Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
November 11, 2010
No, I don't think that is a good idea...
Xtra Normal: make your own, use carefully...
One Professor's Fantasy
So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities
Ok, Eng Lit is just weird, but I get it.
November 9, 2010
A missile was, allegedly, fired off the California coast, near Los Angeles monday night, to some consternation.
It was most likely a US Navy launch of a realistic target missile for an Anti-Ballistic Missile test underway over the last few days with the Japanese Navy.
It was, most certainly,…
November 1, 2010
Wee Beasties
Wee Hairy Beasties?
We, Beasties!
Wee Hairy Beasties!
All Around the Town!
October 29, 2010
Stayin' Alive in The Wall!
Final Teen Spirit!
Best mashup ever!
From Wax Audio (AU)
Also:
Final Teen Spirit!
October 28, 2010
Same old thing as yesterday...
Seriously, wtf is going on with the Sun?
click to embiggen
phew.
ok, so there are some, finally, like 4
upturn into the new cycle has started, bit late and slow
click to embiggen
definitely reminiscent of the late 19th C
click to embiggen
new prediction for the…
October 27, 2010
There is a beautiful pulsar paper coming out in Nature tomorrow, 28th of October issue (Demorest et al 467, 1081, 2010)
Green Bank Telescope measurements of PSR J1614-2230 show it to be a 3ms binary pulsar with a white dwarf companion in an orbit aligned near perfectly edge on to our line of sight…
October 15, 2010
More reports from the IAU meeting at Torino, this time on surprises with the putative planet around Fomalhaut.
The IAU Symposium 276 comes to a close in Torino with a late surprise.
Ray Jay reports again, using the fanciest of modern technology, that something may be awry with the planet around…
October 13, 2010
ok, I give, I'm ready to join the tween decade
signed up to twitter username is steinly0
we'll see how it goes
October 12, 2010
Canadian-French Hawaii Telescope transit observations show super-earth is probably a mini-neptune
Ray Jay reports from Torino that his group has CFHT observations on GJ 1214b transits, suggesting it has a H/He atmosphere, and is therefore probably not a "super-earth", but more likely an ice giant…
October 11, 2010
There are reports from Torino about HARPS observations of Gliese 581(g)
Vogt et al reported on additional possible planets in the multi-planet low mass Gliese 581(g) system.
In particular they showed a ~ 3 sigma detection of a possible 3+ earth mass planet in a circular orbit with an orbital…
October 6, 2010
One of three best XKCD ever
No, you must click through to enlarge
A finite fraction of my online communication now consists of "XKCD:###"
where ### gives the appropriate xkcd number.
October 4, 2010
Many years ago, as I was writing up my thesis, my advisor burst into my office with the hot news.
Someone had announced a possible discovery of an extrasolar planet!
It seems strange now, but back then we really did not know if there were any other planets around other stars.
A lot of astronomers…
September 30, 2010
So, what do we make of the NRC Rankings?
What drives the different rankings, and what are the issues and surprises?
First, the R-rankings really are reputational - they are a bit more elaborate than just asking straight up, but what they reduce to is direct evaluation by respondents without…
September 29, 2010
Dear Computer Science departments of the United States:
I am very sorry that commercial citation services do not adequately follow those conference proceedings in Comp Sci, in which your best work is traditionally published.
Since it is important to you to know, why do you not set up a tool to…
September 28, 2010
The NRC rankings are out.
Penn State Astronomy is ranked #3 - behind Princeton and Caltech.
W00t!
PSU doing the mostest with the leastest.
The Data Based Assessment of Graduate Programs by the National Research Council, for 2010, is out, reporting on the 2005 state of the program.
The full data…
September 28, 2010
Two aspects of the NRC rankings are that a) it took so long that the results are dated and people will selectively choose to use or ignore them as suits best (and then rely on the 1995 rankings instead I gather)
and, b) the process was so hard and unpleasant it will never be done again...
Hmm, that…
September 28, 2010
And BU wins the prize for being first to crack and breaking the NRC rankings embargo...
h/t Leiter Report
September 28, 2010
With about 100,000 metrics collected on 5,000 or so program, there are bound to be errors.
In particular, a lot of the metrics are of the form:out of N people, how many, k, do/do not have the property we are measuring
This is then reported as percentages.
These percentages must be of the form: (1…
September 27, 2010
We are now just 12 hours from the release of the National Research Council Data Based Assessment of Graduate Programs.
The tension is just overwhelming...
An interesting thing about the 2010 NRC rankings is the methodology, and a final version seems to have been settled upon.
As you know, Bob, the…
September 27, 2010
"Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside down."
September 26, 2010
The National Research Council releases its data based ranking of US graduate programs on Tuesday September 28th.
NRC website with methodology and FAQ on rankings
The rankings are much perused and much abused, by anyone from prospective grads, to axe-wielding provosts.
The last rankings were done…
September 25, 2010
Gonna be spending a lot of time and words on rankings in the next few days.
Interesting times and important people.
September 20, 2010
The intertoobz have exploded over the unfortunate Dr Henderson's bemoaning of the impending Bush tax increases, and the hardship of getting by in todays society for two income families
We watch in awe as netizens arise to dissect the issue, and munch popcorn as the show goes on:
Todd Henderson's…
September 18, 2010
A few years ago Ball Aerospace pulled a cute stunt
Ball Aerospace logo - from telestarlogistics blog (click to embiggen)
Using the QuickBirdcommercial imaging satellite, they took a picture of Ball Aerospace parking lot, with some employees dressed in white standing on a blue tarp, spelling out…
September 17, 2010
Krugman is is on fire today, as he has been for a while, this time talking about the tax cuts.
But, even he makes an essential error that all the democrats seem to be making.
It is not about Bush's tax cuts, or keeping Bush's tax cuts or Obama raising taxes.
Bush, for whatever reasons, proposed and…
September 16, 2010
There are some things to be said for staring at scatterplots and times series plots
Calculated Risk, in case you hadn't heard, is one of the best economics and finance blogs on the Net.
Bill at CR is a demon for generating plots:This one is Business Outlook Survey - question is, of course, what is…
September 16, 2010
"...To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:"
Yes, everyone has linked the latest, greatest XKCD:
So painful, so true.
Fortunately the other thing about physicists, is that we have a great sense of humour.
And we need it.
Steve Hsu has been doing…