with much of the discussion of those facts. Actually, maybe I liked it because I disagreed with it. It gave me a lot to think about, which thinking I will now…
The Toyota pedal problem
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:59 pm by Dr. Drang
I’m not a big fan of the Chicago Tribune,1 but I have to say it did a pretty good job yesterday explaining the Toyota pedal recall that’s been all over the news lately. The article is only so-so, but the graphic that accompanies it, by Phil Geib and the improbably-named Max Rust, answered many of…
