March 18, 2008
Stephen asks:
Why do you try to hide your secret desire to be a high-energy particle physicist?
Heh. Seriously, honestly, I have no desire whatsoever to be a high-energy particle physicist. I wish I had a somewhat better understanding of particle physics, becuase that way I would have an easier…
March 18, 2008
Via Steinn, a "meme" asking people to name women in science:
Rules:
1. You can't choose people from your own institution or company.
2. You can't google or use the internet to aid in your search. (But if you know someone is a scientist, but not sure what disciple, you can look that up).
3. You can…
March 18, 2008
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
Zombie Feynman!
(tags: comics science society physics silly)
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Mistake of the Week: "But even he says so, and he's an X!"
"Given any exotic mixture of belief and group affiliation,…
March 17, 2008
It hasn't been a roaring success, but LBMango on LiveJournal has a twist on the questions meme that I like:
Everyone has things they blog about.
Everyone has things they don't blog about.
Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about,…
March 17, 2008
In one of his March Meeting posts, Doug Natelson writes about laser cooling experiments that explore condensed matter phenomena:
While the ultracold gases provide an exquisitely clean, tunable environment for studying some physics problems, it's increasingly clear to me that they also have some…
March 17, 2008
For the first time in forever, the NCAA Tournament will start this weekend, and I won't have a clear rooting interest. Neither Syracuse nor Maryland made the field of 65. This is, of course, karmic blowback from the Giants winning the Super Bowl-- the last time they won, Syracuse became the first #…
March 17, 2008
Over at Physics and Physicists, ZapperZ is thinking about the intro curriculum, and offers a suggestion:
I believe that we should have a more open-ended experiment to be given to the students. So I'll give an example. Note that while thing is something that I've thought about for a while, I'm still…
March 17, 2008
Jacks of Science â A Large Hadron Leprechaun Hunt
Leprechauns have infested the ATLAS detector. Get the hose.
(tags: physics silly pictures)
Crooked Timber » » A Primer on Irish Culture
Three gifted singers who have kissed the Blarney Stone.
(tags: music silly video youtube)
Swans on Tea Â…
March 16, 2008
A little while back, there was some discussion of what science blogging should be, where the question of what draws the most traffic came up. A couple of people said they see more traffic from "real" science posts than from other trivia, in contrast to my claim that I see more traffic from other…
March 16, 2008
Today is "Selection Sunday," when the field for the NCAA basketball championships will be announced, and everybody will start filling out their office-pool bracket sheets. I'm going to be in the weird position of watching the tournament without a rooting interest, as both my teams stink, and won't…
March 16, 2008
I Watched This On Purpose: Hitman | The A.V. Club
"[A] new feature that will explore the impulse to spend time with entertainments that are unlikely to reward us in any meaningful way, or sometimes any way at all."
(tags: movies stupid)
Bad Movie Physics: A Report Card
"We rated 18 movies based…
March 15, 2008
Paul Krugman is now a famour economist, but many years ago, he was "an oppressed assistant professor, caught up in the academic rat race." So, he did what any good academic would do in that situation: he wrote a silly paper to cheer himself up. In this case, a paper discussing the issues that arise…
March 15, 2008
We had an appointment yesterday for a fetal echocardiogram, to look for heart problems that might've caused the scary first trimester screen result back in January. This was basically a high-resolution ultrasound focussed on the heart (with Doppler velocity imaging to look at blood flow), and after…
March 15, 2008
Alpha Centauri might harbour an 'Earth' - physicsworld.com
SF fans and space enthusiasts worldwide commence drooling.
(tags: science astronomy planets space news SF)
NPR: It Isn't Rocket Science: How Best to Board a Plane
Science explains why Southwest is more efficient than other airlines.
(…
March 14, 2008
You know, there are really a remarkable number of bands whose names begin with "S"... There may be more "B" or "T" acts in my library, just because I own a bazillion songs by Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, but there sure are a lot of "S" artists.
