August 13, 2006
Well, it's as good a guess at a collective noun for "kerfuffle" as any other...
There have been three moderately heated bloggy controversies that I've been following over the past week, that I haven't commented on. Mostly because I don't really have that much to add to any of the arguments, or at…
August 13, 2006
Via Making Light, Aasif Mandvi on The Daily Show delivers a blistering yet deadpan assessment of American Middle East policy to date.
I deeply resent living in a world where the only worthwhile political commentary comes from a comedy show.
August 12, 2006
That last post is really kind of a downer topic for a Saturday morning, especially after a fun Friday. Sorry about that. Here's a picture of pretty flowers to lighten the mood:
These are on some tall bushes outside our back door, growing around the base of some pine trees that look like fifty-foot…
August 12, 2006
This year marks 25 years since the identification of AIDS as a disease, and Seed is going with blanket coverage. The latest print issue is devoted to AIDS coverage, there's a temporary group blog covering the International AIDS conference, and this week's Ask a ScienceBlogger is AIDS-related:
To…
August 11, 2006
I'm getting a little sick of the current rotation on iTunes, which means it's probably time for another shopping spree. I've got a couple of albums on my list to buy already (the new Tom Petty, the new Richard Thompson), and I've heard a couple of good tracks on KEXP that I'll check out (new songs…
August 11, 2006
As noted in a previous post, I'm teaching the senior seminar this fall, which means I'll be meeting weekly with our senior majors (13 of them!) to discuss topics of interest to them. Which will involve a fair amount of discussion of graduate school, because that's one of the options, whether people…
August 11, 2006
I usually try to post some lighter material on Fridays-- dorky polls, random tracks, that sort of thing-- and this week, I thought of three different topics that are all basically hooks for comments. So, I'm declaring it a theme for the day, because, well, I can do that. I doubt this will become a…
August 11, 2006
Well, OK, you might want to wait until after work. But if you're into wine, you might be interested in The Naked Vine, a wine-recommending blog started by a guy from a mailing list that I'm on. The origin in explained in the mission statement:
The August 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine has a sidebar…
August 10, 2006
Since dogs are superior to cats, and she's the best Emmy ever, here are some dog pictures a day ahead of the usual pet-blogging schedule.
This one shows Her Majesty in her element, basking in the back yard in a little hollow under a bush.
(More after the cut)
Her little den provides an excellent…
August 10, 2006
The discussion surrounding the recent post about jobs continues to bubble along nicely, both in the original post, and the follow-up. I love it when a plan comes together.
There's been a lot of discussion of following the advice in the Katz letter and seeking non-academic careers, but Jeff F. (who…
August 10, 2006
Well, OK, it's really another of those stories about a cut-up judge, who, in this case, issued an order compelling Defendant's counsel to accept the Plaintiff's counsel's lunch invitation:
There are a number of fine restaurants within easy driving distance of both counsel's
offices, e.g.,…
August 10, 2006
I'm not sure if this is really new, or just new to me, but via a mailing list, I learned that the National Archives of the UK has made the Domesday Book available on-line. What is the Domesday Book, you ask?
At Christmas 1085 William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey to discover the…
August 10, 2006
As noted by several people, most recently JoAnne Hewett, one of the players at the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event is a Ph.D. physicist: Michael Binger, recently of SLAC. So, I guess we need to expand the list of non-academic physics careers to include "professional poker player…
August 9, 2006
A while back, I noted that one student wrote on the all-important course evaluation form "He should wear more pink." I'm still not sure what that meant.
Given that the second most ridiculous comment in that class was "[student name] is the worst Warcraft player ever," I should probably point our…
August 9, 2006
Like The Pontiff, I am always happy to receive an email from a publicist offering me a free book to review. In this case, the book was Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, of UC Santa Cruz.
I have to admit, the title made me a little uneasy. There…
August 9, 2006
The latest jobs in science post has prompted a lot of responses, several of them arguing that we need to expand the definition of acceptable careers for Ph.D. scientists. For example, there's Nicholas Condon in comments:
When I hear this incessant handwringing about jobs in "science," it seems like…
August 9, 2006
I had a bunch of students over for dinner last night, and while I was busy with that, stuff happened in the world. I hate that.
Of course, there's been a lot of energy expended on trivia like primary elections, but that's not what I'm talking about. The important news all has to do with physics.…
August 9, 2006
Technorati reveals a bunch of responses to my weekend post on genre fiction, and I wanted to at least note a few of them here.
Over at Brad DeLong's, he highlights my comments about story pacing, which sparked some interesting comments. A number of people object that books and movies are too long…
August 8, 2006
Jonathan Katz's "Don't Become a Scientist" has bubbled to the surface again, turning up at P.P. Cook's Tangent Space a few days ago. I can't recall what, if anything, I said about this that last time it came around, but I'll make a few comments here, in light of the recent discussions about jobs in…
August 8, 2006
Inside Higher Ed today offers another hand-wringing piece about the problem of college athletics, this time from the president of Augustana College in Illinois. It's a particularly maddening example of the form, doing a lovely job of running down NCAA Division I schools in comparison to Division…
August 8, 2006
The title is from the Guardian's piece on the Harry Potter convention in Las Vegas (via Bookslut), in which the traditional naive reporter is sent out to be shocked by discovering people in costumes, slash fanfic, and pseudo-academic papers:
Lumos 2006 is not just another conference, it's 'a Harry…
August 8, 2006
If you're in the habit of reading science blogs, you've probably already seen Mark Trodden's article on the science of coffee, including a chemical analysis of the contents of espresso. You might be asking "Is there nothing these science types won't analyze?"
Apparently not, as Dylan Stiles…
August 7, 2006
Another update from Official Middle East Correspondant Paul Schemm, working as a journalist in Baghdad. These arrive at irregular intervals, but I figure they're worth reposting when I get them, in case people want a view-from-the-ground perspective.
One officer described it to me as the "new face…
August 7, 2006
Via Making Light, Chris Clarke at Creek Running North has some sharp words in response to the alleged Deep Thoughts on his Starbucks cup:
When Einstein explained his theory of relativity, he couldn't express it in the precise, scientific writing of physics. He had to use poetry. Poetry: the…
August 7, 2006
We got a squirrel-free bird feeder a little while back, and since putting it up have been attracting huge numbers of these little greyish-brown guys to the yard. We've got some more interesting birds as well-- there's a pair of cardinals, and a couple of blue jays as well, but more often than not…
August 7, 2006
I'm very pleased to report that in the month of July, no less than 35 people found this site by searching for some variant of the phrase "Queen of Niskayuna." The dog's going to be insufferable when she hears this. I'm also pleased to report that Aaron Bergman no longer shows up in the top ten…
August 6, 2006
Over at Making Light, the Nielsen Haydens stumbled upon a video of the Hurra Torpedo version of the Bonnie Tyler/ Jim Steinman kitsch masterpiece "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which absolutely boggles the mind. Of course, the weird thing is that their re-invention isn't actually any weirder than…
August 6, 2006
Written on the whiteboard in the student lounge (which has been serving as a convenient surface for student grafitti for the whole summer) last week:
Little Known Fact: Prof. Orzel is actually an evil genius working on a gigantic laser which he plans to use to hold the world ransom for $1,000,000,…
August 5, 2006
Yesterday saw the posting (or at least the arrival on my RSS reader) of two different discussions of the current state of genre fiction. I have issues with both discussions, but reading them together makes for an interesting effect.
First, there's Charlie Stross complaining about the state of SF,…
August 4, 2006
This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger is right up my alley:
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
A bunch of my co-bloggers have weighed in already, and it's…
