catdynamics | September 18, 2006The third Pale Blue Dot meeting is underway at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
It is fun.
If you're in the Chicago area you should come down for the public event, tuesday 19 Sep, 7-9 pm at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
Some distinguished astronomer will give you a song and dance...
So what do we know:
the first elements of the Allen Array are up and running, Jill Tarter showed a very cute movie of the synchronised pointing of the currently installed elements. Someone YouTube it will you!
Here is the movie - very cute - almost eerie
catdynamics | September 15, 2006I heard it from a man who,
heard it from a man who,
heard it from another...
ok, it was an e-mail, but it confirmed the strange tale I had been told.
NASA is about to do a Mad Max on its Science Missions.
Five missions enter, one mission leaves. Literally.
NASA has many houses. Within one is the Science Mission Directorate, which does space science, including Earth observations, Solar/Magnetosphere, Solar System Planets and "Astrophysics" (formerly known as the "Universe" division).
Space Science missions are housed within the divisions, and not always where you'd think.
Within Astrophysics…
catdynamics | September 15, 2006A cool friday, and we stay on theme as we ask the mighty iPod:
oh Mighty iPod, what is with the puffy planets we're finding...
The Covering: Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
The Crossing: Homecoming - Green Day
The Crown: Söngur Bakardrengsins - Thorbjorn Egner
The Root: Cancion - Julian Bream
The Past: Miss Brown to You - Billie Holliday
The Future: Lover, Come Back to Me - Billie Holliday
The Questioner: USA - Pogues
The House: Take A Chance With Me - Roxy Music
The Inside: Prodigal Daughter - Michelle Shocked
The Outcome: Dance of the Reed Pipes - Tchaikovsky
Hm Covering start well. The…
catdynamics | September 14, 2006Hrmph. If they must be dwarf planets, should they not at least have dwarf names?
Instead of Eris and Dysnomia couldn't they have gone with Ori and Nori or Þráinn & Þórinn, or go with the real classics Nýi and Niði!
Dwarf names for dwarf planets!
Andvari is a classic...
catdynamics | September 14, 2006Xena is renamed ...
Eris after its demotion, and its sidekick become Dysnomia
Eris
Interesting choice of namespace, I blame the Illuminati.
see here and here
Is a Harvard special...
Praise Eris!
catdynamics | September 14, 2006Through the magic of iTunes, I just got to listen to "Ever Fallen in Love" as covered by Fine Young Cannibals, right after hearing the Buzzcocks original version.
I also got "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda..." right after a straight cover of "Waltzing Matilda".
This causes severe cognitive dissonance. Although in both cases the covers were quite good.
It is the mood disconnect that gets you.
Any others?
Could have been worse, got straight to "One of Us" without a detour through something like King's College Choir cover of "Come All Ye Faithful". Although now I've thought of it I have an…
catdynamics | September 14, 2006First Philosophia Naturalis Carnival is up at at Science and Reason.
Some good stuff there, including new blogs to browse, in your copious spare time.
Not a plug for this 'ere blog. I was traveling and missed the deadline to submit.
catdynamics | September 13, 2006Tangled Bank #62 - this time with nifty cartoons
At Hairy Museum of Natural History
catdynamics | September 13, 2006Water here is hard.
Hence the kettle needs to be cleaned with vinegar regularly. Overnight.
It really isn't necessary to mention when this is done, if nothing else the smell is a hint.
In spite of this, occasionally coffee gets made with boiled vinegar, especially first thing in the morning.
Sometimes the coffee gets actually drunk.
This time though, I didn't actually notice until My Better Half mentioned it...
Doesn't taste half-bad actually.
catdynamics | September 13, 2006disturbingly interesting item on NASAwatch
short version - the human spaceflight budget crunch is headed for open conflict with space science and it ain't pretty
catdynamics | September 12, 2006Ah, there is a plan.Army Group Steiner will move south and save Baghdad
Science and Democracy have one unique strenght in common.
They provide institutional mechanisms for negative feedback. When pundits are wrong, the mechanisms will, eventually, reveal the error and self-correct.
When those mechanisms fail or or abandoned we lose.
Testing these institutional mechanisms to destruction does not seem like a very good idea.
catdynamics | September 12, 2006Interesting Boston study just published, claiming that the travel restrictions after 9/11 caused a two week postponement in the peak of the 2001/2 influenze season.