This set continues to show that sing-along-ability is the…
March 14, 2008
The next lab visit experiments I want to talk about are really the epitome of what I called the "NIST Paradigm" in an earlier post. These are experiments on "four-wave mixing" done by Colin McCormick (who I TA'd in freshman physics, back in the day), a post-doc in Paul Lett's lab at NIST. As Paul…
March 14, 2008
Yet another picture taken by Kate at the National Zoo. When we arrived at the beaver pen, a bunch of keepers were inside, posing for a picture. This little guy clearly thought that humans being in his enclosure indicated that it was feeding time, and was doing his best pathetic begging.
It really…
March 14, 2008
Today has been dubbed "Talk Like a Physicist Day". Why? Because we're at least as cool as pirates, that's why.
Over at Swans on Tea, Tom offers some vocabulary tips:
Use "canonical" when you mean "usual" or "standard." As in, "the canonical example of talking like a physicist is to use the word '…
March 14, 2008
The Smart Set: Sequins & Scandals - November 8, 2007
"Figure skating is the quintessential American sport, not merely because it is fiercely individualistic while at the same time incredibly conformist, but also because the athletes and fans, like the American electorate, have an…
March 13, 2008
Looking at this segment of the playlist, it's clear that I was, consciously or not, giving a good deal of weight to how well a given song works as a sing-along. For whatever reason, this chunk of the artist alphabet is loaded with tunes that are maybe a little dubious content-wise, but good fun to…
March 13, 2008
As I mentioned a few days ago, I visited Luis Orozco's lab during our trip to DC last week. I already talked about his cavity QED stuff, but that's only one of the projects under development. He's also working on a next-generation apparatus for the laser cooling and trapping of francium, to be done…
March 13, 2008
Over at the new(ish) Of Two Minds, Shelley has posted a video giving advice on scientific presentations from a couple of guys at Michigan. They offer a few quick tips to giving better presentations:
Know your material well enough to give it without slides
Skip the outline (for short talks in…
March 13, 2008
We live in a short-attention-span age. I have a huge array of feeds spewing information at me like the proverbial firehose, so I often don't do more than look at the headline and RSS excerpt, and I don't think I'm alone.
Given that, it's more important than ever that the headlines given to articles…
March 13, 2008
nanoscale views: March APS Meeting II
The latest from New Orleans.
(tags: physics meetings science news)
Whatever » The Problem With 1,000 True Fans
"The problem is that Kevin Kelly, in his enthusiasm, wants to make it seem that getting 1,000 people to give you $100 is no great trick."
(tags:…
March 12, 2008
As noted in the previous FutureBaby playlist post, I started doing this after hearing Don McLean's "American Pie" on the radio while running errands the other day. Amusingly, you will note that that song is not present in this part of the list-- that's because I don't have an electronic copy of it…
March 12, 2008
One of the many very cool things going on in the Laser Cooling Empire at NIST is a series of experiments using optical tweezers to study various biological systems. I used to share an office with the biochemist in the group, who was there to handle the wet chemistry that physicists are notoriously…
March 12, 2008
Via email, Reference Games, featuring two versions of the classic video game "Asteroids" (well, it's a classic if you're my age...). The cool wrinkle: light speed in the game is set to be very low, and you can toggle back and forth between the ship frame and the frame of the background stars, to…
March 12, 2008
Here's another picture Kate took at the National Zoo, showing one of their pandas (the male, I think, but I'm not sure) chowing down on a big branch of bamboo. As noted previously, they're deeply improbable creatures, but really cute.
Just don't try to hug them.
March 12, 2008
Bad Baby Names - A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names - John Tierney - New York Times
"During his 1969 concert at San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash proposed a paradigm shift in the field of developmental psychology. "
(tags: kid-stuff psychology science society culture music)
Gen Ed Reform --…
March 11, 2008
As Scalzi wrote some time back, "one of a parent's more minor but nevertheless important responsibilities is to make sure his or children grow up with a love of music that doesn't totally suck." I was reminded of this the other day while driving around, when "American Pie" came on the radio. I have…
