Science After Sunclipse

About

Science After Sunclipse is a blag for discussing math and physics on the Wobosphere. It began as a coordination site for a seminar on information theory and related topics led by Blake Stacey and his compatriots Eric and Ben. The "Do It Yourself University" seminars are still meeting at various locations in the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area, but soon the blag found its true calling, mixing physics and mathematics with commentary on science's endless battle against mysticism and snippits of what one might loosely call Internet culture. (Ben later started blagging at Plektix.)

Sunclipse is the word Buckminster Fuller suggested as a less geocentric replacement for sunset; the corresponding word for sunrise is sunsight. Blake chose this as the blag's title because he seems to do a whole lot of science stuff in the darkest hours of the morning.

To the extent that this blag has a purpose, it is to answer a question. After two years working on Wikipedia, several months commenting at places like Skepchick and Bad Astronomy, and over a year writing at Sunclipse, Blake felt he had a decent sampling of the ways online science writing worked and, also, failed to work. His first rule for understanding the kind of content one can find was as follows:

This can have exasperating, and sometimes counterintuitive, effects when people get to talking physics online. As John Baez once observed,

The question one should ask is then, "What is easy for me but difficult or impractical for others?"

Blake is currently researching applications of mathematical tools from physics to biological problems and writing autobiographical essays in the third person.

Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll once called the Blagnet "the most erudite and challenging large-scale conversation in human history", while noting that the words we use to describe this activity sound more like "something you feel compelled to do after doing too many Smirnoff shots the previous evening". We hope you enjoy our contributions to the conversation.

Administrative contact: bstacey(AT)alum.removethis.mit.andthistoo.edu

Comment Policy

Don't be a jerk.

Seriously. That's the first and most important rule. This place is like my front porch: we're out in the open air, so you can be a little loud or even rowdy, but you're still on my property. I'm the one who signed the contract which brought this place into being. So, under the general "don't be a jerk" rubric, here are a few types of behaviour which are indicative of jerkdom:

1. Racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, etc., etc. speech.

2. Dismissing decades or centuries of investigation by thousands or tens of thousands of scientists with a wave of your hand and an appeal to "entropy", particularly if you've never in your life calculated a volume in phase space or the efficiency of a Carnot engine. I embrace the policy set forth by Scott Aaronson: if you wish to derail the discussion here, please employ the following procedure.

3. Accusing me of being "anti-faith" in the comment thread of a post about scientific facts which have nothing to do with religion.

Comments which do not meet these standards will be disemvowelled, deleted or mocked, depending upon my mood.