drorzel | May 30, 2008I spent a whole bunch of time running around between talks on Thursday, and at one point was grumbling to myself about the way the organizers had scheduled all the good stuff at one time. Only later did I realize that it really wasn't their fault-- it's all good stuff, and there are only a few sessions here and there that I have absolutely no interest in seeing.
We need more sessions with names like "Boring Inscrutable Theory II," so I don't feel like I need to be in three places at once.
Anyway, a handful of highlights from Thursday's program:
I started off at the ultracold atoms session, to…
drorzel | May 29, 2008If you're reading this shortly after it's posted, you may notice ads for this book popping up in the sidebar and on top of the page. This is probably not entirely a happy coincidence-- I was offered a review copy in email from the author and his publisher, and I suspect that they had ScienceBlogs on their radar as a likely forum for web publicity.
With a title like The Drunkard's Walk, the book could be about one of two things, and the subtitle "How Randomness Rules Our Lives" pretty much rules out any Hunter S. Thompson style gonzo ranting. This is a book about probability and statistics,…
drorzel | May 28, 2008A very quick run-down of physics topics at DAMOP, before I go to bed:
I skipped the prize session at 8am, so I started my day with Bill Phillips's talk in the recent developments in optical lattices session. Oddly, his talk really didn't have much to do with lattices, but it's always a pleasure to see Bill give a talk.
Bill was followed by Immanuel Bloch, who gave an extremely impressive talk about experiments they've done with atoms in optical lattices. This is related to, but way, way beyond the stuff I did as a post-doc. They've done some amazing things with the manipulation of quantum…
drorzel | May 28, 2008I made it to Happy Valley without incident, though it is Orange Cone Season in Pennsylvania, and I spent a lot of time dodging construction. Happily, there really wasn't anything important at the meeting last night.
So I skipped out on the welcome reception to have dinner and a few beers with Kevin and RPM and the world-famous Prof. Steve Steve. They're good guys, as stamp collectors go...
Kevin and RPM both posted pictures, but I'm too lazy to bother right now. Maybe later. I'll definitely post something about actual physics later, but for now, I need to run off to hear more talks, and look…
drorzel | May 28, 2008A little while back, Matthew Hughes offered a free copy of his forthcoming novel Template to online reviewers via his web site. I wasn't able to read it fast enough to get in on James Nicoll's review-a-thon, but I finished it a few days ago.
Template is set in the same basic world as Majestrum, a human civilization many millennia in the future, where Old Earth is ruled by an Archonate, and the high aristocrats have worked so hard to refine their perception of rank and status that they have difficulty even noticing the presence of ordinary citizens.
The new book doesn't start off on Old Earth…
drorzel | May 27, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Academe and Parenting
"Part of the problem, I think, is the potentially infinite demands of the job. How much time does it take, per week, to prep and grade a typical class?"
(tags: academia kid-stuff society culture education)
The Traveling Taps Brigade - washingtonpost.com
""[F]aking taps just isn't good enough," Baldo said. "We're talking about people who served and sacrificed for our country. They should be buried with dignity and honor."
(tags: society culture war music)
Basics - New Curriculum Designed to Unite Art and Science - NYTimes.com…
drorzel | May 27, 2008I did a few of these a while back, and then, as usual, sort of stopped posting on the subject. There are a limited number of articles on science, religion, and culture wars that actually catch and hold my interest, so it's hard to populate a regular links dump.
Of course, I could always just mirror the RSS feed from Slacktivist, which is, week after week, month after month, year after year the best writing on the Internet about religion and politics. I'd particularly like to note his recent post on an antidote to the Left Behind books, in which he celebrates nearing the end of volume one by…
drorzel | May 27, 2008I'm off to the 39th meeting of DAMOP, the division of the American Physical Society for people who do the really cool stuff involving whole atoms and lasers. I've queued up a few things so that the site won't go dark, and the hotel web page promises high-speed Internet, so I may even do a bit of on-site blogging.
Or I may not. The program looks like it will keep me fairly busy. We'll see how things play out. Whether I blog it or not, the meeting is always a kick, and will be a lovely break from intro E&M.
Anyway, you all behave while I'm gone. Walk the dog, water the plants, and don't try…
drorzel | May 26, 2008
A Misunderstood Monument - WSJ.com
"French worked hard to make his huge Lincoln a man and not a god. This is one rumpled icon. The imperfections are hard to miss. His hair is uncombed. His tie is askew. His hands betray a fidgety disposition, and his eyes aren't quite symmetrical."
