catdynamics | March 29, 2011After the Cronon affair, more Freedom of Information Act requests targeting faculty at public universities.
Clearly Walkers in Wisconsin in Labor are of interest to Republicans who Protest Democratic conspiracies against Governors and nothing makes the Maddow than Moore nonsense about injunctions and organized astroturf lawmaking.
"The squid has eaten the squirrel!"
These important matters should be emailed to everywhere in the .edu domain.
Hey, if I am served, does that mean some paralegal will sort my inbox for me...?
Win!
catdynamics | March 28, 2011A rather radical proposal from Texas came across my desk recently, courtesy of the Texas Exes...
A Modest Proposal for Texas Higher Ed:
"... The UT System Board of Regents ... has hired consultants who have publicly stated the fundamental view that academic research is not valuable and that tenured faculty could be replaced by lower-cost lecturers. These consultants propose a formula that excludes research in valuing faculty. They only want to look at any immediate financial value of research that can be proven on a current basis.
...
these same consultants also believe that tenured faculty…
catdynamics | March 28, 2011"How to Survive from Tsunami" by Murata et al, is vol 32 of the Advanced Series on Ocean Engineering from World Scientific Books
Chapter 2 has the introductory phenomenology and basic physics, and the how-to-survive bit.
In view of recent events, WorldSci is putting it up on their website for free:
Knowledge for Tsunami Survival (pdf)
Obviously WorldSci would be grateful if you became interested enough to buy the whole book...(ToC pdf)
- it actually looks quite interesting.
catdynamics | March 26, 2011Savage article on JWST history and funding from Ron Cowen at Science News.
""It's a game of you lie and I'll swear to it," says Michael Griffin, NASA's administrator from April 2005 to January 2009. "The whole community talks itself into unrealistic cost estimates.... Everyone knows it's wrong. Every engineer knows it's utterly without foundation, but engineers aren't making the decisions.""
If only an experienced engineer had headed NASA at the critical time, ensuring realistic cost estimates and funding profiles with guidance from HQ...
This is going back to the Casani report on JWST -…
catdynamics | March 23, 2011NISA has a concise summary of the status of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi (pdf)
Includes temperatures on reactor vessel surface where available.
They show reactor 2 as cold and unpressured, the rise in temperature in reactor 1 - so something in there is generating heat at a significant rate, but at least the rector vessel is pressurized; and reactor 3 is a mess, warm core and unpressured.
catdynamics | March 21, 2011It will probably be some years before we get the full story of what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex after the earthquake.
Information has not exactly been put out coherently or comprehensively, but we can make some inferences from the data that is out there.
It is likely that one or two reactor vessels were breached with release of fuel and radioactive ash into the containment vessel.
There are a lot of nuclear agencies in Japan:
the JAEA - Japan Atomic Energy Agency - whose online environmental radiation monitors are now online (Oarai is the interesting one, between…
catdynamics | March 18, 2011The weekend is almost here, and wot a week it was.
So, we go to the local topical issue at hand: what prospects, eh?
Woosh goes the iPod.
Woosh.
The Covering: Oh Well - Fiona Apple
The Crossing: Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
The Crown: Losing Sleep - Edwyn Collins
The Root: VCR - The XX
The Past: On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
The Future: Wake Up Nation - Paul Weller
The Questioner: My Perfect Cousin - Undertones
The House: Ó Blessuð Vertu Sumarsól - Íslandstónar
The Inside: Deportees - Billy Bragg
The Outcome: Travelin' Band - Creedence Clearwater Revival
"What you did to me made me…
catdynamics | March 17, 2011"The short wave matter
we can't see
Those distant suns
what are they to me
The radiation
falling over me"
Good wiki entry now on Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear accident
"I Am Kloot"
catdynamics | March 16, 2011The Japanese Atomic Energy Authority has online environmental radiation monitors.
The list of stations is here.
View Larger Map
The monitoring station at O-arai is the one between Fukushima and Tokyo.
Ambient radiation levels there are 30-40 nGy per hour.
Current levels are around 300 nGy/h - ten times normal.
Acute radiation effects are seen around a dosage of a Gy,
so long way to go - currently getting close to μGy/h.
Things get serious around milliGy/h.
