Rob Knop's Blog -- ramblings and rants about astronomy, cosmology, science education, general nerdism, and anything else.
Rob Knop earned a PhD in Physics from Caltech in 1997, and did a 5-year post-doc with the Supernova Cosmology Project, and contributed to the discovery of the accelerating Universe. He was an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt for 6 years before scattering out of academia. He now works for Linden Lab, the producers of Second LIfe. (Note: this is not an official site of Linden Lab! Although I work for Linden Lab, all content in this blog is posted without the review or approval of Linden Lab. All statements and opinions expressed here are my own.)
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The contents of each Galactic Interactions post are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
May 28, 2007
Today's the day that Answers In Genesis' museum of ignorance, their "looks like, acts like, smells like, and pretends to be, but decidedly is not a science museum," the Creation Museum opens. I'm horrified about this on many levels. As...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:00 AM • 45 Comments •
May 27, 2007
Category: Second Life
Second Life (SL) is a 3d virtual world (some would call it an online game, but it's not really that; for one thing, it kind of sucks as a game, and for another thing, it's much more than that)....
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:26 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Science & Religion
I'm pretty sure that nowhere in the Bible does it say that the square root of 256 is 16. I happen to know that, yes, 16 squared is 256. Therefore, if I were to tell you and attempt to convince...
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:56 PM • 13 Comments •
May 25, 2007
Category: Astronomy Science
VV114 is a very interesting galaxy. It's a major merger of at least two big galaxies. If I might go out on a limb, it may even be an advanced merger (on the left) currently strongly interacting with another galaxy...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:37 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Academia
Chad just posted a bit of pre-tenure advice, including the very important advice to take all advice with a grain of salt. I would say that also applies to the rest of his advice, because I'm about to post contradictory...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:05 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Kitties!
There has been this Internet meme around for quite some time now: LOLcats (which has also been summarized on BoingBoing). Freaky cat person that I am, I have been remiss in not participating. I seek to remedy that now....
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:56 AM • 6 Comments •
May 23, 2007
Category: Science & Religion
To heck with bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, and all the rest. Yes, all of those algorithms were intelligently design, but none of them follow the precepts of Intelligent Design. And, now, David Morgan-Mar gives us Intelligent Design Sort....
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:15 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Science & Religion
Intelligent Design is cleverly designed. Much of what I say here will apply to almost any other religious tradition in the modern world. I refer specifically to Christianity for three reasons. First, it's the most dominant religion in the USA,...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:17 AM • 11 Comments •
May 19, 2007
Category: The Business of Astronomy
Excerpts from the individual and panel reviews on my latest proposal: The proposed work is very well motivated, well organized, with clear plans and goals. There is also: Guaranteed access to the CTIO 1.5 m, and an established track record...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:11 PM • 13 Comments •
May 17, 2007
Category: Nerdism
It's all the rage to post pictures of your mug. (A mug mug, as it were.) I have lots of mugs, but I figured that this is the one that best fits the theme. This is one painted by... me....
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:39 PM • 2 Comments •
YES! Send me a free issue of Seed.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $14.95. That's 50% off the cover price! If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
(Non-U.S. subscribers, click here.)
