drorzel | December 19, 2010
slacktivist: One win; one loss
"At the end of the day, what this means is that if you want to serve your country and put your life on the line to defend the freedoms enjoyed by Republican U.S. senators, those senators will begrudgingly and belatedly allow you to do so if you are gay or lesbian. But if you want to serve your country and put your life on the line to defend the freedoms enjoyed by Republican U.S. senators and you're also brown-skinned and weren't born here, then most of those senators would sooner see you deported than to allow you to express your patriotism for a nation they…
drorzel | December 18, 2010As has been mentioned in countless places over the last few days, Yahoo plans to shut down Delicious, the social bookmark service that lots of people use for lots of things. My interest in it is pretty narrow, but important for this blog: I use Delicious to generate the quasi-automatic daily Links Dump postings here. As I surf around during the odd free moment, I tag pages that strike me as interesting, and every morning, Delicious generates a blog post that I then copy and publish here.
I really like this feature, because it gives me a way to acknowledge the dozens of interesting things I…
drorzel | December 18, 2010
Eric Cornell: an experimental maestro - physicsworld.com
"Winning the Nobel prize aged just 39 could easily have gone to the head of Eric Cornell, the physicist who shared the 2001 prize for creating the world's first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). But when Physics World reporter, James Dacey, caught up with Cornell he encountered a firmly grounded experimentalist who can immediately spot the danger of complacency. In a wide-ranging discussion Cornell describes the speed at which his discovery was accepted by the community, his latest research project, and his unease with the…
drorzel | December 17, 2010I sprained my ankle yesterday. That's not an official medical diagnosis-- I have a doctor appointment later today to get that-- but I've done this before, and I know the feeling.
Sadly, I did not injure myself saving orphans from a burning building (as I usually do on Thursdays), or while dunking a depleted-uranium basketball through a flaming hoop into the face of a Yeti (because how cool would that be?), but by stepping off our front porch in the wrong place while carrying stuff out to the trash. I'm not sure, but I think the stupidity of the injury actually makes it hurt more-- somebody…
drorzel | December 17, 2010
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » QCut
"Let me end this post with a request: I want all of my readers to visit the YouCut page, and propose that quantum computing and theoretical computer science research be completely eliminated. Here's my own CAREER Award; go ahead and cite it by number as a particularly egregious example of government waste.
See, I'm hungry for the honor (not to mention the free publicity) of seeing my own favorite research topics attacked on the floor of the House. As we all know, it's child's play to make fun of theoretical computer science: its abstruseness, its…
drorzel | December 16, 2010SteelyKid has started to demonstrate a real flair for decoration, which she proudly shows off here:
That's Appa decked out with the three bead necklaces we have for SteelyKid to play with. She tends to take the longest one, the white beads, and wrap it behind her so she has one loop over each arm. She refers to this as her "backpack," and we have a few pictures of her dressed up like this. tonight, She decided Appa needed the backpack which didn't work out so well, given the disparity in size. So he got the smallest (red) necklace as a belt/ backpack thing, and the other two wrapped around…
drorzel | December 16, 2010I'm very pleased to announce that the Uncertain Principles Person of the Year for 2010 is... SteelyKid:
Why do I say this? Well...
First, as lots of people will tell you, we're all citizen journalists now. Which means that I'm every bit as entitled to declare a person of the year as Time magazine is.
Second, everything in Chateau Steelypips revolves around her, so she is clearly the most important and influential person here.
Third, she's way cuter than Mark Zuckerberg. Granted, I don't have a picture of Mark Zuckerberg wearing a napkin as a hat for direct comparison, but I like my odds on…
drorzel | December 16, 2010
The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010 | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
Pretty pictures, plus science.
(tags: astronomy science pictures space planets blogs)
very small array » United States of America Map
A map filled in with the first result from Google's auto-complete. Don't read the comments.
(tags: internet technology pictures us)
Poetry in filing
"Described in our archive catalogue as "verses on the contents of 14 collections of papers", and dated to approximately 1690, this charming little poem describes an eclectic collection of material in surprisingly modern terms."
(tags:…
drorzel | December 15, 2010I've mentioned before that I'm answering the occasional question over at the Physics Stack Exchange site, a crowd-sourced physics Q&A. When I'm particularly pleased with a question and answer, I'll be promoting them over here like, well, now. Yesterday, somebody posted this question:
Consider a single photon (λ=532 nm) traveling through a plate of perfect glass with a refractive index n=1.5. We know that it does not change its direction or other characteristics in any particular way and propagating 1 cm through such glass is equivalent to 1.5 cm of vacuum. Apparently, the photon…
drorzel | December 15, 2010As previously noted, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is selling very well via the Guardian's online bookshop, among other UK venues. It's doing well enough that I might need to start referring to the original text as the American edition of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog...
There's a nice ironic twist to the Guardian aspect of it, though, in the form of a review by that paper that I hadn't previously noticed until this book business summary brought it to my attention. It's a blisteringly bad review, basically dumping hate all over the talking-dog conceit. Which,…
drorzel | December 15, 2010
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Cost-Effectiveness, or Cost?
