One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn't recognize it, but it's somewhere around here). He's there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come back to campus next spring and talk about their experiences. As part of this, he's keeping a blog, because it's all about blogs these days.
Steve's a great guy, and from all reports appears to be doing well and doing good. His most recent post calls me out, though:
I love the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College. It is a tight-knit group and I'm pretty sure that the only person who has the combination of know-how and want to put my blog on RSS feed is a recent graduate of the department. One of the trials the department puts you through between leisurely summer research, horrendous, time consuming lab courses, department luncheons organized by the department problem fixer, Colleen Palleschi, and weekly department talks that the faculty can't stay awake in is "student talks." They will do anything in their power to have you talk in front of people and we are all the better for it.
But we all feared them for one reason. A seven foot giant in the department named Chad Orzel usually attends these talks and occasionally raises his hand. He has been known to use single words in the place of long sentences, which left Bilal and I to pretend to understand his explanations far too many times. "Man, this secretary was giving me such a hard time about our grant proposal." "So, umm, so, Ogothemetric proshabadasher," he would reply and giggle to himself (All physics professors begin sentences with the word "so"). Bilal and I would then back away slowly faking a chuckle.
It goes on in that vein for a little while (you have to scroll down to the end to see the whole thing). I object a little to the big words thing-- I don't use big words indiscriminately-- but it's mostly accurate, and all in good fun.
And I'll get even when he asks for grad school recommendations...
(Obligatory disclaimer: No, I won't really write him bad recommendations. I don't think I was one of his references when he applied last year, but his would be a really easy recommendation to write, and I'd be happy to do it. And he actually ran the text of that post by me before posting it, which tells you something.)
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So, if you talk about his blog in your blog and he talks about your blog in his blog - does this make some sort of internet perpetual motion machine? Maybe this could be harnessed to reduce global warming.
Anybody familiar with the South African "K-Factor" appreciates the futility of sending everybody to college - and 30% of our offspring to high school. An engineer's first task in solving a problem is determining its true cause.
So, what is the deal with physicists and "so"? So this one time I made the mistake of looking at a recording of one of my talks, and, so, um, I was surprised by how often I said it. So.
This is why I posted my take of the list on your blog (but nobody responded). So I'm glad that you re-raise the matter:
Ask a ScienceBlogger: Science Fiction Promotes Science?
Category: Ask A ScienceBlogger ⢠Pop Culture ⢠SF ⢠Science
Posted on: November 24, 2008 1:43 PM, by Chad Orzel
# 16 | Jonathan Vos Post | November 26, 2008 10:30 PM
Have I missed any? Are there more than these 12% that can in any reasonable way be classified as Science, Science Fiction, or Fantasy in the New York Times's "100 Notable Books of 2008"
Published: November 26, 2008
"The Book Review has selected this list from books reviewed since Dec. 2, 2007, when we published our previous Notables list."
THE SACRED BOOK OF THE WEREWOLF. By Victor Pelevin. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. (Viking, $25.95.) A supernatural call girl narrates Pelevin's satirical allegory of post-Soviet, post-9/11 Russia.
THE SCHOOL ON HEART'S CONTENT ROAD. By Carolyn Chute. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) In Chute's first novel in nearly 10 years, disparate characters cluster around an off-the-grid communal settlement.
BLOOD MATTERS: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene. By Masha Gessen. (Harcourt, $25.) Hard choices followed Gessen's discovery that she carries a dangerous genetic mutation.
DESCARTES' BONES: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. By Russell Shorto. (Doubleday, $26.) Shorto's smart, elegant study turns the early separation of Descartes's skull from the rest of his remains into an irresistible metaphor.
THE DRUNKARD'S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. By Leonard Mlodinow. (Pantheon, $24.95.) This breezy crash course intersperses probabilistic mind-benders with profiles of theorists.
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT: A New Verse Translation. By Simon Armitage. (Norton, $25.95.) One of the eerie, exuberant joys of Middle English poetry, in an alliterative rendering that captures the original's drive, dialect and landscape.
THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK. By John Updike. (Knopf, $24.95.) In this ingenious sequel to "The Witches of Eastwick," the three title characters, old ladies now, renew their sisterhood, return to their old hometown and contrive to atone for past crimes.
Nonfiction:
THE BIG SORT: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. By Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. (Houghton Mifflin, $25.) A journalist and a statistician see political dangers in the country's increasing tendency to separate into solipsistic blocs.
HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America. By Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95.) The Times columnist turns his attention to possible business-friendly solutions to global warming.
PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. By Dan Ariely. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.95.) Moving comfortably from the lab to broad social questions to his own life, an M.I.T. economist pokes holes in conventional market theory.
THE SUPERORGANISM: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. By Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson. (Norton, $55.) The central conceit of this astonishing study is that an insect colony is a single animal raised to a higher level.
TRAFFIC: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). By Tom Vanderbilt. (Knopf, $24.95.) A surprising, enlightening look at the psychology of the human beings behind the steering wheels.
[no, despite the title being the same as a great Joe Haldeman novel, we can't count THE FOREVER WAR. By Dexter Filkins. (Knopf, $25.) Filkins, a New York Times reporter who was embedded with American troops during the attack on Falluja, has written an account of the Iraq war in the tradition of Michael Herr's "Dispatches."]
Shoot. I posted this in the wrong thread. Apologies.
I'm in the Faculty Lounge of the High School where I teach, and none of my 9th, 10th, or 11th graders could get more than 9 out of 20 on a quiz about Scientific Notation. They're not so bad with big numbers, but hopeless with negative exponents.
I've been through this material dozens of times when I was an Adjunct Math prof, and an Astronomy Prof. But how can they do Chem, Bio, or Anatomy & Physiology if they can't get this right? Very frustrating...
Oh, Pine. How I loved it so. And how I hate Outlook, but alas, the borg has pretty much assimilated corporate America.
Great post, and also a great post by Steve!