catdynamics | February 18, 2007Crooked Timber poses an ethical issue: are anonymous comments fair game for consideration in admission if the committee can crack the anonymity?
I don't know, but I suspect that independent of the ethics, most committees would take the comments into account, and that most would not consider them definitive, they might tip the issue for marginal candidates.
But, this raises the more general issue of anonymity and psedonymous web presence - whether on student web sites, blogs or other forums.
Anonymity is common, some of the best known, and highest quality academic blogs are pseudonymous,…
catdynamics | February 18, 2007After numerous flights, "Old Man's War" by Scalzi finally bubbled to the top of my pile and got read.
It is really good fun.
I heard about Scalzi a couple of years ago, snagged the book shortly afterwards but it entered at the bottom of the pile and took a while to resurface.
In the meantime I heard more good things about his writing and saw he had a blog I look at occasionally.
The novel is a pretty standard "coming of age" story, with a definite streak of "kick alien butt" mixed in.
The premise is novel, and the writing is good - it reads well, I wanted to know what happened next. Not…
catdynamics | February 16, 2007Warm and sunny friday by the sea.
So, oh mighty iPod, we beseech thee, the time has come, so tell us about ships and kings and whether pigs have wings.
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
NB: For technical reasons we are using a sharply reduced subset of the full collected wisdom of the iPod...
The Covering: Burnout - Green Day
The Crossing: Henry Kissinger - Monty Python
The Crown: Mary had a little lamb
The Root: Auga fyrir Auga - Stuðmenn
The Past: Jungle Music - Rico and the Special AKA
The Future: Jón Pönkari - Bubbi
The Questioner: Jack and Jill
The House: Knights of the Round Table…
catdynamics | February 16, 2007The Navy did some slight unscheduled aircraft carrier moves in recent weeks...
The USS Stennis left harbour early to join the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea.
Shortly after, the USS Reagan scooted out, to cover for the USS Kitty Hawk in the western Pacific.
The Kitty Hawk was going in for maintenance, she is old, but she had major maintenance last year, and is due to be decommissioned a year from now? Hm.
Be unlike the US Navy to disguise ship movements by faking maintenance, eh?
Now, the following appears in the Navy Times
"...Military observers have said that stepped-up…
catdynamics | February 16, 2007Apparently Standard Model cosmology is some sort of a Pharisee conspiracy.
Dearie me.
So, of course, they say, is evolution.
And given this astonishing revelation, the person in question feels it better no cosmology or evolution be taught.
Just to be safe.
This would certainly simplify life for some of us teaching in the sciences, but it might violate the spirit of the American Competitiveness Initiative...
"Indisputable evidence -- long hidden but now available to everyone -- demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate '…
catdynamics | February 15, 2007WaPo has a story on a new Science result presented at the AAAS meeting about evidence for liquid water on Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter info at JPL
This is the image.
This is the most viewed photo today on the WaPo website
Laura Bush's redecorations in the White House.
UPDATE: WaPo promoted the Mars result and bumped the decor (so 3 o'clock, you know) on the web site. Yay.
PS: Actual Science story with links to article etc (subscription)
Eurekalert press release
Details at NASA
The Big Picture - click through for hi-res
catdynamics | February 15, 2007"I always wondered how the "Dynamics of Cats" related to astronomy..."?
Asks the Mark the Fur Guy, and as it happens several other people around the blogosphere.
It sounded cooler than Dynamics of COATs
We acquired our second cat just before the first web presence occured
The blog name is actually the title page of my original Web Page - done for beta release Mosaic either in late 1993 or early 1994, when the Web Was Young.
I miss Mosaic.
I kept it, because I have cats; because I do dynamics; because I am still interested in computation, compact objects, astrophysics and theoretical physics…
catdynamics | February 15, 2007Cats in Spaaaceee!!!
Someone took a cat up on a "vomit comet" - one of the planes used for long parabolic dives to provide many seconds of free fall.
Then they let it go...
Then someone YouTube'd it.
It is funny in a cruelly interesting sort of way.
All I can think is that if you gave the cat 20 mins rather than 20 secs they'd probably adapt just fine, unless there is something seriously funky with their inner ears.
Then the guy in the blue jump suit would be sorry. Real sorry...
Shamelessly cribbed from NASAwatch's hilarious "NASA YouTube'd series"
Promoted from comments:
Dogs really are…
catdynamics | February 14, 2007Bloomin Heck.
