catdynamics | July 23, 2007InsideHigherEd appears to have assimilated the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog
hope it is a permanent arrangement, the CoaCCD blog is a good read, and enhances the IHE web site
current advice to adjunct looking for tenure track is good (although when I saw the title "Ask the Administrator: How to Break In", I have to confess I was expecting a completely different set of instructions... figuring out how to get into locked campus buildings off-hours is almost as valuabell skill - of course getting on the tenure track usually leads to access to more master keys, so that is one way).
catdynamics | July 20, 2007"...the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege"
Ah yes, Firedoglake read it also, can't wait for Greenwald's take on this, might even scoot to a scotusblog to see what they think.
They're not talking about the President, or one of the Senate confirmed officers - I can see an argument that they should be impeached in such cases rather than held in criminal contempt - not saying such an argument is right, just that it could be made.
How does deLong put it...?…
catdynamics | July 20, 2007Cool and busy friday, and we ask the Mighty iPod One: PNA or RNA? Which came first?
Oh, and how will The Party go tomorrow?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Charlie - Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Crossing: Mi-Aout - Henri Des
The Crown: Pencil Skirt - Pulp
The Root: Tangó - Utangarðsmenn
The Past: Scenes From Childhood: Knight of the Hobby-Horse
The Future: Misty Morning, Albert Bridge - Pogues
The Questioner: Revenge! - Spoon
The House: Jólasveinar - Ómar Ragnarsson
The Inside: Bright Lights - Special AKA
The Outcome: Accountancy Shanty - Monty Python
Huh?
Shouldn't ask…
catdynamics | July 19, 2007I haven't spent much time in that den of iniquity, DC, lately
but... third hand rumours percolate back to me, and if I can't sleep, neither should you
a few weeks ago, a commenter said something to the effect that "NASA would do nothing until JWST was out of the way" - I thought at the time it was over pessimistic, but now I'm not so sure, maybe he knew something I did not...
I hear there was a little to-do at a Big Center, and basically there will be a handful of SMEX and maybe one MIDEX or Discovery class mission for astrophysics (aka "universe"), but no more Big Missions. Ever.
So no…
catdynamics | July 19, 2007Max Blumethal goes wild
One of my students is over there.
He is a 2nd lt, light infantry, platoon leader, currently on tour in Iraq, near Baghdad.
He lost his platoon sergeant last month.
catdynamics | July 19, 2007Prof Nina Fedoroff is to become Chief Scientist at the State Department and science advisor to Condoleezza Rice
Good week for Nina, she got the National Medal for Science yesterday
Prof Fedoroff is a prominent biologist and an advocate of genetic engineering of plants and animals, in particular for food crops to improve yield and nutritional quality.
She is the author of Mendel in the Kitchen
A very interesting, shorter article on the issue appears in the current issue of Penn State Science Journal, here is a link to the online version
The most interesting point she makes is on how little…
catdynamics | July 18, 2007The incoherent ponderer has interesting advice on efficiency in research
Take note.
"All of this pondering seems to confirm my earlier thinking that ambition, "killer instinct" and honest self-assessment skills are often more important than being smart or even hard working."
It doesn't hurt to be hard working, and it may be useful to be smart also.
catdynamics | July 18, 2007Find and classify your own damned galaxy....
Everyone is blogging it, and it is important, and about to fall off the scienceblogs front page
The Galaxy Zoo lets you browse Sloan Sky Survey data and do first order galaxy classification of hitherto unknown moderately faint galaxies.
This is subtly important - a frighteningly large fraction of modern astronomical data is never looked at.
Literally. The data is analysed by automated pipelines, there is a lot of it, but a lot is never looked at by actual mark I eyeballs. So we're probably missing something unexpected.
Go browse, it is summer…
catdynamics | July 18, 2007Where Most Needed worries about elite university endowment, and InsideHigherEd decides to be helpful
The problem is Harvard's endowment - estimated at $25-30 BILLION (presumably depending on just what the position of some closed hedge funds are this afternoon).
That's a lot - but there are ~half-dozen other universities with endowments in the $5-15 billion range - the rest, not so much.
The catch is: as a charity, Harvard has to spend ~ 4-5% of its endowment each year - they can boxcar average this, and rich universities do so to be conservative and buffer bad investment years, but the…
catdynamics | July 18, 2007Roasted beagle, with schmear...
...and LAX (New Yorker's: please not the correct spelling, please!)