"The goal of the study -- which is entirely to the good -- is to encourage colleges to base resource allocation decisions on actual effectiveness, rather than on what sounds good or what has usually been done. The authors break out two-year and four-year sectors -- thank you -- and actually define their variables. (Notably, the productivity decline over the past forty years has been far more dramatic in the four-year sector than in the two-year sector.) Even better, they acknowledge that most of the research done on…
drorzel | December 14, 2010As usual, the most sensible commentary on the Southern organizations celebrating the 150th anniversary of secession comes from the Daily Show. Specifically, Larry Wilmore:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The South's Secession Commemoration
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>
The Daily Show on Facebook
This whole business makes me think the British have the right idea regarding the commemoration of treason. We should have an annual Jefferson Davis day, but along the lines of Guy Fawkes day, not a…
drorzel | December 14, 2010
Monday Matchup, Giants vs. Vikings From Detroit - NYTimes.com
"Tired of building vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes for your children's science projects? Recreate the collapse of the Metrodome roof instead.
Materials needed: green construction paper, some wooden dowels, a paper towel, about 500 artificial sweetener packets, and a cellphone. Glue some wooden dowels to green construction paper. Moisten a paper towel and fasten it to the top of the dowels. Then puncture it slightly and keep dumping artificial sweetener on or near the puncture spot until the roof gives way. Once the "field" is…
drorzel | December 13, 2010A bunch of smallish items that have been failing to resolve into full-fledged blog posts for a little while now, thrown together here because I don't have anything better to post this morning:
-- When is doubt, start with self-promotion: Physics World includes How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in their holiday gift books guide, and says wonderfully nice things about it:
Chad Orzel talks to his dog about quantum physics. It is not clear what the dog gets out of this arrangement, but the rest of us ought to be grateful for it, because Orzel's book about their "conversations" is sure to become a…
drorzel | December 13, 2010
What scientists in 1903 wanted for Christmas! | Skulls in the Stars
"Recently, while I was looking for a paper published in Nature in 1903, I happened across a series of advertisements in a supplementary issue of the magazine. These ads, clearly targeted towards those of a scientific persuasion, immediately fascinated me. They provide a unique snapshot of not only the science of the time, but also the business of science at the time. They illustrate what scientific discoveries were new and "hot" in the community, what kinds of equipment were popular enough to become commercial products,…
drorzel | December 12, 2010As you can see from the picture at right, we've got our Christmas tree up, waiting to surprise SteelyKid when she comes home in a couple of hours. This also means it's getting toward the time when I switch over to the holiday music playlist on iTunes.
Christmas music is, of course, a problematic genre. I spent half an hour in a toy store the other day, looking for stuff for SteelyKid, and the entire time that I was there, the only song that played was "The Christmas Song." After six different versions of that, I was more than ready to roast somebody's chestnuts.
So, it's time for the annual…
drorzel | December 12, 2010
New York Governor Vetoes Fracking Bill - NYTimes.com
"New York Gov. David A. Paterson on Saturday vetoed legislation intended to curtail natural gas development using the technique called hydraulic fracturing until a closer review of its effects can be undertaken.
Instead, the governor issued an executive order instituting a moratorium that extends until July 1, 2011 -- beyond the date specified in the legislation -- and that more narrowly defines the types of drilling to be restricted."
(tags: energy environment politics new-york news)
US LHC Blog » When Feynman Diagrams Fail
"We've…
drorzel | December 11, 2010It's time now to talk about two of the greatest mentor figures in the literature of the fantastic. You know their stories well, I'm sure, but the parallels between them are eerie:
Both are gruff but kindly mentor figures who provide crucial guidance for the young and naive protagonist of the story as he moves out into a scary world to complete an important quest.
Both fall into a chasm while battling a fearsome monster to allow the protagonist time to flee.
Both return from their apparent death when least expected, just in time to save the day.
Both have awesomely impressive beards.
I am…
drorzel | December 11, 2010
Physics Buzz: Holiday Instability
"Holiday decorations are unstable. (We're talking about physics here. We'll leave their emotions aside.) To take a closer look at what we're dealing with, I've considered three of the most popular items from the array of December decor: The Christmas tree, the Hanukkah menorah and, of course, the Festivus pole.
Which of the three is the most likely to topple over when cousin Fred bumps into it after sampling too much egg nog?"
(tags: science physics holiday education blogs physics-buzz)
slacktivist: Getting laid off is not the same as getting fired
"…
drorzel | December 10, 2010I'm currently working on a book about relativity, but I still spend a fair amount of time thinking about quantum issues. A lot of this won't make it into the book, because I can't assume people will have read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog before reading whatever the relativity book's title ends up being, and because explaining the quantum background would take too much space. But then, that's what I have a blog for...
Anyway, the section I was working on yesterday concerned causality and faster-than-light travel, specifically the fact that they don't play well together. Given Tuesday's…