Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
August 30, 2007
I finally obtained, and read, the last of the Harry Potterbooks
(no spoilers)
I did wander over to the old (spoilered filled) discussion at that haven of F/SF - Making Light, which was good fun, but one comment caught my eye in the endless discussion of matching up the wizard population to the…
August 29, 2007
"Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" - congratulations Dr May (Imperial College, University of London).
so Brian (may I call you Brian...?) actually passed his viva.
It is official
Astronomy Really does Rock
August 29, 2007
Thus one and all, thus great and small,
the Rich as well as Poor,
And those of place, as the most base,
do stand the Judge before.
They are arraign'd, and there detain'd
before Griffin's Judgement seat
With trembling fear their Doom to hear,
and feel his Anger's heat.
with apologies to…
August 29, 2007
...I was up late in a hotel in Chicago (ok, Evanston) flicking between the weather channel and CNN, watching Katrina, while trying to concentrate on the subtleties of cooling functions for cold ultra low metallicity gas...
Then I saw breaking news on CNN, it was not good.
Ended up staying up way…
August 27, 2007
they got a new building
Turf Wars pt 7
Turf Wars: the end
Hah.
That is what they think... let me tell you, I was there, we chased those chemists out and took plenty of booty too.
Turf Wars: Epilogue
August 26, 2007
Why IS Stephen Colbert just like a Sufi Master Mystic?
That is one of the questions that pop up when a "liberal yankee buddhist" and a "conservative agnostic southern scientist" collaborate to write a book.
"Seeking Truth: Living with Doubt"
by Steven Fortney and Marshall Onellion
ISBN: 978-1-…
August 24, 2007
Steamy hot friday and we ask the mighty iPod: what for the next 16 years?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Rudi, A Message To You - Specials
The Crossing: Travelin' Soldier (live) - Dixie Chicks
The Crown: (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais (live) - Clash
The Root: Sulk - Billy…
August 23, 2007
I just can't help myself; I keep thinking it would be really neat to actually have Joy Division Oven Gloves
August 22, 2007
Ok, so the USAF knew there was something interesting in Taurus in the summer of 1967, but they didn't tell anyone or follow it up, so it didn't count.
It was an "unknown known"!
So, for a while, were gamma-ray bursts; adaptive optics and public key cryptography.
So... what current unknown knowns do…
August 20, 2007
The "Seven Sergeants" Op-Ed in NYT on Iraq
Read it.
Sometimes we link because linking is an inherent good.
August 17, 2007
How the US Air Force failed to win the Nobel prize...
I was at the 40 Years of Pulsars conference this week.
Most interesting, with lots of good reviews and new discoveries.
Sounds like anomalous x-ray pulsars and some low mass x-ray binaries are revealing their secrets, and lots of very…
August 17, 2007
Rainy cool francophile vendredi, and we had questions...!
Oh, mighty iPod One, what of our Pulsar Questions?
Can you answer?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Please Do Not Go - Violent Femmes
The Crossing: Dead Souls - Joy Division
The Crown: Stuart and the Avenue - Green Day
The…
August 16, 2007
The Pulsar 2007 conference blog asks:
what are the 10 most interesting pulsar questions that we'd like to see addressed by the time of the next pulsar anniversary meeting?
Question was posed by Franco Pacini, here is my take - biased to radio pulsars, I note, despite the heavy high energy presence…
August 15, 2007
Philosophia Naturalis 13 is up at the Cocktail Party, which makes me think about economists again...
A lot has been said about the dismal science, both its applications, and the inapplicability of its grander theorizing.
Which is actually rather unfair, economics is, in parts, well founded…
August 14, 2007
Ok, end of day two of the 40 Years of Pulsars conference and what have we learned...
Well, pulsar emission mechanism is still a mystery; we still don't have a good handle on strong rotating magnetic fields, reconnection or field evolution; and, the population numbers for various pulsating neutron…
August 14, 2007
nothing like 7 am fire alarms to get people awake, especially on top of tall buildings, and since the last hotel fire alarm, at a conference, that I experienced was because the hotel was actually on fire, that got me going.
So, "small earthquake in Hawaii" - 5.4 is respectable, are the 'scopes ok…
August 13, 2007
with Karl Rove out of the White House, does this mean the Vice President's Office dominates access to the President totally? With less weighing of domestic political consequences when making political decisions?
If Cheney is not now the major political influence on Bush, then who is?
August 12, 2007
...or give me death
We will fight them in the conference rooms...
Turf Wars continued.
A visitor once asked for a tour of the "Sigurdsson Labs" - I offered to show them my workstation, it was rather nice, until it broke. And there is the old one in the corner, of course. University inventory…
August 12, 2007
40 Years of Pulsars: Millisecond Pulsars, Magnetars and More...
Good meeting so far, good turnout.
There is a conference group liveblog, I'll link to any items of interest I spot.
One of the conference organisers runs the Montreal Poutine website - I am assured it is an experience worth trying,…
August 10, 2007
in the beginning there was the Computer.
http://celobox.googlepages.com/god.html
Mmm.
Command line.
They got it right.
Hang in there 'till "day 6", it is worth the wait.
August 10, 2007
"breaking news" that NYPD is deploying to search for or intercept a aQ threat of a "radiological bomb" in New York (one news site claims "near 34th street"?)
threat is "unverified", of course, we'll see - radiological bombs are mostly psychological weapons, very hard to get material together for a…
August 10, 2007
reports of damage to Endeavour on launch
small loss of tile on underside and possible ice impact on wing
worrying, but too early to tell if it is a serious issue
August 10, 2007
we continue providing educational products for the new kids on the block
last one for a while, I promise, just had to put this one up
August 10, 2007
the new kids need some more education to complete their perspective on science
across the 8th dimension...
Dedicated to (soon to be) Dr May
August 10, 2007
in a more innocent time, at the beginning of the week, the Female Science Professor pondered the implications of Ignatieff's assertions of political science
In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with.
She left her train of thought unfinished, but made…
August 10, 2007
sultry dog days, and if there's been much astro science news, I haven't paid attention
so... we go topical and ask the All Wise iPod: whence go those engines of capitalism, the Free Markets of the world?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Too Soon To Tell - Bonnie Raitt
The…
August 9, 2007
deLong notes the central banks increased the money supply by 7% in a single day (dollar and euro),
for some reason
this works out to 5.3 trillion percent per year, or 4.3 billion %/year if you assume bankers don't work weekends...
economists can sometimes have more fun than even astronomers…
August 9, 2007
University Diaries rambles on life in academia and points us to a little known fact:
Being a College Professor is the second best job in America, narrowly beating out financial advisor...
strangely, they rank software engineer number one, despite worse average pay and lower grade (BBAC vs BAAC for…
August 9, 2007
For some ineffable reason, the Washington Post's Congress Votes database lets you sort the vote count by astrological sign...
I kid you not!
No, they don't include Ophiuchus.
Bastards.
Apparently piscans and taurids are authoritarians, while scorpions are liberal rebel hippies, or something.
And…
August 9, 2007
So, the Beeb reports Russian Tu-95 rec aircraft buzzed Guam
They most likely went to check on how Valiant Shield '07 is going - the summer's three aircraft carrier exercise off Guam.
Stennis, Nimitz and Kitty Hawk are there, while the Enterprise just cleared the Suez Canal and is hovering outside…