catdynamics | July 31, 2006WaPo ponders the possibilities of synthetic virii and genetically modified bacteria
Yawn. been there, done that.
Ok, they go in depthish as benefits a proper newspaper. Only slightly hysterical.
Or we could just read some Greg Egan, Charlie Stross or Vernor Vinge for perspective.
Certainly more fun, and arguably more informative.
catdynamics | July 30, 2006Hotz at the LA Times Sunday Book Review looks at three books on evolution and intelligent design..
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution
David Quammen
Intelligent Thought
Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement
Edited by John Brockman
Why Darwin Matters
The Case Against Intelligent Design
Michael Shermer
Good review. Books on the "to read" list.
catdynamics | July 28, 2006So, I never answered the original question: Why do scientists work hard?
Because we like it.
Science is fun. You get caught up doing it, you can't help yourself.
And there is so much to do.
only bad thing is they make you wear hairnets while analysing crashed flying saucers...
see, this is why Brian May had to leave astronomy for music. Hairnet wouldn't work.
70s were a very difficult decade.
catdynamics | July 28, 2006Bora wants some scientist rock stars
Astronomy obliges!
Brian May of Queen
The lad gave up a serious astronomy career as a PhD student in astronomy at Imperial College, London.
This is the career dilemma most astronomers face on a regular basis - do you continue writing Nature papers on MgI emission and take a SERC postdoc or two, or, do you go write "We Will Rock You" and jam with Freddie Mercury...
Decisions, decisions.
On the other hand, he might have rated three jalapenos on ratemyprofessor.com if he'd stayed on the academic career track!
We Will Rock You!
Aah
Buddy you're a boy make a…
catdynamics | July 28, 2006It is a sticky friday and news are mixed...
So, we ask the Mighty iPod One: will RS Ophiuchi in fact become a type Ia supernova?
Whoosh goes the randomizer...
Whoosh.
The Covering: Funky Kingston - Toots and the Maytals
The Crossing: Walking Back - Cranberries
The Crown: Learning our Long Vowels - Twin Sisters
The Root: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley
The Past: Minstrels - Claudio Arrau
The Future: Scenes From Childhood: An Important Event - Schumann
The Questioner: Ghost Town - Specials
The House: The Long Way Around - Dixie Chicks
The Inside: You Can Call me Al - Paul Simon
The Outcome:…
catdynamics | July 27, 2006A sergeant in the rangers, on patrol in Afghanistan works hard;
so do nurses, deep sea fishermen, coal miners, sole proprietor restaurant startups.
They guys who painted my house this summer worked outside, 10 hour days, physical labour at half my pay. They worked hard.
I've worked hard.
In the overall scheme of things, science is not hard work.
But, there were days this summer when I'd come home, having done nothing but thinking and tinkering with equations, and little bit of paperwork, but I would be more tired, and far more frustrated, than the guys who'd been working non-stop in 90 degree…
catdynamics | July 27, 2006Chad has kicked off a thematically linked discussion:
A response to Jonah on why science is so much work
and, Why they're leaving a pointer to an InsideHigherEd article
My very personal response: poor math prep, lack of professional opportunities, acute labour shortages, and It Is Not A Lot of Hard Work, but it is Difficult To Do.
Chad and Jonah respond from the perspective of experimental work, which, to be fair, is the bulk of work in science; but, the same problem exists, arguably to a greater extent, in theory. People who ought to be able and eager to do science walk out on it, and it is…
catdynamics | July 26, 2006The Daily Show just drew my attention to the irreconcilable promises allegedly made by that G-d person to different tribal faction on different occasions
Which leads us to the conclusion that War is an extension of Gazumping by other means...
...clearly the English are at fault, somehow.
catdynamics | July 26, 2006I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?...
Er, I don't know.
The detailed claim is that 1) the number of extremely hot days (T > 35 C (95 F)) will increase, and 2) that this degrades sugar and inhibits photosynthesis in wine grapes, so you get a worse crop.
Part 2) sounds likely - except of course there are heat tolerant grapes (which is obvious, Greece, Italy and Spain grow a lot of wine grapes), but for the classic french…
catdynamics | July 26, 2006Doug Hamilton has a nifty Astronomy Workshop web page, with lots of fun little tools.
