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.
August 25, 2007
Category: Intellectual Property
DRM stands for "digital restrictions management". (Those who are in the business of peddling it as something positive will tell you it's "digital rights management," but the former is really a better descriptive name.) It is software that prevents you...
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:45 PM • 25 Comments •
August 19, 2007
Category: Random & Gratuitous
Well, not all of these pictures of the sciblings are in the "LOLCats" style, but they do have captions.......
Posted by Rob Knop at 8:33 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Random & Gratuitous
Poor Dr. Steve Steve. Such is his international celebrity that he cannot show his furry little face in New York without being hounded by the (new) media! He tries to hide in Tara Smith's bag, but it's to no avail.......
Posted by Rob Knop at 7:43 PM • 1 Comments •
August 18, 2007
Category: Astronomy Science
This is mostly just an MLP ("Mindless Link Post"), and it's nearly two weeks late, but there's a post by Julianne over at Cosmic Variance that I think is of crucial importance. People who are outside the field of science...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:15 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Self
I overstimulate fairly easily. This is a serious social disadvantage. I may even be what is known as a "Highly Sensitive Person," if you happen to be one who believes that such a category really exists. Read on to find out just what the heck I'm talking about.
Posted by Rob Knop at 12:26 AM • 30 Comments •
August 17, 2007
Category: Rant
I've only sampled a few outlets, so I can't say this definitively. However, the few electrical outlets I've sampled at the Nashville airport are not working. I've read before at BoingBoing about Pay-per use electrical outlets at DFW. I'm guessing...
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:54 AM • 17 Comments •
Category: Self
I'm off on 2 weeks+ of travel. At the moment, I'm sitting in the Nashville airport, waiting to take off on a two-day flight to New York for FNORD. I come back Sunday, and Monday I leave for a 2-week...
Posted by Rob Knop at 11:15 AM • •
August 14, 2007
Category: Big Bang & Cosmology
Following the talk I gave in Second Life about the discovery of the accelerating Universe, we held a couple of Q&A sessions. The original plan was to have questions right after the talk, but the Second Life main grid crashed...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:32 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: About the Blog
I realized that I had several comments that hadn't been flagged as "junk," but which had been flagged for moderation. I don't see those much, so I haven't been looking for them. As such, several of them have been sitting...
Posted by Rob Knop at 10:46 AM • •
August 9, 2007
Category: Self
It's been a few days. I was out in West Virginia last weekend watching my cousin get married. After driving back Monday, I started the new job with Linden Labs, and that has been occupying most of my focus. I've...
Posted by Rob Knop at 9:55 AM • 11 Comments •
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(Non-U.S. subscribers, click here.)
