December 12, 2006
Monte Davis, of "Thinking Clearly About Space" has another snarky look at overblown space enthusiasm, providing a helpful taxonomy of X-Treme Spacers:
Alt.Tech
Chemical rockets have let you down: after decades of gritty engineering they remain expensive and trouble-prone. It's time to start over…
December 12, 2006
As you may or may not recall, some time back we did a fundraising challenge to raise money for the educational charity Donors Choose. Uncertain Principles readers donated a little over $1,200, and ScienceBlogs in general raised about $34,000.
When I kicked in my money, I forgot to un-check the…
December 11, 2006
I remarked to Kate the other night that it's a shame we don't have any science-themed ornaments for the Christmas tree. She responded that I just wasn't thinking hard enough about what we do have, and she's right-- with a bit of effort, it's not hard to come up with scientific symbolism for the…
December 11, 2006
Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean is pondering comment policies:
So the question is: how can the comment sections be better? To decode this for our more innocent readers: how can we increase the signal-to-noise ratio? Increasing the signal is one obvious way, but that's hard. The real question that I'…
December 11, 2006
Inside Higher Ed had a story on Friday about a Modern Language Association study on tenure and promotion. The study group just released its final report (available for download here. Given that I'm waiting to hear the results of my own tenure case (a decision could come at any time, starting this…
December 11, 2006
Over at Bora's House of Round-the-Clock Blogging, we find the sensational headline Beaten by Biologists, Creationists Turn Their Sights On Physics. On seeing that, I headed over to the editorial in The American Prospect that it points to, expecting to be scandalized. When I got there, I found this…
December 11, 2006
There were several sporting events worth commenting on this weekend, none of which I saw in their entirety. Hence, the combo recap post.
Maryland-BC The Terps got beat by Boston College in a game that I didn't realize was on TV until Kate told me about it about midway through the second half. I'm…
December 10, 2006
At least, that's the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the fact that not one string theory result has been nominated for either the Physics Result of 2006 or the Astronomy Result of 2006...
Well, OK, there are other conclusions to draw, such as "Nobody has nominated any string theory results…
December 9, 2006
One of the problems with the logarithmic response of our eyes is that it's always kind of hard to use a camera to really capture the effect of things that light up. If there's enough light to see the background, the lights don't jump out as much as they do in person, but if you make the background…
December 9, 2006
Seen here and there around the Interwebs, the Brutally Honest Personality Test. It's pretty much a standard Meyers-Briggs four-component personality test, except without all the happy touchy-feely crap talking up your positive qualities:
Commander - ESTP
73% Extraversion, 46% Intuition, 66%…
December 8, 2006
As previously established, I don't much care for Christmas music. Last year, I compiled the few holiday songs I owned, and came up with a whopping ten, and that required stretching things a bit. Based on comment thread recommendations, I expanded that to 22 songs (mostly by adding Sufjan Stevens…
December 8, 2006
The AV Club (I promise I'm not actually turning this blog into theonionavclubwatch.com, but I do like their stuff) had a discussion of Christmas music a little while ago, which collides with last night's campus holiday party in interesting ways. Let's just say that there are few things in this…
December 8, 2006
One of the weird features of the trimester calendar that Union runs on is that we get a six-week break between the Fall and Winter terms-- classes end before Thanksgiving, and resume after New Year's. This is neither as restful nor as useful as you might naively expect, but that's not the point of…
December 7, 2006
I've solicited nominations for a bunch of "Year's Best" categories, with varying degrees of success. Best Pop Song was great (and has added a few songs to the list of things to check out the next time I hit iTunes), but I was hoping for more from the best physics results. Was it really that slow a…
December 7, 2006
There have been a couple of science funding items in Inside Higher Ed in the last few days, one suggestiong prizes to spur research, and the other reporting that most people aren't convinced there's a crisis:
Generally, the public appreciates some of the message of the reports going out -- that the…
December 7, 2006
I have a couple of EurekAlert feeds in my RSS reader, because they sometimes turn up interesting things-- I got the Bill Wootters item there, for example, and they had a piece on strontium clocks that I keep meaning to say something about.
Of course, there's also some total garbage, such as the…
December 7, 2006
One of my former professors is collecting some awards:
Professor William Wootters is to be honored for his outstanding achievements in physics, not once, but twice in the academic year, by The American Physical Society and by the International Organization for Quantum Communication, Measurement and…
December 7, 2006
The Onion AV Club has a review of The God Delusion this week. "Big deal, " you say, "Who cares what a humor magazine thinks?"
I've found in recent years, though, that the AV Club is one of the most consistent sources of reviews of movies, music, and books out there. They're sharp, they get right to…
December 6, 2006
Continuing the year-end wrap-up theme, I'll invite suggestions for the best books of the year. Since I'm so far behind on the booklog, it's much harder for me to remember what came out in 2006, and come up with a ranking, but I have some ideas. I'd like to hear what other people think, though, so:…
December 6, 2006
Continuing the year-end wrap-up theme, I'll invite suggestions for the best books of the year. Since I'm so far behind on the booklog, it's much harder for me to remember what came out in 2006, and come up with a ranking, but I have some ideas. I'd like to hear what other people think, though, so:…
December 6, 2006
Syracuse, ranked #21 according to ESPN, lost by three to #24 Oklahoma State on Tuesday night. This comes on the heels of a loss to #17 Wichita State (who climbed to #10 in this week's rankings).
That's what happens when you play ranked teams in December. I'm not sure how they managed to get Jim…
December 6, 2006
Via EurekAlert, a press release regarding a speech by former Presidential Science Advisor (under Bill Clinton) Neal Lane, about nanotechnology. Lane apparently warned that the US is in danger of falling behind in nanotechnology, and urged steps to avoid a nano gap, including the following slightly…
December 6, 2006
David at the World's Fair celebrates Ninja Day with an Ask a Ninja video about physics.
Of course, what the ninja says is a lie-- Physics did the dumping, and he was all, "Please take me back, I promise to only move along geodesic paths in curved space-time from now on," but she was having none of…
December 6, 2006
Turnout has been disappointing in the Physics and Astronomy results of the year threads. Come on, I know there are some opinionated nerds out there reading this-- nominate some stuff.
Here, the AIP provides their own list, complete with links to Physics News Update stories. Are blog readers really…
December 5, 2006
For those who care, I'm "interviewed" over at Page 3.14. The scare quotes are because the interview was actually an email response to a list of questions, which is why parts of it sound stilted. Still, free publicity...
December 5, 2006
It's more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling "Year's Best" lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I'll throw…
December 5, 2006
It's more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling "Year's Best" lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I'll throw…
December 5, 2006
It's more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling "Year's Best" lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I'll throw…
December 5, 2006
The Female Science Professor has a post talking about types of reference letters. Much of what she says is fairly specific to letters relating to prizes or promotions, but some of her comments are perfectly applicable to the junior faculty job search letters I've been reading by the bucketload…
December 4, 2006
Next term, I'm teaching our sophomore-level "Modern Physics" class again. "Modern Physics," in ecuation terms, really means "Early 20th Century Physics"-- it's a couple of weeks of Special Relativity, followed by several weeks of basic Quantum Mechanics, with a mad 2-3 week sprint at the end where…
