November 25, 2007
A couple of months ago, I embarked on an experiment to read some SF magazines, and see if I was really missing out on the wonderful stuff that people are always haranguing con-goers about. I bought paper copies of Analog's November issue and the October/ November Asimov's, and commented on them…
November 24, 2007
LSU lost to Arkansas in "overtime" yesterday (scare quotes are because the college overtime system is bizarre), becoming the latest highly-ranked team to lose to an unranked opponent. This throws the BCS championship system into chaos for the Nth time this season-- by the end of the weekend, at…
November 24, 2007
It turns out that there's a Facebook group for quantum information types called the Church of the Larger Hilbert Space after a remark by John Smolin (Facebook link here), which I thought was the nerdiest thing I ever saw. Until I looked at the "Related Groups," and saw "I support the right to…
November 23, 2007
Web Log -- Charles Bernstein: "Doping Scandal Rocks Poetry
'Cooper pairs' can be found in insulators as well superconductors
They explain superconductivity, and also some insulating behavior-- is there anything they can't do?
(tags: physics quantum experiment science news)
Have we sealed the…
November 23, 2007
As mentioned a while back, I recently obtained a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet PC, which I've been playing around with a bunch. I like it quite a bit-- the handwriting recognition is a whole lot better than the older Toshiba model I used for a while last year, and the interface works a little more…
November 23, 2007
We live just a few blocks away from the local high school, which has had some sort of massive construction project going on for a few months now. I've been wondering what created the giant pile of dirt to one side of the grounds, but haven't been bothered enough to actually, you know, look it up to…
November 22, 2007
[0711.0745] Imaging the Internal Structure of the Earth with Atmospheric Neutrinos
"The absorption of neutrinos with energies in excess of 10 TeV when traversing the Earth is capable of revealing its density distribution."
(tags: physics theory articles science)
mmcirvin: Retract your ad…
November 22, 2007
Kate and I will be hosting Thanksgiving again this year, but not until Saturday, for reasons having to do with pet-sitting-- the Queen of Niskayuna will not tolerate inferior dogs (i.e., any dog who isn't her) in her house, and for some reason, it's hard to find a pet-sitter for Thanksgiving Day.…
November 21, 2007
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: More Doctors of Philosophy (and Science)
The number of Ph.D.'s awarded goes up, but most of the increase is among foreign-born researchers.
(tags: academia US education)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Access and…
November 21, 2007
On a happier science-related note, the AIP's Physics News Update highlights a very nice article in The American Journal of Physics about the wide-ranging scientific investigations of Luis Alvarez:
Scientist as detective: Luis Alvarez and the pyramid burial chambers, the JFK assassination, and the…
November 21, 2007
I generally like Gregg Easterbrook's writing about football (though he's kind of gone off the deep end regarding the Patriots this year), but everything else he turns his hand to is a disaster. In particular, he tends to pad his columns out with references to science and technology issues. I'm not…
November 20, 2007
Crooked Timber » » Disciplines and deterrence
A brief history of shoddy death penalty scholarship.
(tags: economics academia politics society US)
New Stem Cell Method Could Ease Ethical Concerns - New York Times
Let's all take a few minutes to appreciate the accomplishment here, before…
November 20, 2007
Believe it or not, this is actually book-related: I have in mind to do a chapter at the end of the book about the use of misrepresentations of quantum physics to promise magical results. I've been writing the dialogue to go with that this morning (because it's more fun than what I'm supposed to be…
November 20, 2007
I am writing this letter in support of J. Randomstudent's application to your graduate or professional program. I have known J. since the fall of 20__, when he was a student in my introductory physics class.
From the very first day of that course, J. was a constant presence on my grade roster. I…
November 20, 2007
A college basketball game takes a bit over two hours-- 2:10 is pretty typical, what with all the timeouts and miscellaneous stoppages of play. A blowout takes a bit less, a close game a bit more (what with all the intentional fouling at the end), but it's a rare game that finishes in under two…
November 19, 2007
5 Upcoming Comic Book Movies That Must Be Stopped | Cracked.com
'How the project obtained funding for their proposal, entitled "give diamond-hard skin and superhuman strength to angry young ethnic convicts" is yet another prime example of the dangerous incompetence of the Nixon administration.'
