Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
September 17, 2007
If the Iraqi police move against Blackwater, would the US Army fight?
There is a curious situation developing, where the Iraqi interior ministry has "revoked the license" of Blackwater corporation contractors to operate in Iraq, asked they leave, and surrender for trial people involved in a…
September 17, 2007
Random Thoughts thinks about
Gao and Theuns (sub) and the effects of a little bit of warm dark matter on early structure formation.
arXiv copy
September 17, 2007
DHS excludes revokes Mills College Prof and Elgar scholar visa.
Prof Ghuman, british musicologist, Berkeley PhD expelled from the US
I personally find Elgar to be a ponderous and rather tiresome, not to mention heavily abused at both the Proms and US graduations, but this seems a bit of an…
September 17, 2007
Total Drek: Unhelpful Hints
5!
and 6!!
15 - you're ALL smart
20 & 21
ignore 22, obviously.
But 3 is the one you really need to think about as a first or second year
h/t Chad, again
September 17, 2007
Robert Jordan, author of the "Wheel of Time" fantasy series, and assorted Conan novels, died
I am not much of a fantasy reader, although I went through a phase of reading all the Conan novels (originals by Robert Howard, then the later sequels by de Camp and Carter and then Jordan, haven't looked…
September 14, 2007
Long and tiring friday, and we put the iPod to the test!
Oh, Mighty iPod, will Google have to pay out on the Lunar X-Prize?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Counting to twenty
The Crossing: Firebird: Introduction - Stravinsky
The Crown: I Will Never Be The Same - Melissa Etheridge…
September 13, 2007
Google is offering $30 million for anyone able to land a privately funded rover on the Moon by Dec 31st 2012
space.com story
Interesting.
Especially if this becomes part of a long term strategy by Google as a serious involvement in off-planet exploration, as opposed to a one-off stunt.
Google…
September 13, 2007
Ok, I read the BEPAC full report, all 201 pages.
Interesting stuff, lots to glean from it.
First, Con-X community letter on Exploding Galaxies and other Catastrophysics, with some interesting comments from Prof Superwinds.
NASA HQ has still not responded to the BEPAC report. Way back when, my…
September 12, 2007
A WaPo op-ed unveils a new skulk of the usual suspects.
On the starboard side, mateys.
MindingTheCampus.com
"Dedicated to the revival of intellectual pluralism and the best traditions of liberal education at America's universities."
"best"? "liberal"? Really?
With a Horowitz article right on the…
September 12, 2007
the incoherent ponderer ponders the (male) scientist dress code
he likes to dress up, but no bowties
Hah! Like I should talk.
I currently stay away from the default bland slacks and not-too-boldly striped shirt uniform (no tie, natch), in favour of extreme utilitarian mottled grey t-shirt and…
September 11, 2007
more strange goings on in the general vicinity of the Middle East
Syria Comment has an interesting series on the Israeli Air Force strike in Syria.
Given how potentially provocative such a strike is, the line of news stories and diplomatic reactions is weird.
It is also worrying that Israel has…
September 11, 2007
dinosaur killer asteroid possibly traced back to specific belt asteroid collision
I was going to blog this - Bottke et al Nature paper last week (sub) tracing the K-T impactor to a specific disruption of the ~ 170 km diameter parent body of the carbonaceus chondrite asteroid Baptistina.
They also…
September 11, 2007
Expanding Beyond All Understanding
If the universe does in fact become dominated by Λ - dark energy drive acceleration, then in a surprisingly short time the Milky Way will be rather lonely, as all unbound nearby galaxies will have receded beyond our event horizon.
September 10, 2007
In 1999, David Stevenson wrote a short correspondance to Nature, suggesting that radiogenic heating of free floating planets with thick atmospheres might lead to them having surface temperatures high enough for liquid water
These would be planets which had been ejected from the stellar system in…
September 10, 2007
Everytime I hear "Jesus of Suburbia" I think they sing "am I just self-adjoint"?
September 10, 2007
On saturday I spend a fair fraction of the day seeing a small plane endlessly circling over town, and the local fooball stadium
it was towing a large banner, advertisement for a major car insurance company.
I was idly wondering for most of that day, just why Geico was using Che Guevara's image to…
September 9, 2007
The Bitch, PhD is back on form
But, I thought we were rich!
Disposable income on the left coast, versus income in the flyovers
How the hell have we been doing it
After much informed debate, the gory details of the affluent ex-academic life.
Not buying books will not save enough money for a down…
September 7, 2007
Interesting animation series of arctic ice cover over the last 25 years or so, colour coded by age of ice...
From NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice News - Fall 2007
September 7, 2007
Steamy, sultry friday, and we ask the iPod: what is going on with 2M1207B? Is it a mash up, as predicted?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Goodbye Blue Sky - Pink Floyd
The Crossing: Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
The Crown: God's Comic - Elvis Costello
The Root: Waiting for the…
September 6, 2007
I know this is tiresome, but I find it interesting to play "what if..."
I'll get back to all science soon. No point in dynamic web logs if they don't respond dynamically to changing issues... eh?
So, what if the US wanted to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran, ASAP, either 'cause someone thinks…
September 6, 2007
NRC webcast of the panel report on Beyond Einstein
The press releases are spinning this as all JDEM/SNAP - anyone hear what NASA actually said about launch priorities and LISA after the official report?
September 6, 2007
Hm, a flight of eight Tupolev-95 Russian long range bombers buzzed the North Atlantic,
oh, and Syria claims Israeli air force bombed their desert?
Zipped down the Iceland-Faroe gap, RAF and Norwegian Air Force scrambled to meet them.
Grauniad version here
US comment was that they didn't worry about…
September 5, 2007
Beyond Einstein
1) JDEM
2) LISA
"Recommendation 1: NASA and DOE should proceed immediately with a competition to select a Joint Dark Energy Mission for a 2009 new start.
The broad mission goals in the Request for Proposal should be 1) to determine the properties of dark energ with high precision…
September 5, 2007
So the USAF took half-dozen nukes on an inadvertent roadtrip across the US heartland
careless that, but shit happens
no harm, no foul, as they say
The interesting question is why the 5th Bomb wing is shipping Air Launched Cruise Missiles to the 2nd Bomb wing?
The missiles are being decommissioned,…
September 4, 2007
Shocking news from Iceland: the foreign minister has announced the the immediate withdrawal of the entire Icelandic contingent from Iraq!
The Icelandic foreign minister, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir announced that while she deplores the fighting in Iraq and expressing her full support for the Iraqi…
September 2, 2007
The "Big 10" Channel just launched.
A channel dedicated to showing just the college athletics of the eleven teams in the Big Ten conference
That will include a lot of repeats...
I am slightly flabbergasted at a university consortium negotiating such a deal, it just doesn't seem quite right, just…
September 1, 2007
there are some interesting air national guard unit activations taking place
some for overseas deployment to places like the 'stans, support units,
there also seem to be new national guard activation for US internal security duty - "Operation Noble Guard"
nothing spectacularly unusual, but some…
August 31, 2007
A cool autumnal friday, foreshadowing a cool weekend.
And we approach The Mighty iPod, with trepidation, and ask: Oh, Mighty iPod One, the hour of our doom approacheth - what will the outcome be at 4 o'clock on the 5th day of the month of September in the year 2007 of the Common Era? We gots ta…
August 30, 2007
kos diaries are buzzing about rumours that the admin will roll out casus belli against Iran
the current rumour is that we're in the pre-amble (cf recent Bush speeches and press stories), that they'll go into "not August any more" ramp up next week (after Labour Day of course), and gear for…