drorzel | September 10, 2008
Pure Pedantry : PhD Complete Rates
"As opposed to completion gaps, I am much more concerned with the fact that about a third of students are not finishing their PhDs. Why is that?"
(tags: academia science education gender race social-science)
Learning Curves: You Will Be So Screwed When We Get to Max-Min
"My life would be so much easier if you had to pass a serious algebra exam in order to get a driver's license."
(tags: academia education math blogs)
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
"I'm a physics grad student. I need the excuse to party."
(…
drorzel | September 10, 2008I'm having a great time at this week's conference, but I still find myself missing SteelyKid. Which is kind of amazing, really, as she's only been around for five weeks, and she's mostly just slept, cried, eaten, and soiled an astonishing number of diapers. And yet, how can I not miss this:
Really, if babies weren't so darn cute, the species never would've survived long enough to learn to use tools, let alone invent blogs...
drorzel | September 10, 2008We're out for a walk, when the dog spots a squirrel up ahead and takes off in pursuit. The squirrel flees into a yard and dodges around a small ornamental maple. Emmy doesn't alter her course in the slightest, and just before she slams into the tree, I pull her up short.
"What'd you do that for?" she asks, indignantly.
"What do you mean? You were about to run into a tree, and I stopped you."
"No I wasn't." She looks off after the squirrel, now safely up a bigger tree on the other side of the yard. "Because of quantum."
We start walking again. "OK, you're going to have to explain that," I say…
drorzel | September 9, 2008
Shaping Single Photons | Physical Review Focus
"Physicists have been manipulating single photons for several years, but now a team has modulated the time profile of a photon. Using the same optical equipment that fashions ordinary light pulses, the team molded single photons into arbitrary shapes, such as a pair of square pulses, as they describe in the 5 September Physical Review Letters. This precise control could have uses in quantum cryptography and quantum memory storage."
(tags: physics quantum optics science news articles)
View from the Corner: An interesting mathematical model…
drorzel | September 9, 2008I've seen a lot of neat stuff discussed at the Science in the 21st Century meeting, some of which I'll talk about in more detail later, when I have more time to think. One of the most interesting experiences of the meeting, though, has been using FriendFeed to sort of collaboratively live-blog the talks, along with a bunch of other people.
You can get some of the flavor from looking at the comments on Timo Hannay's talk (PIRSA video link, which is worth a look). Not only are there several people making notes as the talk goes along, there are links to things mentioned in the talk, for easy…
drorzel | September 9, 2008If you're looking for something to fill your science-related entertainment needs while I'm in Canuckistan pondering the future of society, and thus not blogging much, here are a couple of things you might want to check out on tv (whose producers sent me helpful emails letting me know of their programs):
"The Next Big Bang," airing tonight on the History Channel. If you're too far from Geneva to go to the (sorta-kinda) start-up of the Large Hadron Collider, you can watch this documentary instead.
"How to Build a Better Being", airing tonight on the National Geographic Channel. This uses the…
drorzel | September 8, 2008
Whatever » A Previous Message Repeated, Slightly More Forcefully
"Now, again, please: Take a nice, deep cleansing breath, center yourself, have some tea, and get a goddamn grip. "
(tags: US politics blogs)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Ask the Administrator: Academic Blacklists?
"The usual meaning of 'blacklist,' as I understand it, is a list of names of people to be shunned. I've never seen such a list, nor have I ever heard of one, anyplace I've worked."
(tags: academia jobs blogs politics)
drorzel | September 8, 2008The video from today's talks at the Science in the 21st Century conference have been posted at the PIRSA collection, so if you want to see my talk, you can watch the video (a 110 MB WMV file), and/or look at the slides (a 2.7 MB PDF).
I would also particularly recommend watching the video of John Willinsky's talk on Open Access, which was outstanding.
The video quality is excellent-- they have multiple cameras, so despite my best efforts to pace out of the frame, they kept me on camera most of the time. The audio clip of the "Bunnies Made of Cheese" posting is a little hard to hear, but…
drorzel | September 8, 2008I gave my talk this morning at the Science in the 21st Century conference. Video will eventually be available at the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive site, but if you'd like to get a sense of the talk, a few people were live-blogging it in the FriendFeed room for the meeting. You get a pretty accurate impression of the talk from the comments there.
I think it went well. People laughed in the right places, and there was some really good discussion in the question period. I look forward to seeing what it looks like on video. They have a really nice AV set-up here, with two cameras…
drorzel | September 7, 2008
Confessions of an RNC security guard | Salon
"Even in their lusty, alcohol-fueled swoons, these young politicos still call Palin "governor." In a way, this reverential horniness is sort of endearing. But mostly it's just creepy."
