January 22, 2008
In comments to my review of "The Race for Absolute Zero", I promised to try to write up an explanation of BEC on the blog. A bit of preparatory Googling demonstrates, though, that I already did, in the fall of 2006, talking about identical particles, Pauli Exclusion, and BEC. You might've thought I…
January 22, 2008
In comments to my complaint about the over-identification of physics with particle physics, I noted that this is largely because high-energy physicists have been successful in getting the media and general public to buy into their belief that high-energy physics is the coolest and most important…
January 22, 2008
I'm not organized enough to make this a regular feature, or to use it to divine the future, but every now and then, I get a really good run of songs on the iTunes shuffle, and make a note. Here's a batch from this weekend (with a smattering of comments):
"White Russian Galaxy," The Crimea
"Be…
January 22, 2008
Well, ok, the final score was really 64-62, but it was 4-2 in the five-minute overtime period after forty minutes of old-school Big East basketball failed to resolve anything. On paper, this shouldn't've been much of a game-- Georgetown is #9 in the country, while Syracuse dresses only eight…
January 21, 2008
Coyotebanjo: Day 03 "In the Trenches" (shout-out Friday edition)
The "Friday Shout-Out," an interesting classroom technique. (via Pedablogue)
(tags: academia education society psychology)
onipress.com
23-page free preview comic for the upcoming Jumper movie.
(tags: books movies SF)
Graphene…
January 21, 2008
A few more detailed comments on the games leading up to the Chateau Steelypips Showdown in two weeks:
The Patriots looked a little shaky, but again, I was never that worried that they would actually lose. Their defense isn't as intimidating as it was a few years ago, but they did enough to get the…
January 21, 2008
The mysterious Revere looks at school killings today (or, more accurately, looks at a study looking at school killings). He/she/they opens with an arresting factoid:
The second leading cause of death in the 5 to 18 year old age group in the US is homicide. These are school aged children and the…
January 21, 2008
The good news:
Kate's New England Patriots beat the Chargers to win the AFC championship
My New York Giants beat the Packers in overtime to win the NFC champioship
The bad news:
They play each other in the Super Bowl in two weeks.
This is perhaps not the most positive sporting development for…
January 20, 2008
I stopped by a Sports Authority store yesterday to buy a couple of whistles before tonight's intramural basketball game (a persistent problem in the last few years has been that the students refereeing the game don't have whistles, and thus fould go uncalled). There were laser-printed signs taped…
January 20, 2008
Brent Musberger is the single worst announcer in sports.
"That's a bold assertion," you say. "I find that hard to believe. I mean, he's famous."
Allow me to explain: Musberger generally calls games for ABC as part of a two-man announcing team. Musberger is the "play-by-play" guy, and the other…
January 20, 2008
My Maryland Terrapins have been, shall we say, inconsistent this year, with back-to-back home losses to Ohio University (not Ohio State, Ohio U.) and American University. As a result, I didn't have really high hopes headed into Saturday's game at tope-ranked North Carolina. Much to my surprise,…
January 19, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Faculty Exchanges: Notes Toward a Proposal
The next great reality show: ProfSwap! Hey, if the writer's strike keeps up...
(tags: academia education experiment)
Words Words Words -- The Dream Cafe Weblog
Steve Brust gets sick of LiveJournal, ans dtarts a…
January 19, 2008
It's not often that I find myself agreeing with the Incoherent Ponderer, but he's exactly right regarding Scientific American's "The Future of Physics" issue (via PhysMath Central):
[T]his month's issue of Scientific American has a special titled "The Future of Physics". I was quickly disappointed…
January 18, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff : The Contextuality of Quantum Theory in Ten Minutes
"Elves, Santa, boxes, and quantum measurements. That's the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem: quantum measurements are contextual."
