Steinn Sigurðsson
Professor of Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. Science Editor at Astrophysical Journal. Icelandic. Herder of Cats.
catdynamics
Posts by this author
November 5, 2006
Ok, seriously, what are the most underfunded fields in science?
I have to agree with some of the other responses: the single most underfunded field across the board, where significant extra funding could leverage major long term results - is systematics - good old fashioned field biology, doing…
November 5, 2006
Andy Kessler is a techie.
Engineer, financial analyst and fund manager.
He is rich, successful and semi-retired, by the looks of it.
He also ran into the US health care system, a fairly gentle bump I must say, and now he wants to see the current system ended, while preferably making another billion…
November 4, 2006
On tuesday Hvalur HF announced that the whaling ship Hvalur 9 was back in harbour and that the fin whaling season is over for the year.
Seven fin whales were struck and landed, out of a quota of nine total.
I want to provide my perspective on the whaling issue in Iceland and a possible political…
November 4, 2006
SciBling Chris Mooney has written an interesting book: The Republican War on Science.
I finally got around to reading it, just in time, as it were.
Seems a bit late, but I see Chris is still on book tour, and it is very current as a topic, plus it is now out in paperback.
War on Science is a book…
November 2, 2006
Just in case, we do our weekly iPod iChing early with a schedule friday publication...
a sort of prescient omniscience.
We will also see how we do with a sharply restricted library selection, this might stretch the iPod's powers to the utmost.
So... oh mighty one. What is in store for us over the…
November 2, 2006
Nice article by MarkCC on why C sucksis not efficient for numerically intensive applications - looks like that's an even better way to get comments and readers than the old "dis String Theory" trick.
Chad has a pointer to a beautiful entry by Aaronson on nifty theoretical things in computer science…
November 2, 2006
Wah.
My poor li'l ol' laptop has a 15 degree bend in it.
Right between the battery slot and the DVD drive.
We were setting up for a talk, of course, and to connect the speakers I moved the laptop case over to a different table, but the Euro/US connector bit on the power supply got tangled in the…
October 31, 2006
Scholarships-Ar-US have nominated 10 student bloggers for a nice little scholarship.
Go vote (it is resistant to Chicago voting, must have a cookie and only lets you visit the voting page once, despite the stakes I imagine few people will take the time to flush their browser cookies and reset…
October 31, 2006
Toil and Trouble
Griffin, Weiler and Mikulski are live on NASA TV right now to make the announcement on Hubble servicing mission number 4.
And the winner is...
... The Hubble Space Telescope!
Griffin has spoken and a Shuttle servicing mission will be added to the planned launches.
applause
I'm…
October 30, 2006
good old days...
If you were in this picture, or know the people who were, then e-mail me...
October 30, 2006
DeLong explains why hexapodia is the key insight
In a perfect world it'd be TeX on an Alpha, but a Mac will do.
Fortunately Google Does No Evil.
October 30, 2006
"...As the country drifts slowly to war"
Update: Why do I keep hammering on the "paranoid Iran scenario"?
Because I am worried that the decision to "take out" Iran has been made in DC, and that it is now merely a question of when, and with what rationale.
There are two considerations: one is next…
October 29, 2006
Sweden. Denmark next.
Not quite three Scandihoovian countries in three days, unless you count surface transits, but still...
Sweden, though, is big. I had forgotten how big. And has changed in an interestingly subtle way.
So I am enjoying the hospitality of Lund observatory, but had to make a quick…
October 29, 2006
Inaccurate in detail, and wishful.
Cute, but real saints would have used C-17s and Chinooks, not B-2s(!?) and Apaches...
Kinda gets your feet tapping.
October 27, 2006
What's the most underfunded scientific field that shouldn't be underfunded?...
Mine!
Me!Me!Me!
Seriously.
October 27, 2006
It is friday, but only the 20th of Oct - we anticipate our movements and ask the iPod now, the question that gots to be asked.
Oh, mighty iPod - is there an "october surprise"?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: In Un Palco Della Scala - Pavarotti
The Crossing: Chocolat - Cornershop…
October 27, 2006
Apparently this trailer is too much for the delicate sensibilities of some of the main stream media,
so I pass it along as a public service.
It is funny, and sad. I'd go see the movie, if I ever got to go see movies that is...
October 26, 2006
Interesting conversation at lunch today: topic was academic performance metrics and of course the dreaded citation index came up, with all its variants, flaws and systematics.
However, my attention was drawn to a citation metric which, on brief analysis, and testing, seems to be annoyingly reliable…
October 24, 2006
We WILL Rock You
Told you so. Brian May of Queen is a genuine rock star scientist
Hm, I wonder if it is any good...
October 24, 2006
Here is the provisional membership list of the NRC review committee for the Beyond Einstein program
Interesting bunch. Looks cosmology heavy to me.
October 24, 2006
...in Iceland that is.
Got in at about 6 am, the weather was lovely, a mild frost, and not too windy, just brisk.
so I took the bus to town and walked to where I'm crashing. Very refreshing, just the thing to wake you up after a long flight.
A bite of skyr, and a walk down to the harbour, and…
October 20, 2006
Friday, rainy friday.
We go back to the Fountain of All Wisdom, and ask the Mighty iPod a more refined question.
Oh, Mighty iPod: are there gauge fields, hidden in the Standard Model, which show up as extra hair on astrophysical black holes, and could we see evidence for this in measurements of…
October 20, 2006
Thanks to iTunes "share inside the firewall" option, the graduate students can track my comings and going in real time. I guess I consider this a "feature" since I control sharing.
The impact of the buttocks of a 12kg baby at ~ 2 m/sec on the face is comparable in effect to that of a slow…
October 19, 2006
Prof Foland of nuclear mangos forward an interesting pointer.
The US Navy's TACAMO ("Take Charge And Move Out") went active this week, with a little flurry of messages (scroll down to comment #71 if you want to see more detail).
This is the old Very Low Frequency communication system, from E-6s…
October 19, 2006
There are a lot of news on the space science front:
ranging from SETI's new "Sagan Center", through APL becoming a NASA field center to the "new improved National Space Policy, with Extra Classified Sections"
I'm way behind, so go browse NASAwatch for now, may catch up on the details in a few days…
October 19, 2006
I just realised that my House Band nominees (below) are all White Males.
And that is even while forgetting to nominate Queen (for the astrophysics of course, and We Will Rock You).
Zuska has a point...
Er, AlphaBlondie anyone? Dixie Chicks?
Ah, Dixie Chicks: I set a SciBling challenge: Which Dixie…
October 19, 2006
Apparently the SciBlings have determined that we need a House Band...
World's Fair advocates Phish, or Wilco, and Chad likes someone I've never heard of (so they must be trendy or something).
Now, I like Wilco, but mostly as Billy Bragg's backup band.
You could go with the classics, like Rush,…
October 17, 2006
Iceland's Fisheries Minister has announced that commercial whaling will resume, with an initial quota of 30 minke whales and 9 fin whales.
The minke page is somewhat inaccurate - the meat has been for sale for some years, and is also served in a number of restaurants. It got relatively popular…
October 16, 2006
Astroprof ponders the imponderable.
Semester is clearly in full swing out there...
Read it and weep.