I had used some of these for my "Stars for Poets" course, but was reminded of them when looking at Bad Astronomy this morning.
Doug has a Generic central force integrator, an issue which came up recently of CosmicVariance (its an orbit-in-a-static-potential integrator, not an N-body tool, but it is a start, you'll get the general idea of the instabilities that occur for non-Newtonian forces).
You can smash a star through the Solar System, or just hit the Earth with your favourite asteroidal or comet impactor…
catdynamics | July 25, 2006deLong explains why academic blogging is good for the soul
I would not have dared to blog openly before tenure (and, no, I did not blog anonymously back then), basically it would not have been well received by most of the tenure committee, or the Dean.
Strangely, if I had been writing a regular short column for SEED magazine or equivalent it would probably have counted as a mild plus for most of the committee, but the web equivalent, not so much.
I started the blog as an experiment - the possibility had been tossed about as an outreach exercise for a particular project I was involved in, and…
catdynamics | July 25, 2006Pat Lang looks at the situation in Lebanon
Belmont Club games the IDF plan
For what little it is worth, I fear Lang is closer to the truth.
The reported IDF forces seem too small for some grand enveloping thrust up to the Bekka valley on the east of Lebanon, not to mention the threat of Syrian reaction if Israeli armour comes up to the valley (and I don't think Israel, or the IDF, is ready to provoke a war with Syria), and the artillery they've deployed is too light to comprehensively scour south Lebanon - divisional artillery vs several thousand square kilometers of prepared rocky ground…
catdynamics | July 24, 2006JC sends a link to an excellent version of Love Will Tear Us Apart - mellow, by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
catdynamics | July 24, 2006One More Way in Which Global Warming Can Kill You - Iceland shows how
Wolfgang of In Search of 42 has moved to the Daily Llama - did he find 42? Or 56 maybe?
Astroprof talks about Pulsar Planets - no, the other astroprof...
PP Cook joins in the You Tube wars with The Klein Four's rendition of Finite Simple Group of Order Two
catdynamics | July 24, 2006A decent article on small scale evolutionary changes in human populations in the Washington Post.
More detail and an actual Synopsis or pointer to the papers - PLoS Bio and here in Science (subscription) would have been nice.
PS as The Loom notes, the QT movie accompanying the piece is moronic and misleading.
The HapMap Web Tool looks like fun
catdynamics | July 24, 2006From CosmicVariance and Baez
Fun, high symmetry, exact solutions of the N-body Coulomb problem. From Cris Moore's web page at the Santa Fe Institute
Pretty. Everybody is doing it, might as well Google it on.
catdynamics | July 24, 2006That reminds me...
The relationship between a thesis advisor and a PhD student is the best example of Lamarckian Evolution: Discuss
catdynamics | July 24, 2006Sometimes Lamarckian evolution does operate... - click through to read Ralph Peter's article also.
Hezbollah learned over 25 years of conflict, and has adapted.
Israel has put itself in a real bind by acting hastily and without thinking things through.
To "win" all Hezbollah has to do is survive as an foundational entity - Israel can't occupy Lebanon indefinitely and they just made sure Lebanon itself can not take control of the South.
Even if all the Hezbollah members are killed and their weapons and infrastructure destroyed, their younger brothers will step up in a few years. No political…
catdynamics | July 21, 2006
A lot of brain power has been devoted to establishing Biosignatures, as a means for remotely detecting alien life.
But, what if alien cows don't fart? Can we still conceive of robust generic biosignatures that are not just slavish restatements of what we think we know about the Earth?
One of my hats is as a co-PI of the Penn State Astrobiology Research Center
We used to run, in loose association, a National Science Foundation REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) program - bring in 10-12 undergrads from other unis for the summer and give them some lab experience.
As part of that, we had…
catdynamics | July 21, 2006Two astronomy papers are up on the Nature website for open critique, the new experiment with open peer review that Nature is conducting.
A new type of massive stellar death: no supernovae from two nearby long gamma ray bursts - Fynbo et al
Baryonic sweeping as the origin of the darkest galaxies in the Universe - Mayer et al
Fire at will.
I think comments are open to everyone, not just subscribers. Someone tell me if non-subscribers are blocked.
Comments and commenter IDs are public I believe.
Only comment I saw on quick browsing was on one of the squicky bio papers on sex... [sic]