Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
July 23, 2007
InsideHigherEd appears to have assimilated the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog
hope it is a permanent arrangement, the CoaCCD blog is a good read, and enhances the IHE web site
current advice to adjunct looking for tenure track is good (although when I saw the title "Ask the…
July 20, 2007
"...the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege"
Ah yes, Firedoglake read it also, can't wait for Greenwald's take on this, might even scoot to a scotusblog to see what…
July 20, 2007
Cool and busy friday, and we ask the Mighty iPod One: PNA or RNA? Which came first?
Oh, and how will The Party go tomorrow?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Charlie - Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Crossing: Mi-Aout - Henri Des
The Crown: Pencil Skirt - Pulp
The Root: Tangó -…
July 19, 2007
I haven't spent much time in that den of iniquity, DC, lately
but... third hand rumours percolate back to me, and if I can't sleep, neither should you
a few weeks ago, a commenter said something to the effect that "NASA would do nothing until JWST was out of the way" - I thought at the time it was…
July 19, 2007
Max Blumethal goes wild
One of my students is over there.
He is a 2nd lt, light infantry, platoon leader, currently on tour in Iraq, near Baghdad.
He lost his platoon sergeant last month.
July 19, 2007
Prof Nina Fedoroff is to become Chief Scientist at the State Department and science advisor to Condoleezza Rice
Good week for Nina, she got the National Medal for Science yesterday
Prof Fedoroff is a prominent biologist and an advocate of genetic engineering of plants and animals, in particular…
July 18, 2007
The incoherent ponderer has interesting advice on efficiency in research
Take note.
"All of this pondering seems to confirm my earlier thinking that ambition, "killer instinct" and honest self-assessment skills are often more important than being smart or even hard working."
It doesn't hurt to be…
July 18, 2007
Find and classify your own damned galaxy....
Everyone is blogging it, and it is important, and about to fall off the scienceblogs front page
The Galaxy Zoo lets you browse Sloan Sky Survey data and do first order galaxy classification of hitherto unknown moderately faint galaxies.
This is…
July 18, 2007
Where Most Needed worries about elite university endowment, and InsideHigherEd decides to be helpful
The problem is Harvard's endowment - estimated at $25-30 BILLION (presumably depending on just what the position of some closed hedge funds are this afternoon).
That's a lot - but there are ~half-…
July 18, 2007
Roasted beagle, with schmear...
...and LAX (New Yorker's: please not the correct spelling, please!)
Iceland does Korean-Japanese fusion - honestly, I think this is a one-off joke, but I'm busy and it is a cheap-laff, innit?
Did I mention Icelanders are rated the happiest people in the world?
Not…
July 16, 2007
It was 380 years ago today that "turkish pirates" raided the southwest of Iceland and took 242 slaves into captivity in Algiers...
For some reason the anniversary was commemorated...
The raid, by barbary corsairs out of Algiers (which was an Ottoman domain), hit the Westman Islands (…
July 13, 2007
The Female Science Professor lays it down:
...would you rather be a professor at:
1. A university that is located in a city/region in which you would love to live, but at which most of your faculty colleagues would be insane and/or unpleasant;
or
2. A university in a not-great place to live, but at…
July 13, 2007
It is cool, sunny festive friday, and so we cheerfully bop along over to the iPod, and ask:
what is in store for us in August now? Anything hot?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Sumar í Reykjavík - Stuðmenn
The Crossing: Arabian Dance - Tchaikovsky
The Crown: This War is Over -…
July 11, 2007
Tinetti et al have a paper in Nature, July 12th, claiming infrared spectroscopic detection of water on an extrasolar planet.
Just appeared on the exoplanet.eu mailing list/web site
Paper is there Water vapour in the atmosphere of a transiting extrasolar planet (pdf)
(here is Nature link)
Detection…
July 10, 2007
duh
I'll grab the original paper soon as I can see it on Proc Roy Soc (Lockwood and Frölich in press)
PS: here is a pointer to the paper itself
here is the full text - pdf (subscription)
It is a nice compact paper - good summary of recent history and proposed mechanisms, then a very…
July 10, 2007
So, the rumours are true, the USS Enterprise is scooting back to the Persian Gulf
- usual game issue - could be regular rotation, with one of the two carriers already there going home (Stennis should head back in August if they stick to the six month rotation), but it will provide a window with…
July 9, 2007
So I'm catching up on e-mail with half an eye on the idiot box where my better half is watching the new episode of the "Closer"...
it is good, almost good enough to make me stop what I'm doing and watch with full attention
why are the cable channels, TNT and USA, not to mention HBO and Showtime…
July 6, 2007
I just noticed curious language in the DoE Senate Appropriations Committe statement on JDEM
From AIP's FYI #66
"Joint Dark Energy Mission. - The Committee has consistently urged
the Department to move forward toward launch of the Joint Dark
Energy Mission [JDEM]. Unfortunately, in spite of the…
July 6, 2007
High mass planets around metal poor red dwarfs, may put small crack in big theory
New planets just put up on exoplanet.eu - from JJ of the California-Carnegie-AAT group. These were mentioned at Santorini, but I don't think I talked specifically about them at the time, not sure if I failed to note…
July 6, 2007
Sunny, happy friday.
We approach the iPod, and we ask - is Carter's Large Number Coincidence Argument valid, or does it fail for one or both of the two obvious reasons?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Walking Contradiction - Green Day
The Crossing: Danse Des Cygnes - Tchaikovsky…
July 4, 2007
Bush may like to think he is non-abelian, but we know he has a nilpotent subgroup.
Not only does he have a nilpotent subset of ideals, but the interesection of his prime ideals is nilradical!
Phbt!
July 3, 2007
It was a rough week for the UK, with record floods and terrorist attacks in the middle of a change of government.
As the Y-Ranter points out, the bureaucracy dealt with it in stride
Y'know, they really did. The airports were opened and working smoothly despite the increase in security level, and I…
July 1, 2007
Oh man, Heathrow is not exactly the easiest of airports at the best of times, but landing an hour after the UK went to "critical" security status is not a good time. In the rain.
Oh, and I understand about the whole bus thing, that you don't want large vehicles driven up to the terminal right now…
June 30, 2007
"The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity"
by Ron Pernish and Clint Wilder of CleanEdge
HarperCollins: ISBN-13-978-0-06-089623-2
This books is NOT about investment advice... or so they say, for good and valid and legal reasons.
But each chapter ends in a list of…
June 30, 2007
a question in one of the comments to the "Extreme Solar System" threads, was to the effect of - "when will the embargoed/unpublished stuff come out and the rest of us know"?
well, depends...
some of the items were in press or submitted to Nature/Science - these will come out in a matter of weeks,…
June 30, 2007
Extreme Solar Systems conference has finished, and the lovely WiFi service at Athens airport just crashed and wiped out what I wrote... aargh.
Hrmph, the previous version was much snappier and comprehensive, with amusing and informative hyperlinks.
Ok, before my battery runs out, here goes...
Lots…
June 29, 2007
We venture into the future to ask the Mighty iPod One - what IS going on with OJ287?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: The Love Parade - Undertones
The Crossing: Lullaby
The Crown: Disco 2000 - Pulp
The Root: Get Up Stand Up - Bob Marley
The Past: Popsicle - Talking Heads
The…