catdynamics | August 30, 2007I finally obtained, and read, the last of the Harry Potterbooks
(no spoilers)
I did wander over to the old (spoilered filled) discussion at that haven of F/SF - Making Light, which was good fun, but one comment caught my eye in the endless discussion of matching up the wizard population to the size of Hogwarts class.
"What kind of society needs one school, one bank, one Ministry and 13 professional Quidditch teams?"
I know! The Færeyjar! - Faroe Islands
They have 50,000 people, fairly spread out in small villages.
Far as I know, they still have one bank (Landsbanki, natch), ok they seem to…
catdynamics | August 29, 2007"Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" - congratulations Dr May (Imperial College, University of London).
so Brian (may I call you Brian...?) actually passed his viva.
It is official
Astronomy Really does Rock
catdynamics | August 29, 2007Thus one and all, thus great and small,
the Rich as well as Poor,
And those of place, as the most base,
do stand the Judge before.
They are arraign'd, and there detain'd
before Griffin's Judgement seat
With trembling fear their Doom to hear,
and feel his Anger's heat.
with apologies to Wigglesworth, doesn't scan anymore...
Craig mongers... NASA rumours
"I understand that heads of all major departments will be briefed on Sept. 5th, and the public press conference on the 6th. I also understand that the true result has been leaked and is out there (somewhere); and also that there are…
catdynamics | August 29, 2007 ...I was up late in a hotel in Chicago (ok, Evanston) flicking between the weather channel and CNN, watching Katrina, while trying to concentrate on the subtleties of cooling functions for cold ultra low metallicity gas...
Then I saw breaking news on CNN, it was not good.
Ended up staying up way too late, mesmerised by the sub-text in the reporting.
A couple of days later I flew out of O'Hare, right over the arc of storms that were squeezing the last little bit of gulf moisture from Katrina out over the Ohio valley.
Seeing the very rapidly moving high altitude clouds ripple over the Lakes…
catdynamics | August 27, 2007they got a new building
Turf Wars pt 7
Turf Wars: the end
Hah.
That is what they think... let me tell you, I was there, we chased those chemists out and took plenty of booty too.
Turf Wars: Epilogue
catdynamics | August 26, 2007Why IS Stephen Colbert just like a Sufi Master Mystic?
That is one of the questions that pop up when a "liberal yankee buddhist" and a "conservative agnostic southern scientist" collaborate to write a book.
"Seeking Truth: Living with Doubt"
by Steven Fortney and Marshall Onellion
ISBN: 978-1-4343-1872-5
Author House
www.seekingtruth.info
Seriously, I was half-way through this book when the last of the Harry Potter's arrived (I'm a purist and order the english adult editions in hardback to avoid bowdlerized versions), but I finished this book first.
The book is an attempt to draw lines in…
catdynamics | August 24, 2007Steamy hot friday and we ask the mighty iPod: what for the next 16 years?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Rudi, A Message To You - Specials
The Crossing: Travelin' Soldier (live) - Dixie Chicks
The Crown: (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais (live) - Clash
The Root: Sulk - Billy Bragg
The Past: Cadet Rouselle - Sien Diels
The Future: Winter - Vivaldi
The Questioner: Change - Melissa Etheridge
The House: Bob Wilson - Anchorman - Half Man Half Biscuit
The Inside: O zittre nicht mein lieber Son - Mozart
The Outcome: The Price I Pay - Billy Bragg
"Well I'd like to meet…
catdynamics | August 23, 2007I just can't help myself; I keep thinking it would be really neat to actually have Joy Division Oven Gloves
catdynamics | August 22, 2007Ok, so the USAF knew there was something interesting in Taurus in the summer of 1967, but they didn't tell anyone or follow it up, so it didn't count.
It was an "unknown known"!
So, for a while, were gamma-ray bursts; adaptive optics and public key cryptography.
So... what current unknown knowns do you think we have right now?
That we may or may not hear about 40 years from now?
What discovery, invention or nifty useful or fun science of technology thingie is known by a small number of people out there, but buried by classification or stored in some vast warehouse at an undisclosed location…
catdynamics | August 20, 2007The "Seven Sergeants" Op-Ed in NYT on Iraq
Read it.
Sometimes we link because linking is an inherent good.
catdynamics | August 17, 2007How the US Air Force failed to win the Nobel prize...
I was at the 40 Years of Pulsars conference this week.
Most interesting, with lots of good reviews and new discoveries.