7 day graph is here
Watch that curve.
catdynamics | March 15, 2011there are a number of questions that need answer regarding the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, aka Fuk-D.
As a starting point, here is an amateur online feed of radiation in Tokyo (Park18).
It is a geiger-counter, the normal count rate is 10-20 cpm, around noon on march 15th the count rate peaked at about 120 cpm, the counts then dropped before there was another broad rise on march 16th to about 40 cpm.
The first question is: why am I having to link to an amateur with a geiger counter?
The Japanese Atomic Energy Authority has four online environmental radiation monitors.…
catdynamics | March 15, 2011On may way to the office this morning, the young man striding off to class in front of me, was in animated discussion on his phone about the desirability of getting a "tactical sight" for his handgun, and the need to pick up some more bullets.
Beretta tactical sight - for speed of acquisition!
In the wake of recent incidents, including some verbal threats made not a million miles from my office, and in anticipation of some revised legal considerations, namely that students carrying guns openly will likely be permitted on a number of campuses, we have been offered appropriate training:
"The…
catdynamics | March 14, 2011some weeks ago, a number of our colleagues became unaccountably busy, disappearing into their offices, holding long, late night telecons, haranguing stressed postdocs
what they had in common was their membership of the LIGO science collaboration
well, social networks report that at the LIGO-VIRGO meeting all was revealed
the LIGO Internal Affairs division had done a blind injection of an artificial realistic gravitational radiation event to see if the data analysis pipeline actually performs as advertised
apparently it did, the blip was picked up, I presume we will hear soon how well they…
catdynamics | March 13, 2011there are two questions denizens of academia ought to always ask themselves:
could your children attend your own institution of higher education?
even if they did not get the insider's discount?
and,
could you, if you were in school now, with the circumstances of your childhood, attend your own institution of higher education?
even if you did not get an academic scholarship?
Well, could you?
I could not have.
catdynamics | March 11, 2011ok, lets try not to have another week like this one for a while...
so, iPod, given what there was, what do we do now?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Accident Waiting to Happen - Billy Bragg
The Crossing: Capital Radio (Live) - Clash
The Crown: Good Timin' - Beach Boys
The Root: Kick Out The Jams (Live) - Pearl Jam
The Past: Við Gróttu - Stríð og Friður
The Future: Melbourne Mambo - Mavericks
The Questioner: Lovers Town Revisited - Billy Bragg
The House: Can't Stand Losing You - Police
The Inside: Talkin' Bout A Revolution - Tracy Chapman
The Outcome: Hello Mr Heartache -…
catdynamics | March 4, 2011Well, that was exciting.
So, it is friday again, and we're keeping this here blog limping along through gratuitous lite blogging, again, as we welcome the iPod iChing to the Five'n'Dime...
So, no offence NASA, the much jinxed Next Generation Space Telescope has kinda been stuck out there on its own in the NASA Science Directorate, almost like an invitation...
So, Oh Mighty iPod One: what will become of the James Webb Space Telescope in these uncertain times?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Don't Worry Baby - Beach Boys
The Crossing: The First Day of Spring - Noah and the Whale…
catdynamics | February 25, 2011Every year we contemplate the Hubble Call for Proposals demand curve.
Four years ago we started to quantify the demand curve
the calm rational analysis soon broke into a nerd gambling frenzy
we then started theorizing about proposal scale invariance which annoyingly enough apparently works
by then Julianne was analyzing the observations of the proposal submission rate - this was back in the good old days when blogging was hot and we had time to actually do stuff
so, can't let a good analysis down:
this is the linear plot, the time is in theorist units, rounded
data collected anecdotally…
catdynamics | February 25, 2011As the Hubble deadline slips away, later than ever, we ask the Mighty iPod One the question whose answer we all must know:
Oh, Mighty iPod One: what will come out of Hubble for cycle 19?
Whoosh goes the iPod.
Whoosh.
The Covering: Deep Dark Truthful Mirror - Elvis Costellor
The Crossing: O Isis und Osiris - Mozart
The Crown: Richard - Billy Bragg
The Root: Carnival of the Animals: Aviary
The Past: I'm on Fire - Johnny Cash
The Future: Interlude VI - Mannheim Steamroller
The Questioner: Oksn - Ruth Rubin
The House: Ten Little Fish - Twin Sisters
The Inside: The Obvious Child -…