catdynamics | March 16, 2010Oh someone's really smart
Oh, complete control
yeah, that's a laugh.
Generics, that's the ticket.
catdynamics | March 13, 2010
Ãað mælti mÃn móðir
að mér skildi kaupa
fley og fagrar árar
fara á brott með jeðum
standa upp à stafni
stýra dýrum X-vængi
halda svo til hafnar
höggva mann og annan
Tattúínárdalasaga: aka
The Saga of the People of the Tattooine River Valley
Finally reconstructed from ancient manuscripts and diverse sources.
Making the rounds, h/t anonymous commenter
Totally excellent.
catdynamics | March 11, 2010 So... these credit default swap thingies,
they pay out if some credit instrument goes bad, like a bond issue,
and, famously, financial companies buy them as side bets hedges against financial "events", including betting against instruments they are promoting to clients, and deals they have no involvement in at all
and they are not regulated
Soooooo........
countries can play this game also, right?
So, Iceland owes a few $billion or so.
It faces sovereign default in 2011 unless a miracle happens.
CDS spreads right now are about 5-6% for Icelandic bonds, which is huge, yet way too small - 1-…
catdynamics | March 10, 2010compare and contrast
nope, no anger yet...
interestingly, Shelley had better vocal range than Swift...
catdynamics | March 8, 2010Já, maður reddar þessu bara einhvernveginn...
Diplomatic cable form Reykjavik to Washington - Jan. 2010
UK/NL offer to ISK re: Icesave (PDF)
ISK negotiating team report (PDF)
h/t Evil Henry Paulson on Calculated Risk
catdynamics | March 7, 2010As the three remaining readers may have noticed, I've been a bit too busy to blog for a couple of weeks.
But other blogs go on, and right now, over on SciBling "Eruptions" there is a fascinating live discussion in the comments on the possibility of an imminent eruption in Eyjafjallajökull.
Increasing signs of activity at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland
Click to embiggen
From Fosshotel - stay there, it is nice
See also aerial view from snorrason.is
Eyjafjallajökull is a small glacier just west of the medium sized Mýrdallsjökull which hosts the better known volcano Katla.
Eyjafjallajökull has…
catdynamics | February 26, 2010That is all.
Now get back to writing some bloomin' proposals, you slackers.
catdynamics | February 24, 2010So, who is taking odds on the Hubble Proposal Cycle 18 Deadline being postponed from this friday to next week because of The Upcoming Monster Storm!
Even if it misses Baltimore, as the current track would have it, our genteel colleagues in Boston might be Not Amused.
Of course none of us are betting on a delay, we're rushing to get our proposals done thoroughly and early.
catdynamics | February 23, 2010to answer a question: hiring of senior faculty is a lot like middle school dating.
There's the "if I would, what would you answer?"
followed by the "well, if you were to ask, and I were to answer, what would you do?"
Delicate, tiresome, and occasionally effective.
Sometimes it becomes a non-terminating descending loop.
And sometimes it is a total headfake.
catdynamics | February 19, 2010NASA's SDO destroys a Sundog on launch.
Cool video.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched, successfully, Feb 11th.
On the way up, the rocket crossed a high altitude layer of ice crystals - a wispy cloud - which was showing a Sundog - the rocket visibly rippled the cloud as it passed through - looks very cool.
SDO video link
Full launch video - ripples at ~ 1:50+
see also GrrlScientist
catdynamics | February 19, 2010The Aspen Center for Physics is holding its annual series of winter workshops, with the final, double sized workshop being on the astrophysical topic of Black Holes.
Aspen Center for Physics
Yes, I am there, organizering, Daniel Holz from CV is also here, along with 100+ other luminaries, and, yes, he's also been too busy to blog.
The discussion has been lively and broad, covering everything from formation and accretion of low mass stellar black holes, through to mergers of supermassive black holes, via the puzzle of intermediate mass black holes.
Wednesday evening, Prof. Andrea Ghez gave…
catdynamics | February 7, 2010There was a truly weird advert or contributed op-ed on the radio a couple of days ago.
