July 1, 2010
Ah, the busy life of a modern homeowner: making phone calls, dealing with the mail, and doing some washing up:
Meanwhile, outside the house, Emmy ponders whether it would be worth the effort to huff and puff, or if trying to blow the house down would just get her scolded.
This isn't the greatest…
July 1, 2010
Back in the uncomfortable questions post, crowther asks:
This is an excellent blog, but the volume of posts leaves me with a mixture of envy and annoyance (to be unnecessarily honest, perhaps). How in the world do you find the time to do so much blogging and reading of others' blogs? Aren't you…
July 1, 2010
What, If Anything, Is Big Bird? | The Loom | Discover Magazine
Determining the species and ancestry of every kid's favorite giant flightless crane.
(tags: kid-stuff television silly biology video talks)
Reflections on American Academy's Report: Do Scientists Understand the Public? : Framing…
June 30, 2010
The kerfuffle of the moment in the science blogosphere once again relates to Chris Mooney, who is pretty much a kerfuffle looking for a place to happen at this point. This time around it centers around a Washington Post op-ed that is basically the executive summary of a American Academy of Arts and…
June 30, 2010
I have now finished all of the short fiction on this year's Hugo Award ballot (links to most nominees are available here), and I have to say, the pickings here are pretty slim. The stories that aren't forgettable or preachy are deeply unpleasant, leaving me wanting to put a lot of stuff below "No…
June 30, 2010
The Kagan Hearings: Elena Kagan does her best John Roberts impression. (1) - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
"Yet the ghost of [Thurgood] Marshall himself comes in for tremendous abuse today at the hands of Republican members of the committee. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., starts the ball rolling by…
June 29, 2010
I gave a short introduction to how to give a presentation today to the students who will be presenting their research in our twice-weekly Summer Student Seminar Series. This included examples of a data slide that is bad in the ways that students' first attempts at data slides tend to be bad, and…
June 29, 2010
The dogphysics karma joke is pretty much dead, as countries with current or future editions of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog have gone a dismal 1-3-0 in the first round of elimination play. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, honestly.
The big story of the World Cup at the moment is the…
June 29, 2010
A couple of significant news items from the world of particle physics:
There was a conference on neutrino physics recently, and the big news from there is that two experiments measure something funny with neutrino oscillations, namely that the oscillations seem to proceed at different rates for…
June 29, 2010
slacktivist: Rendering unto Krugman
"But knowing their hypocrisy, he said unto them, "Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a dime and let me see it."
And they brought one. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this -- FDR's or Herbert Hoover's?"
They answered, "Roosevelt's."
And he said…
June 28, 2010
Last week, Dmitry Budker's group at Berkeley published a paper in Physical Review Letters (also free on the arxiv) with the somewhat drab title "Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einsten Statistics for Photons." Honestly, I probably wouldn't've noticed it, even though this is the sort of precision AMO…
June 28, 2010
There is a proposal for a Physics Q&A site along the lines of Stack Overflow for computer stuff. Like many such projects, this largely conflates "physics" and "theoretical particle physics," so I'm not sure how much of a contribution I can really make. I've got plenty of theorist readers,…
June 28, 2010
Josh Rosenau makes an excellent and important point regarding prayer meetings and the Gulf oil spill: that the point is not so much that God will stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, but that religious groups are a key community organization point for getting people together to work on the problem.…
June 28, 2010
Power and making § Unqualified Offerings
"A colleague was complaining yesterday about the way that some faculty are treated better than others. Not so much in my department as in certain other departments. Some people, for a variety of reasons, probably do get a better deal (even if not to the…
June 27, 2010
... because SteelyKid is a baby on the move, and she moves fast:
SteelyKid spent a long weekend with Kate's mom, and we went down there yesterday to pick her up. This picture, snapped during a playground visit this morning, gives you some idea of her energy level.
