Get Started Handling Academic Citations Like a Pro

…other “+” appearing above “Source Options” on the new pane. Just go to any search box (such as Google Scholar) and search for “***“, and copy resulting page’s URL. Paste it in the web-search shortcut you just created in Quicksilver under “URL.” Under “Name,” write something useful like “GoogleScholar.” Finally, rescan your catalog by clicking the circular-arrow in the bottom right. That’s it! To search for stuff, just invoke Quicksilver, hit “.” (…

Read more

Get Started Learning General Relativity Online

…eory. Emphasizes philosophical perspectives, where relevant. Available for free online. Introduction to General Relativity on Wikipedia. A quick overview of a few of the essential features of GR, on everyone’s favorite non-scholarly resource. Mathematical introductions to general relativity Oz and the Wizard, by John Baez. This is very entertaining introduction to general relativity in the form of a dialogue. It also contains a fantastic dictionar…

Read more

Get Started Reading Books and Articles on the Cheap

…the Library. The what? Yes, the library. It’s still the easiest way to get free books to read. Some libraries will even send books to you in the mail for free. Here’s how to find a public library in your area. Or, visit your local University’s library for an even grander selection. Buy very, very cheap books. Ok, so this one’s almost free. There are hundreds of books selling at less than 1 cent on Amazon. They’re not all worth a penny, but there a…

Read more

Get Started Improving Your Philsci Archive Experience

…e pleasant. Use Google to search philsci archive. Google is a far superior search engine. Why use anything else? Enter your search keywords into Google, followed by this string: site:philsci-archive.pitt.edu This will return a Google search for your keywords, restricted to Philsci archive. Trust me, this is a real pain-reliever: for example, searching for “van fraassen” returns baloney on Philsci archive’s search engine, while Google returns hundr…

Read more

Could You Have Defended Galileo?

…ies fall. But you can still try to put upper and lower bounds on motion in free fall, in order to get your result. How can the law of uniform velocity provide bounds on the time it takes for a body to fall? On Monday, I’ll elaborate on that last hint. (It’s actually an interesting problem all by itself.) Later, I’ll sketch a little bit of the first answer to this challenge, which was given by Pierre de Fermat in an obscure letter to Gassendi, arou…

Read more