(…
November 19, 2007
I have to spend the day working with a thesis student who needs to finish up by tomorrow (no pressure), so I don't have time to write up the seven-part detailed explanation of the physics of deep-fried turkey that I was hoping to do. Maybe next year.
In its place, inspired by Backreaction's post on…
November 19, 2007
In one of those "Living in the Future" sorts of moments, our regular lunchtime pick-up basketball game has an email listserver. Pretty much every day there's a game, there's some email chatter and trash talk. My signature comment is to describe one of the other players as being "Weak like a really…
November 18, 2007
These Scientific Minds Think (and Drink) Alike - New York Times
Scientists acting like rock stars. Buckaroo Banzai, call your agent.
(tags: science society culture)
In U.S. Name Count, Garcias Are Catching Up With Joneses - New York Times
You'll be shocked--shocked!-- to learn that neither Kate…
November 18, 2007
If you go to the California Bar home page, you will see that only 56.1% of the applicants who took the bar exam this year passed. If you poke around a little, you can find the list of those who passed, and on that list, you'll find my sister's name. She graduated law school back in May, and took…
November 18, 2007
I've been thinking off and on all day about the Jon Sobel post I mentioned in the previous post. I think he's got a point, but something about it strikes me as slightly off. To get this out of my system, I'm going to babble about it a bit here, and see if anything coherent emerges.
Sobel's jumping-…
November 18, 2007
Following on yesterday's post about books, I started thinking about the best pop music for the year. Since getting iTunes, I've been able to do this quasi-scientifically, by putting together playlists of the top-rated songs for the year, which provides an easy guide to what I liked best. My first…
November 17, 2007
Backreaction: Universal Scaling at Deadlines
"[Physicists] have analysed the distribution of registrations for two conferences...[and] they can describe this distribution by a simple model, assuming that the 'pressure to register' is inversely proportional to the time left before the deadline…
November 17, 2007
An email from Amazon arrived yesterday announcing their Best Books of 2007 lists. This is an earlier-than usual opening of the "Year's Best" season, in which every publication in the universe produces a list of the N best Whatever of the past year, but with the Christmas shopping season now…
November 17, 2007
Kevin Drum is thinking about debate formats:
Now, there's nothing wrong with a few beachballs. Giving every candidate a couple of minutes to simply explain their healthcare plan -- or whatever -- without interruption is fine. But then what? Do we really want several months of "debates" in which…
November 16, 2007
Court Rejects Fuel Standards on Trucks - New York Times
The decision is not what I expected, given that headline, but hey, it's the Ninth Circuit...
(tags: environment news politics)
YouTube - Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer
"What do the writers of the Daily Show think of the ongoing…
November 16, 2007
As you're probably aware, a cyclone hit Bangladesh yesterday, and has wreaked a good deal of havoc on what is already a fairly fragile country. Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have been all over this, and are urging people to contribute to relief efforts in both text and video.
So, well,…
November 16, 2007
Turnabout, after all, is fair play.
An easy answer would be to just copy the worst reason for doing just about anything else: "Chicks dig it." Ironically, it's also one of the more effective ways of getting guys to do things, particularly college-age guys...
But I'm sure somebody else can come up…
November 16, 2007
Inside Higher Ed has an article on yet another study of why there aren't more conservatives in academia:
Colleges have been increasingly competing to offer "family friendly" policies -- in the hopes of attracting the best academic talent from a pool of Ph.D.'s that includes both more women than…
November 16, 2007
Kate and I went to see Bruce Springsteen last night in Albany. The show was listed as starting at 7:30, but it was 8:25 before the band took the stage. At about 9:30, they were playing "Devil's Arcade," one of the slower and more political songs off the new record, which gave me time to look at my…
