links for 2008-03-11

'[T]he new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, "Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed."'

"Professor Oaks is known for his generous public outreach intitiative. You can't go wrong with a selection of a free water turtle, free fire lizard or free plant dinosaur. "

"What Would Jesus Do? ...Not an Elf." (via Jim Henley)

Academia is not a path to riches. Now, in convenient tabular format!

"[T]he behind-the-scenes discussion on the Speedy Gonzales page takes a fascinating detour into the proper terms to describe Speedy's speech."

"Rebranding torture as "harsh interrogation techniques" doesn't alter the fundamental fact that such harsh techniques do nothing to keep a free people safe. They are useful for one and only one purpose, the purpose for which they were designed: extracting

"The microscope sees each particle twice, one image in the horizontal plane and one in the vertical. Because the two planes have one dimension in common, it's a simple calculation to correlate the two and figure out each particle's 3-D path."

A veritable physics-palooza!

"By measuring the ratio of clock frequencies for aluminium and mercury the researchers at NIST have concluded that the fine structure constant is not changing to within 1.6 x 10-17 per year."

A tribute to the hick Springsteen.

"The new detector, described at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society by Charles Clark... promises to improve existing neutron measurements and enable tests of new phenomena beyond the Standard Model."