Accordingly, Kate and I are both…
June 26, 2010
The last two days of group play were kind of disappointing, with two games (Brazil-Portugal and Spain-Chile) barely being contested in the second half, as the teams involved were sure to advance, and just sort of kicked the ball around idly in the middle of the field until the clock ran out. In a…
June 26, 2010
A couple of related items from the uncomfortable questions comments. First, from Elizabeth:
What's your favorite homemade supper? What is your favorite thing to cook?
then a bit later from CCPhysicist:
What is the WORST thing that Kate ever cooked? What was your own worst cooking disaster?
This…
June 26, 2010
Testing the Best-Yet Theory of Nature « Berkeley Lab News Center
""[I]t should be remembered that the Standard Model is not a final theory of all phenomena, and is therefore inherently incomplete," says Dmitry Budker, a staff scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of the U.S. Department of…
June 25, 2010
Inside Higher Ed has a news squib about gender disparities in academic science, which points to a Nature story about a survey on job satisfaction (bad IHE, giving a false impression on the story!). The gender portion of the story is limited to a short section at the end of the article, and one…
June 25, 2010
A second uncomfortable question from tbell:
boxers, briefs, or other?
That's an interesting question. Not many people would think to ask about a comparison between professional fighting and the products of the legal profession.
Boxing, while no longer the cultural force that it once was, does…
June 25, 2010
Continuing with the uncomfortable questions, H asks a good one:
Union is one of the most expensive colleges in the country. What are students getting for their money? How does Union justify the increase in price over other schools with comparable academics and facilities?
See, now that's an…
June 25, 2010
Sci-Fi Airshow :: Home
"The SCI-FI AIR SHOW's purpose is to preserve and promote the rich and varied history of Sci-Fi/fantasy vehicles. Through display and education we seek to celebrate the classic design and beauty of these ships and the rich imaginations that created them. When the cameras…
June 24, 2010
SteelyKid is spending a long weekend with Kate's mother, so we are baby-less. Which means no Appa-for-scale picture this week, alas.
Since I know some of you would freak out without the weekly cute-baby photo, though, here's another shot from the backyard playhouse:
As you can tell, Kate has an…
June 24, 2010
Next in line of questions from readers, we have tbell with:
Since science is a self-correcting process (maybe only at a statistical level, not necessarily an individual level), it would be cool if you would relate the last time you were seriously wrong about some aspect of science or research, and…
June 24, 2010
Starting at the beginning of the uncomfortable questions left by readers, we have Tex asking:
If physics is the basic science that underlies almost every other science, why do American high schools usually teach it in the 3rd or 4th year, after biology and chemistry? Shouldn't it be the other way…
June 24, 2010
I'm seriously lacking in bloggy inspiration at the moment. So we'll fall back on something that has worked a couple of times in the past:
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,…
June 24, 2010
On Writing and the Internet: Data Is the New Alcohol « Lev Grossman
"A lot of writers have been ruined by addictions in the past. Heroine, alcohol, etc. Me, I don't have big -- big -- problems with drugs and alcohol. (I have in fact, over the past 6 months, moderated my drinking, something I…
June 23, 2010
The US managed to survive yet another appalling lapse of officiating and beat Algeria 1-0 on a goal in stoppage time. Simultaneously (in some frame of reference), England beat Slovenia 1-0. With South Korea advancing yesterday, countries with current or forthcoming editions of How to Teach Physics…
June 23, 2010
I don't remember who pointed me at this transcript of Deepak Chopra interviewing Michio Kaku, but if I remember who it was, I fully intend to hate them.
DC: Is our conversation affecting something in another galaxy right now?
MK: In principle. What we're talking about right is affecting another…
June 23, 2010
Scanning Electron Microscope Submissions | SEM Image Galley by ASPEX
"Do you have a sample you'd like to send us to have scanned by one of our Scanning Electron Microscopes or our Tabletop SEM?
Just download the sample submission form below, fill it out, and mail it in along with your sample, and…