Some lessons there.
catdynamics | September 12, 2006NASAwatch reports more rumours of Science Directorate turmoil
I can not overemphasise how potentially important the top tree of SMD administration is for space science. The fine graining of science priorities, advising and solicitation is done at the level from head of the divisions (at least two of which are vacant or have temps in place) to the AA for science and her deputy.
These positions determine which areas get supported in the next few years, within the overall SMD budget constraints, they decide which priorities rank and who gets a say.
Likely that big changes are coming, again.
catdynamics | September 12, 2006There is an interesting SciBlog back-and-forth going on about the "pipeline" problem and retention of underrepresented subset of physical sciencists.
The discussion raises some interesting points, but I want to pick on one small item: the question of intro classes and entry into major.
Does anyone see significant intake into physical science majors from the large non-major oriented intro classes?
Seriously.
I can not think of a single student in our major in the last decade that I know came to us through an intro class. They were either pre-committed to the major, or were in a related…
catdynamics | September 11, 2006Joel Achenbach of the Achenblog at the Washington Post is worried about science press releases:
Eight is Enough: Achenblog
Question Scientific Authority
The latter is about our press release on a paper that came out in Science last friday.
Here is the original primary press release on EurekAlert.org.
To get some sense over the degree of "control" the scientists have over press releases, note that the press release spells my name incorrectly, and provides an incorrect institutional affiliation!
That is just for perspective. I've been involved in a number of press releases, some of which have…
catdynamics | September 11, 2006Noticed a number of dead birds on the walk to and through campus today.
Maybe I just notice these things more nowadays.
Or, maybe it is the change to cooler weather.
In the meantime here is something to cheer you up
Deaths continue to double each year.
Simplest explanation is that it is growing exponentially in birds (or some other host) with a low co-efficient for transmission to humans, that is constant.
If human-to-human transmission became efficient, the doubling time would suddenly shrink to something like 1-2 weeks.
Else, the incidence in birds must saturate and we'll see a leveling off…
catdynamics | September 11, 2006I learned some amusing little things over the last couple of weeks.
Some universities have staff who track blog and web comments about the institutions.
They seem primarily interested in comments by prospective students!
Secondary interest is comments, partiuclarly negative ones, by current faculty and staff.
A tertiary concern is any comments by current students.
This is an obvious development in retrospect, I just hadn't thought about it.
Universities obsessively track any mainstream media mention of themselves, web and blog tracking would follow. I am sure some universities also contract…
catdynamics | September 7, 2006Oh, mighty iPod, travel time, and we ask you through the magic of scheduled time displacement:
are there really habitable terrestrial planets in orbits exterior to the hot Jovians?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: King for a Day/Shout (live) - Green Day
The Crossing: Whispering Your Name - Alison Moyet
The Crown: 2001 - Melissa Etheridge
The Root: La fille aux cheveux de lin - Claudio Arrau
The Past: Cool Water - Talking Heads
The Future: A New England - Billy Bragg
The Questioner: Golden Years - Bowie
The House: Truth No. 2 (live) - Dixie Chicks
The Inside: Call Me -…
catdynamics | September 7, 2006No, not that authority, silly.Us.
And quite right too.
My response in the Achenblog comments is below the fold...
"I think that even scientists sometimes in the thrill of announcing discoveries overstate the degree of certainty. This may be then exaggerated by journalists. No?" - Achenblog response in comments
My comment left in Achenblog:
Joel - I'm shocked. Or do I mean thrilled.
I can't believe you'd say journalists exaggerate.
I think you're spinning "think" to be synonymous with "know"...
We do not as of right now, know very much about extrasolar terrestrial planets (the exception…
catdynamics | September 7, 2006More than one-third of the giant planet systems recently detected outside our
solar system may harbor Earth-like planets, according to a new study by
scientists associated with NASA's Astrobiology Institute. Many of these planets
may be covered in deep global oceans, with abundant potential for life.
PS: Seed Magazine news story on this
see WaPo's Achenblog for perspective:
Question Authority! Why?
Good BBC article on it here
Actual paper is up on Science's web site now (subscription)
Also Cool paper by Squyres' et al on water on Mars
Click here for hi-res version© Nahks
The study focuses…