Silliness
Category archives for Silliness
Because 4% of the Energy Controls 100% of the Photons
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 26, 2011 “I work around the clock– 1043 Planck times per second– providing the gravitational attraction to hold this galaxy cluster together. And some baryonic cosmologist wants to explain me away as a modification of Newtonian gravity? “I have been silent for 13.7 billion years, but no more. “I AM THE 96%” (Original Pandora Cluster image from…
Sing Along Time
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 4, 2011 Twinkle, twinkle Have you any wool? H I J K L-M-N-O-P Up above the world so high One for the little boy who lives down the lane Now I know my A-B-C’s Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full
Academic Poll: Pronoun Trouble
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 18, 2011 I’ve moved on to the second of three academic writing projects I wanted to work on this summer (yes, I know I’m rapidly running out of summer…), which is a sort of review article on which I will be the only author. This creates an awkward situation in the introductory material, because it just feels…
Quantum Politics
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 3, 2011 In the “ideas I wish I’d thought of first” file, the Canberra Times has an op-ed comparing politicians to quantum objects, because they seem to hold contradictory positions at the same time, and are impossible to pin down. It garbles the physics a little, and is very specific to Australia, though, so let’s see if…
Quantitative Analysis of Bullshit in Physics Abstracts
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 25, 2011 Via Bee, we have the BlaBlaMeter, a website that purports to “unmask without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text.” Like Bee, I couldn’t resist throwing it some scientific text, but rather than pulling stuff off the arxiv, I went with the abstracts of the papers I published as a grad student, which I…
Negotiations Break Down Again; Administration Warns of Possible Depression
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 18, 2011 (A white house, Niskayuna, NY) Negotiations stalled for the 125th consecutive minute, dashing early hopes that a compromise might be reached in the tense talks that have gripped this otherwise quiet suburban neighborhood. As the crisis enters its third hour, both sides reiterated their long-standing positions. “It’s 8:45pm, MythBusters is over, it’s time to go…
Quantitative Comparisons Between Disciplines
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 17, 2011 As many a thoughtless person has observed when learning what I do for a living, physics is really hard. But you may have wondered just how much harder is physics than other subjects? Well, now, we have a quantitative answer: This is a shelf of books at the Burlington, MA Barnes and Noble, clearly showing…
Poll: Incredibly Important Cultural Question
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 15, 2011 Prompted by this and this, among other things, one of the critical questions of the modern age: Harry Potter is a: Magic is a classical phenomenon, no matter what you may have heard, so you can choose one and only one option.
The Bat Diet: Live Longer Through General Relativity
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 23, 2011 A scientific theory hasn’t really arrived until the cynical and unscrupulous find a way to use it to extract money from the credulous and gullible. This has posed a significant obstacle for general relativity, dealing as it does with gravity, which requires really gigantic masses to produce measurable effects. That makes it a little difficult…
Calendrical Innovation
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 27, 2011 Union operates on a trimester calendar, with three ten-week terms (September-November, January-March, April-June), rather than the two 14-15 week semesters used by most other colleges and universities. This has some advantages in terms of flexibility– even science and engineering students get to take terms abroad, which is harder to swing in a semester system– and…
