catdynamics | December 13, 2008Giljagaur is the second jólasveinn to come to town.
That is if he hasn't been rendered by Gordon Brown for terrorist activities.
catdynamics | December 12, 2008Today is the 12th of december, and there are 13 days until christmas.
This means, of course, that the first of the yule elves came to town this morning.
As you know, Bob, there are thirteen of the Yule Lads, or jólasveinar, as we call them.
And they are not really elves, since their mother is a troll.
The childstealing, cannibal Grýla, of legend.
Stekkjastaur is the first to arrive in town.
They come to town, one each day until christmas eve, and then leave in order, starting christmas day and finishing on the 6th of january.
They leave small treats or presents in the shoes of good…
catdynamics | December 12, 2008Look to your left.
Now look to your right.
No. Lower.
Ah, there. See it?
Science News from the New York Times.
And right back at ya.
Yes!
ScienceBlogs and The New York Times are now link buddies.
We link to them. They link to us.
On a "best of..." basis.
I'm not quite sure if this makes the NYT more hip, or us more stodgy, but I am sure it all for the best.
Guess I'll be owing Overbye some more link love, eh?
NYT started off with a link to Chad's Quantum Burger.
Chad is apparently frozen out today, so he may not know this yet...
catdynamics | December 12, 2008Brrrrrrr... another frosty friday, eh.
So, modulo the vagaries of The Powers That Be, what, Oh Mighty iPod One, is to be the Fate of the US Automobile Manufacturers?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Barnið Sefur (live) - Bubbi Morthens
The Crossing: Look At The Monkeys
The Crown: Fairly In The Money Now - Undertones
The Root: If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Past: Waiting For the Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg
The Future: Bílavísur - Björk
The Questioner: It's All Been Done - Barenaked Ladies
The House: Bodies - Sex Pistols
The Inside:…
catdynamics | December 12, 2008just heard on the radio this morning: it was a live riff on "12 days of christmas" by what sounded like a classically trained male choir.
They started mixing up the lines around the 4th verse, and then working in lyrics from other songs (eg "... two turtle doves/and a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer");
at the end they broke into "I have a dreidle" on the 12th verse, and then worked in a very good "Christmas down in Africa" to finish it off.
Audience was enjoying themselves and it was very well done.
Must know who did it.
Found it!
Slowpokes.
Straight No Chaser
A Capella Men's Choir
And,…
catdynamics | December 12, 2008Report of EU delegation to Norway and Iceland on Deceptive Practises:
Prof. Kjetil Storesletten (econ. Univ. Oslo), has pointed out how Icelandic Banks circumvented the Basel standard for capital adequacy through deceptive practises.
Report of EU delegation to Norway and Iceland on Deceptive Practises (pdf)
The banks sent each other "love letters" - they'd lend each other reciprocal loans, balancing exactly.
This changes the asset and liability value equally in their books, but they can leverage against assets. So this multiplied their ability to take highly leveraged positions and…
catdynamics | December 12, 2008Klaatu barada nikto.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is one of the great classics of '50s science fiction, and one of my favourite old movies.
It has, I gather, been remade, starring Keanu Reeves, and is coming out today.
Now, I don't usually do a lot of these third party press releases, but it is one of my favourite movies, the trailer suggests it may not totally suck, and the press people came up with a hook that totally sold me...
The DSCN dish.
They are broadcasting the movie into space.
The publicity company leased a Deep Space Communication Network dish (a li'l 5m dishes down in…
catdynamics | December 11, 2008The next decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics has been formed and the panel is about start meetings and townhalls.
Astronomy has a tradition of decadal surveys of research priorities, which have been enormously successful.
The surveys are a National Research Council run activity under the Board on Physics and Astronomy and the Space Studies Board, and is supported by NASA and heavily relied on by NASA Science Missions Directorate for guidance on big mission priorities.
A new survey is urgently needed, given our rather interesting times, and likely changes in directions and priorities…
catdynamics | December 11, 2008As you know, Bob, the Large Hadron Collider broke, after it was turned on and demonstrated to function, but before any full design energy collisions took place.
Before the LHC there was the SSC which also met its demise in strange ways.
Coincidence?
I think not...
Now these are large, complex, expensive machines.
As such they are subject to political whims, and engineering flaws.
But, some of the smartest people on Earth have teamed up to get together the resources and build and operate these supercolliders, to probe physics at the highest energies. And they've always worked before.
On the…
catdynamics | December 11, 2008The Yorkshire Ranter poses an interesting take on the Mumbai attack
A couple of you who are reading this need to go read that, think and understand, if you haven't already.
You know who you are.