Sounds like anomalous x-ray pulsars and some low mass x-ray binaries are revealing their secrets, and lots of very interesting binary millisecond pulsars in the pipeline - be fun to see what is going on there when the followup observations are done - soon as Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo are back on line.
But, the surprise of the meeting came with the last invited talk - before Joe Taylor's "summary" talk.
A gentleman…
catdynamics | August 17, 2007Rainy cool francophile vendredi, and we had questions...!
Oh, mighty iPod One, what of our Pulsar Questions?
Can you answer?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Please Do Not Go - Violent Femmes
The Crossing: Dead Souls - Joy Division
The Crown: Stuart and the Avenue - Green Day
The Root: This is Reggae Music - Zap Pow
The Past: Surfin' USA - Beach Boys
The Future: Clampdown - Clash
The Questioner: If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day - Half Man Half Biscuit
The House: Tight Wad Hill - Green Day
The Inside: Look Like That - Violent Femmes
The Outcome: Ha-ha-ha Rækju Reggae…
catdynamics | August 16, 2007The Pulsar 2007 conference blog asks:
what are the 10 most interesting pulsar questions that we'd like to see addressed by the time of the next pulsar anniversary meeting?
Question was posed by Franco Pacini, here is my take - biased to radio pulsars, I note, despite the heavy high energy presence locally:
Find a black hole-pulsar binary.
This is the issue of the utmost importance, and all available observational and data analysis resources should be dedicated to it immediately.
Are there sub-millisecond pulsars? Pulsars with spin periods less than a millisecond?
Find a double…
catdynamics | August 15, 2007Philosophia Naturalis 13 is up at the Cocktail Party, which makes me think about economists again...
A lot has been said about the dismal science, both its applications, and the inapplicability of its grander theorizing.
Which is actually rather unfair, economics is, in parts, well founded quantitative and based on well defined assumptions that are tested both by observational data and microeconomic experiments.
I conjecture that much of the problems of economics may come from the fact that most of the people who "do" economics - whether by trying to apply academic economic theory, or by…
catdynamics | August 14, 2007Ok, end of day two of the 40 Years of Pulsars conference and what have we learned...
Well, pulsar emission mechanism is still a mystery; we still don't have a good handle on strong rotating magnetic fields, reconnection or field evolution; and, the population numbers for various pulsating neutron stars don't quite add up.
It is not quite as bad as I make it sound, a lot of work has been done, and the picture is coming together.
Chatting with a colleague, I get the impression that a lot of old, hard problems are close to solution, some just need an additional insight, or two, others just…
catdynamics | August 14, 2007nothing like 7 am fire alarms to get people awake, especially on top of tall buildings, and since the last hotel fire alarm, at a conference, that I experienced was because the hotel was actually on fire, that got me going.
So, "small earthquake in Hawaii" - 5.4 is respectable, are the 'scopes ok?!
Oh, and how are, like, the various people and stuff doing?
No fire here, just some workman doing tests, guess he figured since he had to be up, everyone else could damn well be up. (Last time it was just a laundry room fire - barely enough to stink up the hotel and keep us out half the night, in…
catdynamics | August 13, 2007with Karl Rove out of the White House, does this mean the Vice President's Office dominates access to the President totally? With less weighing of domestic political consequences when making political decisions?
If Cheney is not now the major political influence on Bush, then who is?
catdynamics | August 12, 2007...or give me death
We will fight them in the conference rooms...
Turf Wars continued.
A visitor once asked for a tour of the "Sigurdsson Labs" - I offered to show them my workstation, it was rather nice, until it broke. And there is the old one in the corner, of course. University inventory control wants to see it about every other year, they think it is worth actual money.
Ok, I think I have a student in some corner also, but they're working hard, I'm told.
Can't be having them disturbed by visitors.
catdynamics | August 12, 200740 Years of Pulsars: Millisecond Pulsars, Magnetars and More...
Good meeting so far, good turnout.
There is a conference group liveblog, I'll link to any items of interest I spot.
One of the conference organisers runs the Montreal Poutine website - I am assured it is an experience worth trying, and have been given directions to the "best poutine" place, with instructions to try the poutine with bacon for starters. Apparently a bit of salt and pig fat helps newbies with the dish.
Reception was fun, best spot of the night was someone carrying the cheese plate scooting off just as a starving…
catdynamics | August 10, 2007in the beginning there was the Computer.
http://celobox.googlepages.com/god.html
Mmm.
Command line.
They got it right.
Hang in there 'till "day 6", it is worth the wait.