July 16, 2008
Back when we bought the house, Kate's parents were having miserable problems with their cable Internet service-- at peak times, the real bit rate went down so far that it was impossible to get anywhere-- so we opted for DSL service. Five years later, we still have DSL, and even the same modem.
When…
July 16, 2008
Just before we turn the corner, a woman goes jogging past with a Golden Retriever. As we continue on our way, I can hear the Doberman three houses up barking at them as they go past. The windows muffle the sound, but I can make out a bit of it. "Get offa my lawn! Gonna bite you! My lawn!"
When we…
July 15, 2008
Packer Is Leaving CBS After Calling 34 Final Fours - NYTimes.com
Woo-hoo! Now they just need to ditch Jim Nantz.
(tags: basketball sports television)
In depth: depth of focus and depth of field « Skulls in the Stars
An explanation of why you can't get everything in your pictures in focus.
(…
July 15, 2008
As you have no doubt noticed, my early-morning review of Randy Olson's Sizzle was part of a concerted effort to get blogs to review the movie all on the same day. It's an experiment of sorts in using blogs to promote the movie.
Unfortunately for Olson, it seems to be an experiment designed to test…
July 14, 2008
FemaleScienceProfessor: No Man's Land
Why, as much as I gripe about our finance department, dealing with them is infinitely better than dealing with their research university counterparts.
(tags: academia science economics)
Thought For The Day -- Words Words Words -- The Dream Cafe Weblog
Also…
July 14, 2008
The forthcoming Sizzle, Randy Olson's follow-up to the well-received A Flock of Dodos, is a movie that's trying to do three things at the same time: 1) provide some information about global warming, 2) make a point about how scientific information is presented to the public, and 3) experiment with…
July 14, 2008
Matt Yglesias points to a Peter Suderman post talking about this post about finding jobs:
The last couple of years have seen my friends begin to start their honest-to-goodness careers, as opposed to jobs that were by design short-term. I'd say that among people I would call friends, a good two…
July 14, 2008
In a comment on the FutureBaby betting thread, Rivka writes:
(I'm laughing at all these people who are predicting early. The average gestation for a first time mother is 41 weeks, 1 day.)
Of course, as a physical scientist, my immediate reaction to that is "If they know that, then shouldn't that…
July 13, 2008
squishable.com: they're giant round fuzzy stuffed animals. hug them.
"They're giant, round, fuzzy, stuffed animals. Hug them."
(tags: animals silly toys kid-stuff)
July 13, 2008
OK, not really a betting pool, as there will be no cash wagered. This is strictly for amusement.
The projected arrival date for FutureBaby is July 28th, which is two weeks from tomorrow. Of course, the actual arrival date could be any day in the next month or so. We also don't know the sex of…
July 13, 2008
What Kate said, basically. The visuals are spectacular, the plot is pretty silly, the gender politics are kind of irritating.
The director, Guillermo Del Toro, is supposedly going to direct The Hobbit, and given the impressive look and feel of this movie, I'm sure he'll do cool things with Middle-…
July 12, 2008
Thin-film dyes boost solar cells - physicsworld.com
"Scientists in the US have shown how to multiply the power output of photovoltaic (solar) cells by up to ten times using organic dyes to concentrate sunlight."
(tags: science physics optics chemistry energy environment news)
Swans on Tea »…
July 12, 2008
A couple of links about things that have turned up in my email recently:
-- As a follow-on to yesterday's post about grad school, I got an email a little while ago about Graduate Junction, a social networking/ career building site aimed at graduate students. I'm coming up on ten years of being out…
July 11, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff : Ways To Do Fundamental Theoretical Physics
I like option three...