Some conservative anti-tax guy, and a left-wing editor had joined in calling for a US "Question Time", a la the UK "Question Time" in Parliament.
ie the President doing questions and answers with Congress, formally.
Inspired, in part, I suspect, by Obama's performance against the congressional republicans in a question and answer session, though conservative dude brought out the old teleprompter canard against Obama in explaining why he thought it was a good idea.
There is just one slight problem: "…
catdynamics | February 7, 2010Why do the gods keep interfering in football championships?
And which gods?
I'd think Loki, by default.
But Manning's throw away really smells of Ãðinn - he always had a macabre sense of humour about bringing down established fighters through mischance or misjudgement.
'cause, y'know, when football players invoke the gods in their victory, you really have to think first about "which god?"
catdynamics | February 7, 2010The Yorkshire Ranter analyses the Climate Research Unity coverage in your friendly neighbourhood grauniad.
Robert P. points us to an analysis of the crack itself - kinda blah. Basically trawling through a misconfigured server by a script kiddie.
catdynamics | February 5, 2010Newish super trendy band out of Iceland.
Jazzy math music with touch of heavy rock.
Or so I was told.
Album is "Lightbulb Universe"
Eyes of a Cloud Catcher at the Weird Girls Project
Above These City Lights
live - yup, they also rock
You can fan them on facebook
catdynamics | February 4, 2010Penn State has released the preliminary conclusions of its inquiry into the purloined e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Free-Ride provides an excellent discussion
PSU story on the internal inquiry
Full report (pdf)
In the meantime, the Grauniad reports police questioned a UEA scientist about the original cracking of the CRU e-mail archive
There has been considerable external pressure on PSU on this issue, with protests planned by conservative student groups this friday on campus, weather prermitting...
The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy…
catdynamics | February 2, 2010Ok, peeps, time to 'fess up - pseudonymously
what are people doing with grad admissions?
I'm hearing contradictory stories: some places claim to be doing normal admissions, but some of those same places have also lost TA slots, I hear; I know some places are cutting admissions, by factors of 2 or more - you know who you are, lets hear it; I also hear of at least a couple of places who are sticking their neck out and increasing admissions - true?
The pool of applicants is larger than in recent years, and look strong, it will be an interesting year.
catdynamics | February 1, 2010been a while since l looked to see what is out there, but here is a smattering of recent blog stuff that caught my attention
'cause linking is good
The Spirit of XKCD - admit it, you cried!
Systemic looks at the Kepler planets announced at AAS
Milky Way mapped in the style of the London Underground - simple, yet elegant
Daglegt líf í NASA
Brin's - Science Fiction That Teaches
Astro Dyke looks behind the scenes at the Rumour Mill
Academic Shopping Around and The Silence of the Adviser - Wise is the Female Science Professor
Carnival of Space #137
Carnival of Space #139
hm, I seem to be missing…
catdynamics | February 1, 2010NASA 2011 budget is out, and with it the new 5 year plan.
It is drastic, bit more so than I expected.
Short version: Constellation is dead, Dead, DEAD!
Ares I, Ares V and Orion are shut down. ~ $10 billion thrown away, again, with nothing to show for it, again.
More money,
I'll backfill the details and provide links later:
basically NASA will fund a serious launcher technology development program for future heavy launch, but for now they are taking the Space Cadets up on their offer - human and cargo LEO launch services will be bid out, with first bids already out - so if the technology…
catdynamics | January 28, 2010Another loss to cosmology, as Geoff Burbidge dies at 84.
Geoff Burbidge was a major figure in the early days of cosmology.
Best known for his B2FH paper on stellar nucleosynthesis, he later became an advocate of Steady State Cosmology with Fred Hoyle, and aggressively skeptical of the cosmological origin of the redshift of quasars.
I last saw Prof. Burbidge at one of the Carnegie Millennial meetings and was reminded how extraordinarily sharp he was, and the breadth of his knowledge of the details of astrophysical phenomena, as he quizzed a number of the speakers on the their assumptions and…