drorzel | April 22, 2008Two weeks ago, now, I promised some peer=reviewed physics blogging, to compensate for the "screechy monkey" nonsense. Of course, I got distracted by other things, but I've been sitting on this paper for a while now, and I really need to get it off my desk.
The paper in question is "Quantum Register Based on Individual Electronic and Nuclear Spin Qubits in Diamond," by the group of Misha Lukin at Harvard, published in Science last June. It's a clever idea for a way to do quantum computing using individual nuclear spins in a diamond matrix. I really like this idea, not least because it has the…
drorzel | April 22, 2008The release of Expelled has generated all sorts of chatter, almost certainly more than it deserves on its merits as a film. It's also produced repeated mentions of the fact that it's the eight highest-grossing political documentary of all time-- most recently, Tara Smith writing at Correlations.
That claim reminds me of a long-ago student whose application for a summer program described him as a student at "the fifth best university in Florida." None of the people reading it could come up with four, let alone the fifth. And God knows, I would have a hard time naming seven high-grossing…
drorzel | April 22, 2008When I start to lecture, I go into Teaching Mode, which affects the whole way I present myself. I speak at a slightly higher pitch, and the whole cadence of my speech changes. I talk a little bit faster, but repeat myself more, and speak in a more formal style.
The funny thing is that I'll drop in and out of Teaching Mode during the course of a class (or a research talk, which gets a very similar treatment). When I respond to questions in the middle of a class, I usually do so in something closer to my normal tone of voice, returning to Teaching Mode when I return to my prepared lecture.…
drorzel | April 21, 2008
Cognitive Daily: What's better for heating a mug of water: The stove or the microwave?
Dave watches pots boil so you don't have to.
(tags: physics science energy environment silly)
PETA's Latest Tactic: $1 Million for Fake Meat - New York Times
Shockingly, they've stumbled across a halfway decent idea. I think this is mentioned in Revelations somewhere...
(tags: animals food science)
The Ethical Werewolf: In which the werewolf is admitted to paradise
"I said, "If someone asks a question, and it's a good question, I'm going to dance.""
(tags: academia education jobs society culture…
drorzel | April 21, 2008There's a new "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question out:
"A question from a friend's 9-year old son:
What is in the air we breathe? What is it's chemical composition?"
The short answer to this is "a little bit of everything." Pretty much
any substance we have on Earth can be found in the atmosphere
somewhere. The atmosphere is a pretty big place-- roughly
1044 molecules worth of stuff (that's
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or
take). In a collection that big, you'll find just about anything you
want.
All we can really do when asked about the composition of the…
drorzel | April 21, 2008Another reason why I recommend limiting the advice you listen to as a new faculty member on the tenure track is that most of the things that academics do are highly individual activities. There's no one right way to teach or do research, and what works for one person may fail miserably for another.
My favorite example of this is from my first year of teaching. I had a fellowship through grad school, so I didn't do the usual TA'ing, and came into my tenure track job with very little classroom experience. I have a whole bunch of very capable colleagues, though, so I asked around about things to…
drorzel | April 21, 2008One of many parts of the FutureBaby! process that I was lamentably ignorant of is the idea of the hospital tour. When I first mentioned to colleagues that we were expecting, many of them (mostly women) asked "Where are you going to have the baby?"
My initial response was "How the hell should I know? In a hospital, I hope. Preferably not in the back of a cab." I always just assumed you went to whatever hospital was closest when things started happening. Probably because I grew up out in the sticks, where hospitals aren't exactly thick on the ground.
But no, this is a Major Decision-- people…
drorzel | April 20, 2008Janet follows a post by ScienceWoman on prioritizing research time with a List of advice for tenure-track faculty. It's excellent advice if you're a junior academic seeking tenure.
I have only one suggestion to add:
Seek advice, but don't take too much of it.
If you're on the tenure track, you will have friends and colleagues at your institution who know more about the process than you do. You should absolutely seek them out, and ask them for advice-- whether they're formally in a mentoring role or not, they will have good suggestions to offer.