The starting point is a spoofed phone call made earlier to Pakistan, purporting to be from the Indian foreign ministry, threatening war.
The conjecture is that the Mumbai attack was a step in a privilege-escalation attack to try, presumably, to trigger a war through a man-in-the-middle spoof corrupting the flow of information.
Each escalation lowers barriers to war, and shortens time scales to react…
catdynamics | December 11, 2008There is, apparently, some friction between the current NASA admin and the Obama transition team.
Could get interesting.
Interesting story at the Orlando Sentinel space blog
"NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is "not qualified" to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned."
Read all the way to the bottom, it is good stuff.
h/t NASAwatch - go read the comments, they are interesting
Looks like NASA policy will be highish,…
catdynamics | December 11, 2008last class, and we got through 126 slides in the last two lectures...
twice a week, for the last three months, except for the "few" odd times I was on travel, I have walked into our freshman seminar with a small cup of black coffee, and, if the grad students hadn't eaten them all, a cookie - lemon cream or oreo, usually.
So, for the last class the students decided I needed to modernise, and get one of them new fangled healthy blended drinks:
I think this is called a "strawberry island oasis yogurt cream smoothie";
not half-bad actually, in fact could get used to it...
Not much caffeine…
catdynamics | December 9, 2008US Treasury Bonds sold at -0.005% interest
h/t CR
Yes, to lend the US Treasury $1000 for three months, you would have to pay them.
About $0.01 for the term.
They sold $27 billion of these, which means financial institutions are paying the US government.
They are paying the US about a quarter of a million dollars if they would, please, not actually lose the money by march.
Cheaper than any other option. I infer.
Solves a lot of problems if they can convince people to keep it up for a few more quarters.
Since Treasury Rates never go up, just as Housing Prices never go down, the very large…
catdynamics | December 9, 2008So, I'm teaching a freshman seminar right now, and covering, among other things "summary of current research topics" - to kinda tease the students about what is out there that might be interesting.
Two of the topics covered are exoplanets and modern cosmology.
I found I could fit a nice summary of exoplanets into about 40-50 slides covered in two fast paced classes.
The cosmology is up to 107 slides, two be covered in two classes, and I had to stop, though there was more stuff I knew I really had to include.
So, maybe there is really something to all this cosmology stuff after all?
Or, there…
catdynamics | December 8, 2008Tribune Co files bankruptcy
They are the parent company of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune.
They need to get out from under the debt they took on after a spree of mergers and acquisitions, apparently after being unable to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team...
Maybe they can also cut their science reporting sub-departments.
h/t CR
catdynamics | December 8, 2008Where is my air car?
Living in the future is good, certainly beats the alternative.
But I'm not sure I was expecting a choice between a Charlie Stross wild ride or a Ken MacLeod dystopia.
Could be worse, we could still fit in a R.A.H. theocracy timeline with some bad luck.
catdynamics | December 8, 2008Yo yo yo.
Don't forget the Hubble Cycle 16 Supplemental is due at 11:59 pm sharp, and that is Eastern Standard Time, not some laid back later west coast time.
Rumour is that NICMOS did not come back from the warmup during restart, and that it will be WFPC2 and ACS Solar Blind Channel only.
Unless someone comes up with a fast remote fix for NIC and fast.
Seasonal Pretty Picture of M13 - taken with ACS, just to remind us of our loss, and the importance of Galactic Globular Clusters, which we all know are key to understanding the evolution of stellar populations in cosmological context.…
catdynamics | December 8, 2008That someone is blogging the Nobel ceremony from the spot is cool, that it is one of the laureates is cooler.
Krugman needs a twitter now though, methinks.
One day a physicist will get there first.
catdynamics | December 5, 2008An Icelandic Norn Curses the Head of the Central Bank.
With pictures.
From "Surviving Iceland" blog.
Yes, she is spanking the Head of the Central Bank, in effigy.
You worried yet Ben?
Click for full size at "Surviving Iceland"
Here is the back story:
"....So what was happening was that there was a witch inside the central bank, putting a spell on our central bank governor..."
It must have worked, the exchange rate of the króna surged in early trading this week...
catdynamics | December 5, 2008Brrrr, an icy friday, and we gently shiver to the Mighty iPod and we ask: those high energy gamma ray blips recently detected - signature of dark matter annihilation, or just a regular nearby pulsar?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Identify The Beat - Marc Smith vs Safe'n'Sound
The Crossing: Memories Can't Wait - Talking Heads
The Crown: Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
The Root: South Australia - Pogues
The Past: Breaking News - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Future: Private Investigations - Dire Straits
The Questioner: Straight to Hell - Clash
The House: Worried Man Blues -…