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.
July 31, 2007
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
I managed to get through my 15-20 minute "talk," and just as I threw it open for questions Second Life had a database problem and everbody in-world had to be logged out.... We got back in 40 minutes or so...
Posted by Rob Knop at 3:39 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Rant
A lot of people have commented on the fact that if you get an Apple iPhone, you have no choice but to get your phone service through AT&T. For a lot of people, this is a deal-killer. Why would Apple...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:42 PM • 9 Comments •
Category: Second Life
Just a reminder: I'm giving a talk / Q&A session about the discovery of the accelerating Universe today in Second Life. The talk is at 10:00 AM PDT / 12:00 Noon CDT / 1:00 PM EDT / 17:00 UT. Find...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:05 AM • 2 Comments •
July 30, 2007
Category: Academia
A while back at this blog's former site, I wrote a post entitled A Career and a Life. Now that my career is on the precipice of undergoing a tremendous change, I thought it might be interesting to revisit that post.
Posted by Rob Knop at 5:05 PM • 10 Comments •
July 27, 2007
Category: Science Education & Outreach
Chad links to an article about a study that shows that good preparation in high school math helps students perform in all science disciplines in college, whereas studying one science in high school doesn't help their performance in other science...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:13 PM • 31 Comments •
July 26, 2007
Category: Second Life
Next Tuesday, July 31, at 10:00AM PDT (17:00 UT), I'll be giving a talk and Q&A session in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe. The talk is being hosted by Troy McLuhan of the Science Center Group....
Posted by Rob Knop at 3:37 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: About the Blog
Hey, all of y'all's, go head forth to Wikpedia's Scienceblogs.com entry, and make it as good as you can. Please say nice things about me. PZ just announced on his blog that people should go and edit the site, and...
Posted by Rob Knop at 1:01 PM • 8 Comments •
Category: Academia
A couple of years ago, I went to a meeting for junior faculty at Vanderbilt about the tenure process. The ostensible goal of the meeting was to help us feel more comfortable by letting us better understand the process. The...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:29 PM • 9 Comments •
July 24, 2007
Category: Intellectual Property
You may have heard about the amendment proposed to a Higher Education act by Harry Reid that would make colleges responsible for enforcing RIAA and MPAA policy. The text of the amendment is absolutely every bit as scary as the...
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:37 AM • 9 Comments •
July 21, 2007
Category: Rant
Because, unlike what happens with copyright violation, students at Kansas University would at least be given due process and the right to a trial in which they could defend themselves if accused of murder. Oh, and P.S., just like Josh's...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:02 PM • 2 Comments •
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