Iceland does Korean-Japanese fusion - honestly, I think this is a one-off joke, but I'm busy and it is a cheap-laff, innit?
Did I mention Icelanders are rated the happiest people in the world?
Not that you'd know it from looking at them.
But then it is via the grauniad, and the methodology sounds a wee bit contrived.
catdynamics | July 16, 2007It was 380 years ago today that "turkish pirates" raided the southwest of Iceland and took 242 slaves into captivity in Algiers...
For some reason the anniversary was commemorated...
The raid, by barbary corsairs out of Algiers (which was an Ottoman domain), hit the Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar), which ironically are named after the irish slaves that rebelled in the late 9th century and fled to the islands.
They were all hunted down and killed, but it turned out the islands have a decent harbour (much improved by the tongue of lava from the 1973 eruption) and sit in the midst of some of…
catdynamics | July 13, 2007The Female Science Professor lays it down:
...would you rather be a professor at:
1. A university that is located in a city/region in which you would love to live, but at which most of your faculty colleagues would be insane and/or unpleasant;
or
2. A university in a not-great place to live, but at which you would have interesting colleagues
catdynamics | July 13, 2007It is cool, sunny festive friday, and so we cheerfully bop along over to the iPod, and ask:
what is in store for us in August now? Anything hot?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Sumar í Reykjavík - Stuðmenn
The Crossing: Arabian Dance - Tchaikovsky
The Crown: This War is Over - Melissa Etheridge
The Root: Solidify - Sheryl Crow
The Past: London Calling - Clash
The Future: Where Do You Think You're Going - Dire Straits
The Questioner: Sunday - The Cranberries
The House: Carnival of the Animals: Aviary
The Inside: Teenage Dad On His Estate - Morrissey
The Outcome: I Marcia…
catdynamics | July 11, 2007Tinetti et al have a paper in Nature, July 12th, claiming infrared spectroscopic detection of water on an extrasolar planet.
Just appeared on the exoplanet.eu mailing list/web site
Paper is there Water vapour in the atmosphere of a transiting extrasolar planet (pdf)
(here is Nature link)
Detection is by comparing broadband IRAC mid-infrared data from Spitzer with detailed atmospheric models.
Object is transiting hot Jovian HD189733b - Jupiter mass planet in 2 day orbit around a K dwarf about 60 lightyears away.
Claims is the absorption seen in mid-IR is only consistent with water vapour at…
catdynamics | July 10, 2007duh
I'll grab the original paper soon as I can see it on Proc Roy Soc (Lockwood and Frölich in press)
PS: here is a pointer to the paper itself
here is the full text - pdf (subscription)
It is a nice compact paper - good summary of recent history and proposed mechanisms, then a very straightforward look at the data set over the last 40 years - figures 1 and 3 really tell the story.
View image
Figure 3 as a pop-up image, reproduced from Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 10.1098/rspa.2007.1880
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/h844264320314105/
"Recent oppositely directed trends…
catdynamics | July 10, 2007So, the rumours are true, the USS Enterprise is scooting back to the Persian Gulf
- usual game issue - could be regular rotation, with one of the two carriers already there going home (Stennis should head back in August if they stick to the six month rotation), but it will provide a window with three carriers in the region, just in case someone wants to start flicking at chips on shoulders of paranoiacs...
a bit early. I also note the Lincoln, Truman and Eisenhower are all at sea doing warmups. There are not enough aircraft carriers out of dock and warmed up to sustain two carriers…
catdynamics | July 9, 2007So I'm catching up on e-mail with half an eye on the idiot box where my better half is watching the new episode of the "Closer"...
it is good, almost good enough to make me stop what I'm doing and watch with full attention
why are the cable channels, TNT and USA, not to mention HBO and Showtime making better new shows, and sticking with them, then the regular over-the-air channels? And why do they get to do clever things like airing new episodes off-season?
So the Three Letter Channels do go through a lot of shows, each season, and by Sturgeon's Law most are crap, but the number of…
catdynamics | July 6, 2007I just noticed curious language in the DoE Senate Appropriations Committe statement on JDEM
From AIP's FYI #66
"Joint Dark Energy Mission. - The Committee has consistently urged
the Department to move forward toward launch of the Joint Dark
Energy Mission [JDEM]. Unfortunately, in spite of the Committee's
support and the Department's own scientific facilities planning
process, this has not happened. The Department's fiscal year 2008
request for JDEM will cripple the Department's capacity to move
forward either in partnership with NASA or as a single agency
mission in 2008. Unfortunately,…