October 13, 2009
The baseball playoffs are upon us, which means that most of the sports media are consumed with baseball talk. I find this faintly annoying, as I'm not really a fan of baseball. And, really, I can't be a fan of baseball, for the same reason that I can't be a conservative Republican activist-- I don'…
October 13, 2009
The Ostrom Nobel -- Crooked Timber
"To amplify what Kieran has just said - political scientists are going to be very, very happy today. I had seen Lin cited as a 50-1 outsider by one betting agency a few days ago, and had been surprised that she was at the races at all, given that economists tend…
October 12, 2009
Somebody should look to see if there's a correlation between the weather on the days of campus visits and the number of prospective students who apply/ enroll at a given school.
We had pretty decent weather-- cool but seasonal, sunny in the morning, clouding over in the afternoon-- for today's Open…
October 12, 2009
It's Adopt-a-Physicist time again, and I've been "adopted" by three classes: Susan Kelly's class at Blind Brook High School in Rye, NY; Lisa Edwards's class at Hickory High School in Hickory, NC (insert your own Hoosiers joke); and Suprit Dharmi's class at Terrill Middle School in Scotch Plains, NJ…
October 12, 2009
The Digital Cuttlefish looks at the Archie comics, and waxes poetic:
Two paths play out in a comic book,
When Archie walks down memory lane
"The road not taken" is the hook;
So now, the writers take a look
And re-write Archie's life again,
This time with Betty as his bride;
Veronica the woman…
October 12, 2009
Britain's Nobel winner condemns science funding reform | Science | guardian.co.uk
""There is a lot of focus now on trying to get very quick pay-offs in research. It is a huge mistake. Basic science has paid off far more than any directed research," Ramakrishnan said.
"If you don't invest properly…
October 11, 2009
Over at Physics and Physicists, ZapperZ notes a fairly useless interview with Guy Consolmagno, and suggests some alternative questions:
1. How old do you estimate the universe to be based not only on your observation, but also the consensus among astronomers? Would this be contrary to the biblical…
October 11, 2009
Physics - Protecting quantum superpositions from the outside world
"Quantum information science relies on superpositions of quantum states with a definite phase relation, but such superpositions are inherently fragile against interactions with their environment. Fortunately, if some kind of…
October 10, 2009
In the last couple of weeks, I have suddenly acquired a rather full travel schedule for the coming months. The odd thing is that none of these trips are book-publicity junkets-- they're all basically professional-type appearances, several of them taking place before How to Teach Physics to Your Dog…
October 10, 2009
Green Energy Should Trump Politics: Daniel Lyons | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com
"[L]ook at what [scientists] are up against: a noisy babble of morons and Luddites, the "Drill, baby, drill" crowd, the birthers, and tea-party kooks who have done their best to derail…
October 9, 2009
Inspired by yesterday's post about the speed of light, a poll about c:
What do you think of the speed of light?(surveys)
So, how do you feel about the speed of light?
October 9, 2009
The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize went to Al Gore and the IPCC. The 2008 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel went to Paul Krugman. And now, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Barack Obama.
Really? I mean, really? I like the guy as much as the next person, and it's nice…
October 9, 2009
From Gourmet to the Daily Gazette « Easily Distracted
"This is the real issue for a lot of old media. They used to be a habit, a tradition, a part of life. As such, you ignored what you didn't use or like the same way you ignore a tear or a stain in a piece of furniture that you otherwise find…
October 8, 2009
Winter is coming, and SteelyKid is getting ready. Here, we see her modeling the latest in baby headgear (handed down from a friend):
It's very stylish. I'm not convinced that hugging Appa will take the place of a coat, though...
A slightly better Appa-for-scale picture is below the fold:
This…
October 8, 2009
A couple of days ago, I answered a question from a donor to the Uncertain Principles challenge page in this year's Social Media Challenge (we've raised $1,807 thus far-- thank you all). If you'd like a question of your own answered on the blog, all you need to do is send me the confirmation email…
October 8, 2009
Less-Convergent Culture « Easily Distracted
"Here's what I find as far as standard commercial outfits [for Halloween costumes]. If you're female and a kid and you want to be a superhero, you're basically out of luck unless Wonder Woman is your favorite. "
(tags: kid-stuff gender stupid comics…
October 7, 2009
The Cutest Vaudeville Convict in the Universe says "Hi!"
SteelyKid is fourteen months old today. Between the arbitrary numerical signifier and the outfit, how could we not do some bonus Baby Blogging?
October 7, 2009
Prompted by working on lecture notes for Quantum Optics last night, a Dorky Poll about the mathematical formalism of photon number states
What's your favorite photon operator?(polls)
I know it's hard to pick, but choose only one.
October 7, 2009
I have a Dorky Poll idea for later in the day, but let's get this out of the way first:
Choose only one:(opinion)
Don't say I never gave you these options.
October 7, 2009
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." I know just about enough to recognize this as something biochemical, but I'm sure there will be plenty of commentary about…
October 7, 2009
Confessions of a Middlebrow Professor - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Beam makes light of Adler's inflexibility, but he does not entirely embrace the by-now clichéd disdain for the Great Books, because they represent something admirable that, perhaps, should be…
October 6, 2009
We're six days into the DonorsChoose challenge, and at the time of this writing, ten people have contributed just over $1,700 to the Uncertain Principles challenge entry. That's an impressive average, and I thank you all for your generosity.
I also offered a number of incentives, and Lauren Uroff…
October 6, 2009
The sneaky folks at the Nobel Foundation have thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to the Physics prize. All the speculation has surrounded exotic quantum effects and theoretical esoterica, and they turn around and give it to something -gasp- practical...
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics is…
October 6, 2009
Career Advice: I'm Sorry I Published - Inside Higher Ed
"Given that it seems to be common wisdom that publications are helpful, two anecdotes I heard in the past week or so scare me a little bit. Both anecdotes are about departments that were searching or are planning a search. Both departments…
October 5, 2009
In this week's issue of Publishers Weekly there's a short review (scroll down) of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (which will be released December 22):
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Chad Orzel. Scribner, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4165-7228-2
What do dog treats and chasing squirrels have to do with…
October 5, 2009
The Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak for "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." Who's HI, you ask? HI is the commenter who picked Blackburn and Greider in the official Uncertain…
October 5, 2009
As you may or may not have heard, there's a new Stargate franchise on the SyFy channel with John Scalzi as a creative consultant. It may have slipped by without you noticing, because John is too modest to hype it much...
Anyway, given the Scalzi connection, I checked out the pilot on Friday, and it…
October 4, 2009
Sunday morning, Chateau Steelypips: Everybody's in the library.
Why does SteelyKid look so pleased with herself, you ask? Because she's found a new game:
On the bright side, Emmy's opinion of SteelyKid has moved beyond "grudging acceptance"...
October 4, 2009
Posthumous Novels by Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Ralph Ellison - WSJ.com
"A new wave of posthumous books by iconic authors is stirring debate over how publishers should handle fragmentary literary remains. Works by Vladimir Nabokov, William Styron, Graham Greene, Carl Jung and Kurt…
October 3, 2009
Effect Size (Again) « Easily Distracted
"I agree that if a researcher can establish that a particular effect or phenomenon has a statistically significant influence or role in social behavior, it matters, that this is a finding worth reporting. The problem is, as McCloskey notes, that some…