(tags: physics quantum science computing)
An Upsetting Outcome :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News…
January 18, 2008
Amazon conveniently informed me today of a very positive development in SF: Night Shade Books is republishing Glen Cook's space opera novel The Dragon Never Sleeps, which I reviewed quite some time ago. I've re-read it since then, and if anything, my opinion of it improved. It's "New Space Opera"…
January 18, 2008
Somehow or another, I have managed never to read Feynman's famous book on Quantum Electro-Dynamics. It always seemed a little too much like work, but having found myself in the position of writing a pop-science book about quantum physics that includes a chapter on QED and Feynman diagrams, it…
January 18, 2008
Ernest Rutherford once said
In science, there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.
So, a really simple question: which do you prefer? Physics or stamp collecting? Leave your answer in the comments.
January 17, 2008
The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Smith Of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles Of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien (1967, 1949) | The A.V. Club
"A friend who's much smarter than I once theorized that the process of growing up involves going either through a Tolkien phase or a Beat phase, but never both."
(tags…
January 17, 2008
They're renovating a lab down the hall from mine (this is what led to the power shutdown that temporarily disabled my wavemeter). Today's agenda apparently involves a lot of drilling. Or, possibly, a bank robbery.
Whatever's going on, the intermittent violent shaking of the floor is not so…
January 17, 2008
Typing up the demolition story reminded me of another before-my-time NIST story. Again, the statute of limitations has run, so it's probably safe to tell this.
As mentioned in the earlier post, it was very expensive to get the official facilities team at NIST to do construction work, so a lot of…
January 17, 2008
The Washington Post has an article this morning headlined Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif.:
The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court's decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar in…
January 17, 2008
I've been in a bit of a funk this week, for reasons that don't bear talking about, and everything in blogdom has seemed indescribably tedious: the same boring people having the same stupid arguments over and over, with no end in sight. And don't get me started on politics.
In an effort to shake…
January 17, 2008
Congratulations to Texas Tech coach Bob Knight, who extended his own NCAA record by winning his 900th game as a coach against Texas A&M last night. Knight being Knight, he couldn't get through this without a tiny display of churlishness:
After the game fans chanted Knight's name as he walked…
January 16, 2008
Quantum Hoops
We're still not sure whether they won or lost.
(tags: basketball academia sports physics movies)
slacktivist: King and Huck
The difference between the religious language of Martin Luther King and Mike Huckabee.
(tags: religion politics US society culture)
Coping With the Crunch…
January 16, 2008
Last week, I made an oblique mention of an equipment failure, and commented about the positive experience I had in dealing with their engineers on the phone. I carefully avoided naming the broken product or the company I was dealing with, out of some obscure sense of blogging ethics.
I shipped the…
January 16, 2008
While browsing through Border the other day, I noticed a book called Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance, which is the latest entry in the subgenre of mysteries in which improbable literary figures turn into detectives. In fact, it may represent the end of the genre-- I think they may have…
January 16, 2008
The second half of the NOVA special on "Absolute Zero" aired last night. Like the first installment, it was very well done, avoiding most of the traps of modern pop-science television. There were some mysterious shots of amusement park rides when they started talking about quantum mechanics, and I'…
January 15, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Civility
The Dean Dad's one-sentence campus civility code.
(tags: academia culture society humanities social-science)
I Can Has Rezearch Papar? by Cyle Gage
The semiotics of LOLCats. Or Maybe it's the hemeneutics of LOLCats. I get those mixed up.
(tags:…
January 15, 2008
The second part of the NOVA program Absolute Zero airs tonight on PBS stations. The first part, "The Conquest of Cold" covered the theory and technology of refrigeration, while this segment, "The Quest for Absolute Zero" will include all the fun atomic physics stuff leading up to the achievement of…
January 15, 2008
This is actually sort of a pre-lab story, as it happened before my lab in grad school was even established. It pre-dates my time at NIST, and happened long enough ago that the statute of limitations has surely run out, so I feel safe telling it.
The lab I worked in in grad school was acquired by…