But in the end, the decisions about what you do…
drorzel | April 20, 2008Scott Eric Kaufman, inspired by this piece in The New Yorker, relates his own tale of being stuck in an elevator:
At this point I was about five minutes into my own hanging. The damn thing wouldn't settle and so I panicked. I started pacing frantically and I checked my watch and I knew I would be late for class because you know and why am I still hanging inches above my point of egress but then wait a minute I'm an inch from the floor I want to be on but am in fact floating in an elevator shaft four stories up with a two-thousand pound counterweight aimed at my head and maybe I ought to…
drorzel | April 19, 2008
Jacks of Science â Super Slow Motion is the New Slow Motion
"[A]s frames per second increase (speed of video decreases), coolness approaches infinity, a value infinitely cooler than the speed of normal life. Moving past this discontinuity, boringness surpasses coolness and we observe exponential decay as speed of
(tags: video youtube silly science gadgets movies)
Phil Gordon Answers Your Poker Questions - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
"Randomness, otherwise known as "variance" at the poker table is much bigger and more important than most poker players realize. I have a…
drorzel | April 19, 2008There's just no getting away from science-and-religion. Yesterday's (snail) mail brought a flier from the Williams College Society of Alumni, giving the schedule of events for my upcoming 15th (!!) college reunion. The very first item on Thursday's list of faculty lectures:
1 p.m. "Celebrating Evolution from a Religious Perspective" featuring Stuart Crampton '58, Barclay Jermain Prof. of Natural Philosophy, Emeritus and Richard Spalding, Chaplain to the College
That would actually probably be pretty interesting-- Prof. Crampton was co-advisor for my senior thesis, and he's a really smart…
drorzel | April 19, 2008The whole framing/ "screechy monkeys" fracas led to a number of people asking for more frequent postings emphasizing a more moderate view of the great science and religion flamewars. As I said at the time, I'm a little hesitant about this, because there just isn't that much there that crosses the posting threshold for me-- I just don't care enough about most of the incidents that generate noise here to deal with the hassles that come with posting.
In an effort to do a little good by speaking out more, I'll try to compromise by posting occasional collections of science-and-religion related…
drorzel | April 18, 2008
Preliminary thermal modeling accounts for some (but not all) of the Pioneer Anomaly - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society
Some of the mysterious extra acceleration may just be uneven heating.
(tags: science space physics astronomy thermo theory computing)
Car Talk
"Coming April 22, PBS's NOVA presents a very special program. The topic? 'Car of the Future ...' Now, here's the downside: '...with hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi.'"
(tags: television science silly)
Atoms in a Radio-Frequency-Dressed Optical Lattice
Using lasers and RF fields to make a lattice of ring-shaped…
drorzel | April 18, 2008I drank the last of the Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre last night (I don't go through beer very quickly these days), which means the fridge is nearly empty, and it's time for a beer run. Which, of course, is a great excuse for a filler-iffic audience participation question:
What sort of beer should I buy?
Not that you could tell from my behavior last weekend, but I'm not a big fan of pilsner or light lagers-- if I'm only having a few, I prefer a heartier, darker beer. Belgian beers and IPA's are great. Fruit flavors are right out.
So what should I get?
drorzel | April 18, 2008(Because nothing brings in readers like a physics pedagogy post...)
Out in Minnesota, Arjendu is expressing high-level confusion about the business of lecturing:
As I've said a few times before in this blog, I prefer to let students read the text to get a preliminary take on physics content on their own, generate questions and confusions on which I focus during 'lecture', and then check their comprehension of these principles by working together on applying them via problem-solving -- and doing this in my presence so I can help them work out what they do and don't know.
I see this as…
drorzel | April 18, 2008"Why in the world are you posting that?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's a yappy little dog. We don't like yappy little dogs."
"True enough, but it's a picture of a yappy little dog in the infrared, and that's pretty cool."
"I don't think it's all that cool. You should take pictures of me in the infrared. I'd look much cooler than that dog."
"I don't doubt that, but I don't have a heat-sensitive infrared camera, and I can't really justify spending thousands of dollars on one just to take pictures of you for filler posts on my blog."
"Maybe. I'm skeptical. How about a visible-light picture, at…
drorzel | April 17, 2008
The Scientific Activist: Why Are Veins Blue?
It's all about optics.
(tags: social-science medicine biology optics physics blogs)
100 Greatest Novelty Songs
Feel the pain.
(tags: music silly stupid culture)
drorzel | April 17, 2008I picked up the new Rustic Overtones album a week or two ago, partly on the strength of this review at 75 or Less, but mostly because I really liked "Hardest Way Possible" off Viva Nueva, and can't understand why it wasn't a huge hit. (The self-cover on this album probably indicates that the band doesn't understand it, either. Alas, like all self-covers, it's nowhere near as good as the original).
The record as a whole is pretty good, though I'm not as enthusiatic as Tom D. "Rock Like War," "Oxygen," and "Carsick" are really good songs, and most of the rest is solid. Unfortunately, it also…
drorzel | April 17, 2008Janet posted a few days ago about asking questions of grad students in seminars and journal clubs and so on. This is part of a larger conversation that I'm too lazy to collect links to-- Janet has them-- about whether grad students should show solidarity with their fellows and refrain from asking tough questions of each other in public.
It's an interesting question, and the sort of thing I would ordinarily be all over, but my graduate experience was idiosyncratic enough that I don't think I can say anything that would generalize well. I was officially a student in the Chemical Physics Program…
drorzel | April 16, 2008
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Science Fairs and School Boards
"From looking at the other projects, this year's theme was baking soda volcanoes. " This year, and every year.
(tags: education science kid-stuff)
Physicists Claim to Have Found 'Dark Matter' Again - New York Times
"Juan Collar of the University of Chicago said people were excited about the new results. "You wouldn't put your hand on fire that this is wimps," he said, but agreed that some kinds of wimps were still among many possibilities, including that the e
(tags: physics astronomy precision-measurement quantum…