(tags: science theory silly physics blogs)
» It's post-a-rejection-letter Friday! >>Nostalgia For Infinity: Literature, Gaming, Punk Rock (and all that)
"Apropos of the ridiculous focus on whether or…
July 11, 2008
Matt at Built On Facts spots an Inside Higher Ed article that I missed, showing that grad students at South Carolina get $9,500 a year, and uses it as a starting point to comment about grad school salaries:
The difficulty of living as a graduate student varies heavily on what you're studying. Take…
July 11, 2008
Tobias Buckell brought the whole sordid racist rejection letter episode to my attention a couple of days ago. This has apparently decided to become the "Violet Blue" episode for this week, and today, Toby dredges through the sewers of the Asimov's forums to find a few real gems of sexist and racist…
July 10, 2008
The Reality-Based Community: Economics and Fundamentalism
"A very hard puzzle for the intellectual historians of the future will lie in determining how economics remained the queen of the disciplines when it made so many wrong or simply irrelevant predictions."
(tags: academia economics social-…
July 10, 2008
I'm currently revising the book chapter based on the original "Bunnies Made of Cheese" post, which deals with virtual particles and Quantum Electro-Dynamics. The best proof of the power of QED is the measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, where experiment and theory agree to…
July 10, 2008
Via Matt Yglesias, the following pair of pictures purports to show that "an equal number of people can fit into a vastly smaller space if they're riding a bus than if they're in single passenger cars." See if you can spot the problem:
Answer below the fold:
The bus picture is on a vastly different…
July 9, 2008
In Grad Admissions, Where Is Class? :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"A study just published in PS: Political Science and Politics suggests that in graduate departments, class may be nowhere to be found in admissions decisions."
(tags: academia class-war…
July 9, 2008
The Corporate Masters have launched a new group blog, Next Generation Energy, that will be providing regular commentary on energy issues and possible new sources of energy. The authors include a few people already on ScienceBlogs (William Connolley, James Hrynyshyn, and Sheril Kirshenbaum), along…
July 8, 2008
Vital Statistics - Summer Sports Are Among the Safest - NYTimes.com
"The snowboarding accident rate is higher than the rate for summer pastimes like boating, camping, fishing, hiking, mountain biking, swimming, and water-skiing -- combined."
(tags: statistics medicine sports science)
stand up…
July 8, 2008
As a sort of palate-cleanser after the quantum chicanery discussed in the previous post, let me recommend Donald Simanek's Museum of Unworkable Devices, a wonderful collection of failed ideas for perpetual motion machines, including explanations of why they don't work.
I'm tempted to turn a couple…
July 8, 2008
The final chapter of Bunnies Made of Cheese: The Book is currently envisioned as a look at the misuse of quantum mechanics by evil squirrels: qucks and hucksters of various sorts. As a result, I spent a good chunk of yesterday wading through the sewers of alternative medicine books on Amazon, using…
July 7, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Ask and Ye Shall Receive...
Wise and worldly advice about academic job hunting.
(tags: academia jobs education)
My Semester With an Asperger Syndrome Student :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
I am somewhat…
July 7, 2008
John Allen Paulos's Innumeracy is one of those classics of the field that I've never gotten around to reading. I've been thinking more about these sorts of issues recently, though, so when the copy I bought a few years ago turned up in our recent book-shuffling, I decided to give it a read.…
July 6, 2008
Kate and I are giving away books.
Not all of them, mind, and they're not totally free-- you need to pay shipping-- but a couple hundred duplicate/ disliked/ never-going-to-get-read books are being discarded. If you would like any of them, there are simple instructions on Kate's LiveJournal.
Don't…
July 6, 2008
From yesterday's snail mail:
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence about the President's Fiscal Year 2009 Budget. We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
So, there you go. I'm appreciated and my suggestions are welcomed. Of course, it took me a while…
July 6, 2008
"2. Ever repeat a word so much it starts to lose its meaning? Writing a book is like that, only with 90,000 words."
Quantum quantum quantum, quantum quantum. Quantum.
July 5, 2008
What a drag: Arago's Experiment (1810) « Skulls in the Stars
"[I]t was a failed experiment, based on incorrect theories of light propagation, which was interpreted incorrectly by Fresnel, but this incorrect interpretation helped lead to the (correct) view that light has wavelike properties!"
(…
