Hello everybody! This is the new home of Galactic Interactions. To those of you who have not heard of me before, you can find older posts at my blog's former location.
I'm an assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy at Vanderbilt University who is still learning how to keep his mouth shut. Or, rather, not learning, hence the blog (among other things). My favorite things to blog about are astronomy and astronomy education & outreach. Every so often, I will get a bee in my bonnet and attempt to explain some concept or another from astronomy, Physics or cosmology. However, I will also rant on about science in culture, the conflict between science and religion (and the places where there not need be so much of a conflict as there is), "free culture" issues... and about the despair of being on the tenure track without adequate funding, and the assumption of impending doom that results.
I'm looking forward to my new role as a science blogger at sciencebloggers.com, and feel honored to be among the august company that is the other bloggers on this site.
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Welcome to the Cosa Nostra! Or is it Hotel California? One of those places you can never leave (alive)! ;-)
The hive-mind groweth. . . .
OK, now somebody needs to tap Jacques Distler on his virtual shoulder and get him to update the Planet Musings feed!
Welcome! I must admit to curiosity - is the 'seicne' in your blog header an accident, or on purpose? Looking forward to your posts here. Cheers, ctenotrish
Welcome to the new place, Rob. I've been reading your old blog for a year or so, and I look forward to more astronomy content here.
Hooray! Glad to see you at ScienceBlogs, my favorite center for scientific... er, bloggery.
Welcome, Rob. I've enjoyed a number of your comments on other blogs here and will be looking forward to reading you more often.
First comment!
This is a meta comment.
Oh, and welcome.
Smart move.
Let me be the first to congratulate you, yadda yadda yadda...
Good news everyone! I read you a lot, and now you're easier to get to - win/win!
You're such a bandwagon hopper, and I totally claim first comment.
Does this mean you get paid for blogging now?
No comment yet? Can't be! Am I to be the first one to say hello? Well, so be it: welcome to SB, Rob! I'm glad to see that the empire is extending wisely, swallowing the best blogs out there. Happy ScienceBlogging!
I hope you are settling in well and that the spam filter here treats you more kindly that the one you'd been fighting with.
Glad to see you're getting a higher profile location. You know they say the three most important things about a blog are location, location, and location. Or maybe that's retail business. Whatever... good luck.
Congratulations on your move!
Welcome to the ScienceBlogs (they will assimilate you). It had somehow passed me by that you had a blog, but I've enjoyed your comments on other blogs, so I am looking forward to youre output.
So, here's me just figuring out that I'd turned moderation on! I didn't mean to do that. All this time with no comments... I was getting lonely! Then I realized that there were all kinds of comments in the queue....
-Rob
Just dropping by to say "welcome". And, since we share the same first name, and are both in Tennessee, you can't be all that bad :)
Oops, gotta go. I think the hounds have treed a 'coon.
Hey cool, a Vandy Cat has a blog on scienceblogs. Well, I'm here at Vandy too. Just wanted to say that I'll keep an eye on your blog and I hope all goes well.
Welcome to ScienceBlogs, Rob!
BCH
Welcome. Seen you visit before.
ScienceBlogs has a bit of a HS clique mentality. More mature than middle school, but a long way from paid professional demeanor.
There's the crowd of insecure kids that point out the zits in the less popular kids. The Bette Finnebowskis; smart as a whip but shrinking wallflowers. The feminists with the chip. The cheerleader. The moody girl. The GSA club kids hang at the cafeteria on Thursdays. There's the jocks. The posers. The nerds. The geeks. The debate team captain. And the occasional Ricky Linderman.
Bring it. :-)
Hi Rob! Looks like ScienceBlogs has finally hit the big time!
*Whispers:*
Dude, which one's the moody girl?
I think you're going to get a lot more traffic here
Are you open minded enough to consider the influence that electricity plays in our universe? If so, visit thunderbolts.com.
There's the crowd of insecure kids that point out the zits in the less popular kids. The Bette Finnebowskis; smart as a whip but shrinking wallflowers. The feminists with the chip. The cheerleader. The moody girl. The GSA club kids hang at the cafeteria on Thursdays. There's the jocks. The posers. The nerds. The geeks. The debate team captain. And the occasional Ricky Linderman.
I want to be in lots of cliques. When I was in high school, I was in the "smart nerd" clique (but this was a private school, so it wasn't so bad to be there) as well as the "theater" clique (although we managed to bring in some "cool" people for a big anthology show our senior year).
Here: well, I'm going to be in the "don't hate the religious" clique, which will be roundly denounced as soft-headed and intellectually dishonest by the "any thinking person should be atheist" clique, although I'm also firmly in the "biblicial literalists should be made fun of" clique.
I'm hoping that we'll have enough people now to form a Physical Science clique, and maybe even a Physics Clique (at which point we can claim that everybody else is just in the vast Stamp-Collecting clique, although as an astronomer, most physicists already think I'm just a stamp collector).
Are you open minded enough to consider the influence that electricity plays in our universe? If so, visit thunderbolts.com.
I'm not so open-minded that my brain falls out, sorry.
The electromagnetic force assuredly plays a huge role in our Unvierse... but if you're talking about the Velikovsky "electric Universe" crap, forget it.
-Rob
I'm a Scientific American fan. I know that a lot of of people view it as pop-science, but still it's interesting enough to learn something, but not so obscure as to be meaningless to non-scientists.
Over the years they've had some drag out fights in the SciAm letters pages, but usually they called each others names in very creative ways where one had to stop and consider the grace of the insult, and appreciate the underlying subtlety.
So little of that graceful, good natured ribbing exists with the blogs. Generally, it's quite coarse, unsubtle, and over the top, but that's probably because the chaff is still being separated.
Eh, it's still somewhat entertaining. It's fun to be in at the beginnings of something, particularly as a reader; the alleged consumer of your product.
Hopefully, you'll have an occasional open thread.
I try to read as many scienceblogs.com blogs as I can, and just found out about your transition. Welcome to the site! As a former physics student hoping to go to grad school in plasma physics, I'm glad to see your blog thrown into the mix.
Count me in on the clique-revolution!
Well I think you should deinitley start a physics clique if one does not exists (you might even be able to one day convince me to join lol) but i do think you are misinterpretting my man Earnest (fellow Kiwi and all).
It is not that all science that is not called physics is stamp collecting, but rather most of science regardless of what you call it IS physics and the rest is just taxonomical stuff (the closest actual bit of science I can think of to philat... philatitl... stamp collecting).
Enjoy your time in the collective, I for one intend to enjoy reading you here.
Rob