(tags: history US art society culture)
Observatory - Steep-Headed Canyons May Have Been Formed by Massive Floods - NYTimes.com
"Box Canyon was not formed by seepage over time. Instead, they say, a massive flood about 45,000 years ago carved it violently and much more quickly." No sign of an Ark, though.
(tags:…
drorzel | May 26, 2008Most of my reaction to this weekend's Emily Gould article in the Times was "Gosh, who knew that writing for Gawker might have a corrosive effect on your personal life...," but there were some interesting bits. She did a nice job explaining how blogging can be sort of addictive, and also had some good bits on the phenomenon of blog fame:
I started seeing a therapist again, and we talked about my feelings of being inordinately scrutinized. "It's important to remember that you're not a celebrity," she told me. How could I tell her, without coming off as having delusions of grandeur, that, in a…
drorzel | May 26, 2008Today is Memorial Day in the US, the official holiday for remembering the men and women killed in our various wars. It's also the traditional start of the summer season, which means that it's always an odd collision of the solemn and the raucous. Growing up, there was always a parade in town, which started downtown and made its way to the cemetery for an official ceremony and wreath-laying by the chaplain of the American Legion. He could never quite keep the words straight ("These flowers may wither, but the spirit of which they are a symbol will endure forever"), but he came close enough,…
drorzel | May 26, 2008So, the Martians go and helpfully draw a box on the ground as a target for the Phoenix landing, and what do they do? They land next to it, not in it. Way to go, NASA.
I bet if they hadn't screwed up the unit conversions, they would've hit it...
(The square pattern on the ground is really something to do with the water ice that the mission is there to look for-- it's a natural phenomenon, and a good sign for the mission.
(It just looks like a landing zone drawn by space aliens.)
drorzel | May 25, 2008
New tests of the Copernican Principle proposed - physicsworld.com
""I would bet my house now that the results will come out null so the Copernican Principle is valid on the scales we observe," says Paul Steinhardt a cosmologist at Princeton University, "But I think the experiments should be done.""
(tags: science astronomy physics theory news)
The New Cult Canon: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang | The A.V. Club
"Not every project allows writers to examine the clichés they're generating--in that way and others, the film is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Black, and one he's earned"
(tags: movies…
drorzel | May 25, 2008Every now and then, I look at the huge list of blogs and news sources in my RSS feeds, and say to myself "You really need to thin these out..." How can I make any progress, though, when there are always great new blogs being created?
The latest new blog to ctach my interest and increment my subscription total is Built On Facts by a grad student named Matt, which was linked to by Tom. It features everything from a discussion of shaky physics in the new Indiana Jones movie to discussions of the physics or marksmanship, to an entire category of worked problems, with equations and everything.
OK…
drorzel | May 25, 2008Via Lara, a "meme" calling for the posting of random quotes. Because why not?
"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe. "
Ray Bradbury (1920 - )
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. "
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)
"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988), Time Enough For Love
"Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions. "
Cullen Hightower
"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. "…
drorzel | May 24, 2008
Mark Batty Publisher/ Books/ Description
Bedtime reading for future font geeks.
(tags: books silly language publishing)
Where to Watch Phoenix' Landing - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
"There are a bazillion sources of information on what's up with Phoenix as its landing approaches on Sunday, so here's an attempt to round up some of your options."
(tags: science space planets internet television news)
The Quantum Pontiff : Doggy Dogs
German Shepherd mixes: the official dog of physics bloggers.
(tags: dog pictures blogs)
Primer: Steven Spielberg | The A.V. Club
"…
drorzel | May 24, 2008For the first time since I don't know when, Kate and I have gone to see movies in a theater on two consecutive weekends. I'm pretty sure this hasn't happened in at least two years.
Anyway, before my general (spoiler-free) movie comments, some trailers:
You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Seriously, this is a movie? I thought it was just a fake commercial slapped together for SNL that had somehow come unmoored from the show and started turning up on other channels.
The Love Guru. Mike Myers has outdone himself: I hate this character already.
Australia. For everyone who has been dying to see a movie…
drorzel | May 24, 2008A colleague in Biology had his Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy class make videos explaining something they studied in class. He's posted the results to YouTube and Facebook, so the students can see them, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, you, too, can learn about the bite force of bats from a college student in a ski mask and rubber wings:
Other videos cover muscle retention in burrowing tree frogs, brachycardia in penguins, hypoxemia in penguins, and prey localization in sharks.
It's pretty amazing what the kids these days get up to, with their cameras and their editing software and…
drorzel | May 23, 2008
Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » In My Day...
"[I]t would help, if you want to complain about the declining quality of the humanities, to not be a historical dunderhead on a fantastic scale, to demonstrate some degree of erudition."
(tags: academia humanities history society culture education)