July 5, 2006
I didn't get to see much of the World Cup games over the weekend, as we were in Chicago at a friend's wedding, with drinks and dancing and socializing, and various other things that were more attractive than watching penalty-kick shootouts. A few scattered observations all the same:
Appearances:…
July 5, 2006
I had meant to post something or another yesterday, after we got back, but, well, I was still in vacation mode, and didn't get around to it. I also didn't queue up anything for today, thinking that I would write something last night, but I didn't feel like doing that, either. You may get another "…
July 3, 2006
Poking through the archives to find some old physics posts to fill space while I'm away from the keyboard, I realize that back in 2002, I wrote a lot more about politics than I do now.This is largely because most of what I wrote about politics back then makes me cringe now. And, in fact, made me…
July 2, 2006
I'm going to be away from the computer for the long weekend, but I don't want to have the site go completely dark, even over a weekend, so I'm going to schedule a few posts from the archives to show up while I'm away. Everyone else seems to be doing it (and pushing my posts off the front page, the…
July 1, 2006
I'm going to be away from the computer for the long weekend, but I don't want to have the site go completely dark, even over a weekend, so I'm going to schedule a few posts from the archives to show up while I'm away. Everyone else seems to be doing it (and pushing my posts off the front page, the…
June 30, 2006
I'm going to be away from the computer for the long weekend, but I don't want to have the site go completely dark, even over a weekend, so I'm going to schedule a few posts from the archives to show up while I'm away. Everyone else seems to be doing it (and pushing my posts off the front page, the…
June 30, 2006
As you have no doubt seen elsewhere on ScienceBlogs, the great DonorsChoose blog challenge ends tomorrow. I won't actually be here to do a final post on the subject, so this is the last prodding you'll get from me.
As of this morning, the Uncertain Principles challenge entry stands at $996.02,…
June 30, 2006
The great thing about soccer is that even pets can get in on the game:
Here, Emmy shows off her ability to bat things around on the floor, in honor of the Germany-Argentina game coming up today. The toy in question is a Buster Cube, which we heartily endorse-- it's a plastic cube with a hole in…
June 29, 2006
Matt Leifer, whose blog I hadn't previously encountered, has a long and fascinating post on evaluation criteria for quantum interpretations. "Interpretation" here means the stuff of countless "Isn't Quantum Mechanics weird?" books-- Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Bohmian hidden variable theories, all…
June 29, 2006
I ended the previous laser post by noting that diode lasers need some additional wavelength selection to be done in order to be useful as light sources for spectroscopy experiments. In their natural state, they tend to emit light over a broader range of wavelengths than is really ideal, and we'd…
June 29, 2006
A little while back, JoAnne at Cosmic Variance reported on the status of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant next-generation accelerator that is the cover story for the current print issue of Seed. Particle experimentalist Gordon Watts reports in with some more technical details about the…
June 28, 2006
From America's Finest News Source:
Professor Pressured To Sleep With Student For Good Course Evaluation
FAYETTEVILLE, AR--Alan Gilchrist, an associate professor of English literature at the University of Arkansas infamous for his tough grading standards and dry lecturing style, was coerced into…
June 28, 2006
I haven't posted much about life in the lab lately, because even though I'm getting to spend a bit of time in the lab, I've been so fried from this past term that I haven't had much energy for blogging. Things are finally settling into the summer routine, though, and I've gotten a little rest since…
June 28, 2006
Two links containing important advice for the academic set. First, Derek Lowe reminisces about summer in graduate school:
When I was in graduate school, I had a law student as a neighbor for a while. We were both pretty quiet, and got along fine in our respective dinky efficiency apartments, but we…
June 28, 2006
Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching):
Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in…
June 27, 2006
There was an interesting article in the Times today about the possibility of "geoengineering":
In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more…
June 27, 2006
My traffic has been down a little in the past couple of weeks, which of course can't possibly be because I haven't posted anything really interesting in that time. No, clearly, it must be that I'm not playing the game right.
Thus, I have performed an extensive study or high-traffic blogs, to…
June 27, 2006
An open thread comment over at Making Light triggered a discussion of what words and phrases could serve as reliable markers of SF fandom. (It continues for a good while, but at times is nearly buried in discussion of Japanese knotweed.).
This got me to wondering about what phrases would serve as…
June 27, 2006
Last week's attempt to shame people into donating to the DonorsChoose fundraiser produced a flurry of donations that brought us up to a respectable $896.02 and third place on the leader board. Which is pretty cool-- thanks to all who have donated.
The official challenge runs through July 1 (that is…
June 27, 2006
Via Cosmic Variance, news of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy for 2006:
Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt are awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy 2006 in recognition of their leadership roles on the two teams that made the remarkable discovery of an acceleration in the rate of the expansion…
June 26, 2006
I'm a very, very lazy blogger, and I'm particularly bad about updating my sidebar links. I finally got around to putting a few months' worth of new science-y blogs into the sidebar, though, so you might want to check them out, if you don't already read them:
Angry Physics "Presenting the "other"…
June 26, 2006
This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question is a total meatball:
What makes a good science teacher?
Teaching science is a big part of what I do, so of course I have an answer for this. Which is basically the same answer as everybody else has already given, so let me try to put a slightly different…
June 26, 2006
It was a lazy Sunday in Chateau Steelypips, what with the party Saturday afternoon, so I watched a fair amount of soccer. I saw nearly all of the England-Ecuador game, and the second half of the Portugal-Netherlands game. This has made something clear to me:
The most difficult thing to find in…
June 26, 2006
I've got a grant proposal to review, and a progress report to write for one of my own grants, so you're getting short, link-y physics blogging:
- The Strings 2006 conference has ended, with the participants apparently deciding to keep up with this "string theory" thing (maybe you've heard of it?)…
June 25, 2006
Some sort of network problem at Verizon cut Chateau Steelypips off from the Intenets yesterday, but that was all right, as we were hosting a party for some friends from work, and had other things to do. The weather, which had been predicted to be lousy, turned out to be fine, and a good time was…
June 23, 2006
It's almost finished now, so this is a little late in being posted, but the Washington Post has been running a week-long series of on-line chats with noted "futurists," under the title Beyond the Future. I'm a little dubious about most "futurism," but reading about people's predictions for future…
June 23, 2006
So, the US lost to Ghana yesterday, ending the World Cup for the Americans. I watched most of the second half, and it was pretty frustrating. Amazingly, Ghana was actually more theatrical than Italy, with the flopping and the flailing and the writhing on the ground as if in agony-- there should've…
June 22, 2006
There's been some behind-the-scenes talk of the resurfacing of the annoying comment bug, which we had thought was fixed. I haven't noticed any problems myself, but I have noticed that the comment traffic is down a bit. I just attributed that to the fact that I haven't written much lately that was…
June 22, 2006
OK, it's not an official Ask a ScienceBlogger question (that answer will show up next week), but over at the World's Fair, they've raised an important scholarly question via a scene from The Simpsons:
Marge: Homer?
Homer: Yelloh?
Marge: There's a man here who thinks he can help you.
Homer: Batman?…
June 22, 2006
I'm not about to stay up all night to post to every channel on the front page, but I will make a brief appearance in the "Culture Wars" channel, not my usual space, to note two science and religion items:
1) Rob Knop offers lecture slides on the scientific method, and the difference between…