The US Air Force has revised its doctrine on operations for counterproliferation.
AF DD 2-1.8
Pages 8, 17-18, 26-28 and 46 make especially interesting reading.
I think my favourite bit is on page 26...
Legal Considerations
The preemptive nature of counterforce operations, particularly when not
connected to a broader military campaign, is subject to conflicting interpretations of
international law. Given this controversial nature, orders to conduct counterforce
operations will likely originate at the highest levels of the United States Government.
Resulting rules of engagement…
catdynamics | February 13, 2007The Very Large Array has been doing a survey of HI - atomic hydrogen emission - in nearby galaxies.
The resulting data is pretty amazing.
Collage of the HI images from NRAO newsletter page 3 (pdf)
Note the range in morphology, and the range in scale - the images have been scales to match the best estimated physical sizes of the galaxies. Dwarf galaxies really are little!
Combining multiwavelength observations reveals more info, like infrared images from Spitzer and ultra-violet images from GALEX.
Further, the radio data has high precision velocity information - high spatial and velocity…
catdynamics | February 13, 2007Damm.
I knew some of the AAS presentations had been podcast, I just couldn't find the link...
Finally:
AAS podcasts - right now it is a dozen or so from the 2007 Jan meeting in Seattle.
I liked Brown's talk on hypervelocity stars.
I missed Brown's talk on Kuiper belt objects, but heard good things about it.
Julianne from CosmicVariance is also there, as is the COSMOS press conference.
Haven't browsed the archive, probably full of good stuff.
catdynamics | February 13, 2007Hogg is testing Planetarium software for the OLPC
Looks nice. I want.
For the children, of course...
I know the purpose of the OLPC project, but ya'know, I bet you could get a few million early adopters in the US and Europer.
Subsidise the early production until economy of scale is achieved.
catdynamics | February 13, 2007Word is that Mary Cleave's successor as director of Science Mission at NASA has been announced.
And that it is Alan Stern. PI of the New Horizons mission enroute to Pluto right now. (ignore really annoying soundtrack) (ahem, admire really interesting soundtrack)
De gustibus non est disputandum, eh?
Iiinteresting... planets and UV observer. APL and SWRI.
Here is the blurb
via NASAwatch
catdynamics | February 12, 2007Turns out Iran does make its own ammunition, duh.
Question is: is that what the Pentagon showed?
PS: More at Entropic Memes
PPS: apparently someone at kos disputes the authenticity of diomil.ir - looked real enough, but these things can be faked.
Don't know why they'd bother, it is not going to be hard to get some Iranian made 81mm rounds in the gulf, easier just to buy or confiscate them if you wanted to embellish evidence
In particular the question is whether Iranian ammo would have bright yellow english language markings and Common Era dating, using US convention.
Defense Industries…
catdynamics | February 12, 2007Once a scout, always a scout...
I was, really, in Iceland - learned useful skills, like how to make a snow cave when a sudden summer blizzard catches you on a hike, how to make a fire in a country with no trees, and how to make "flour bombs".
Excellent. Especially when by court order the scouts went co-ed (1977 I think) and subsumed the girl scouts. Camping trips became something else entirely.
So now that World's Fair and a host of others has established the Order Of The Science Scouts Of Exemplary Repute And Above Average Physique
Since I, more than most, do deeply grieve for the slow…
catdynamics | February 12, 2007Good blog by John Spencer on the Planetary Society blog on rescheduling HST observations during a Jupiter flyby
They had ACS observations scheduled to coincide with pictures taken by the New Horizons Pluto Express probe.
They can use WFPC2 instead, lucky sods, but needed to put in a modified proposal fast.
Then they got 20 extra orbits, since the end of ACS really does leave the current HST observing queue rather sparse.
Always a silver lining...
Now if they'd only go back to the very highly rated NICMOS proposals that were cut last year to make way for the large proposals using ACS they'd…
catdynamics | February 12, 2007travel blogs get tiresome, but since I am trespassing on Cosmic Variance turf, I'll indulge
So: Bay Area, yay!
Expecting major snow storm in PA: ✓
Rain predicted in CA: ✓
PS: Damm! It really IS raining. Phooey.
Apparently I am now a Stanford employee: CA tax forms still a pain: ✓
I need to start leasing out my services a a minor weather deity. Precipitation patterns are definitely non-random as I move.
In the meantime, I need to find out just exactly when Risa shows up in her office (nice building btw), and to hassle some students...
Then it is back to the snow I guess.