(tags: politics US journalism society culture)
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » The Singularity Is Far
"[I]f the Singularity ever does arrive, I expect it to be plagued by frequent outages and terrible customer service."
(tags: science computing books review blogs)
drorzel | September 7, 2008Sunday's a travel day for me, as I take a tiny little prop plane to the exotic land of Canada, for the Science in the 21st Century workshop. After an hour and a half bent double in a goddamn Cessna, I'll probably be too sore to type, so don't expect much blogging from me.
If you're looking for something to fill the blog-shaped hole in your day, though, you could enter the Millionth Comment Contest ScienceBlogs is running. The lucky winner will get an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to do see cool science-y stuff, and have dinner with a blogger of their choice.
All you need to do is give…
drorzel | September 6, 2008
Soundtrack Saturday: "Real Genius" | Popdose
All but one of the songs from Val Kilmer's finest film.
(tags: music movies blogs science)
drorzel | September 6, 2008We went down to visit Kate's parents on Wednesday, so I wasn't able to post the weekly bison-for-scale picture. I did get one, though, so here it is a few days late:
This also gives us a chance to show off her "Smart Cookie" onesie, which I picked up because it's a nice break from the frilly pink princessy crap that dominates the girl-baby clothing market. SteelyKid is adorably cute, to be sure, but that's not all she has to offer.
A different sense-of-scale option is below the fold:
This is the "airplane" carrying configuration, which sometimes helps quiet her down when she's a little…
drorzel | September 5, 2008
Adventures in Ethics and Science: Data paparazzi.
Is it ethical to write a paper based on a snapshot of a data slide at a conference?
(tags: ethics science publishing physics academia)
Jonathan Martin's Blog: Democrat reader email of the day (so far) - Politico.com
"Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."
(tags: politics US religion history class-war literature)
Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider - Telegraph
"Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the…
drorzel | September 5, 2008Dave Munger does Friday polls calling them "Casual Fridays," but then, the usual run of posts at Cognitive Daily is a lot more serious than my usual standard. So I'll call this a "semi-formal Friday" poll, sort of the khaki pants and blue blazer of the online research world.
I'm also too lazy to set up poll software for this, so I'd like to ask you to leave your answers to the following questions in comments:
1) When driving between two places you regularly visit, do you:
a) Always take main roads (highways or major surface streets), even if there is traffic.
b) Usually take main roads, but…
drorzel | September 4, 2008
Torontoist: ROAWR...Pop!
Best. Balloon Animal. EVER.
(tags: dinosaurs animals art silly pictures)
Built on Facts : Charging the Earth
"Gravity couldn't hold lint to your shirt in a million years."
(tags: physics math gravity science blogs)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: In Which I Realize That We're Doing It Wrong
"[T]he attitudes we convey, and messages we send, by treating ESL status as a handicap are backwards. In this market, fluency in two languages (English and Spanish, really) is a huge plus. ItâÂÂs an asset. "
(tags: academia education diversity society culture blogs…
drorzel | September 4, 2008Fade in on an Old, Balding White Man reading the paper at the breakfast table.
OBWM: I don't know. I'm really worried about the economy. Rising fuel prices, increasing costs of everything...
Cut to his Younger Blond Wife, sipping tea
YBW: I know. And the mortgage crisis, all these home foreclosures. It's terrible.
Cut to his Perky Teenage Daughter, eating cereal
PTD: Don't forget the rising cost of college.
Return to OBWM, in a wider shot showing that he is alone at the table. A plasma tv on the wall shows YBW and PTD, having breakfast in the kitchens of two of his other houses.
OBWM: And if…
drorzel | September 4, 2008We're in Boston to visit Kate's parents, and while we wait for SteelyKid to wake up and demand food, we're watching "Mike and Mike" on ESPN2 (the live simulcast of the radio show). They've been talking about how tonight's NFL kick-off (our long national nightmare is over...) was pushed up so as not to conflict with the Republican Convention.
I can't help thinking, though, that given John McCain's charisma (or lack thereof), the Republicans might be better served by having the football game run opposite McCain's speech. That way, their core audience will opt for watching the game live, and…
drorzel | September 3, 2008
The Quantum Pontiff : Wisely Using Your Advantage
"In other words, what is your probability of ruin, given a starting bankroll of D dollars, an advantage of p, and a target of T dollars?"
(tags: science math statistics blogs)
Optics basics: Coherence ë Skulls in the Stars
A very nice explanation of one of the slipperier concepts in optics.
(tags: physics optics science education blogs)
Top Story On John McCain Run Out Of Obligation | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"John McCain is one of only two men who has a chance to become president of the United States of America, and by…