drorzel | December 20, 2007As previously mentioned, I plan to end the book with a chapter on quantum flim-flam. As research for this, I've been looking at kook sites on the web, and Googled "quantum healing," which turns up all manner of gibberish from Deepak Chopra. It also includes a helpful little item at the bottom of the page:
Searches related to: quantum healing
maurice chevalier hugh grant deepak chopra ectomorphic
The Chopra search makes sense, and "ectomorphic" is a gibberish word that shows up in that sort of stuff. But Maurice Chevalier? And Hugh Grant?
If I could just figure out the connection between…
drorzel | December 20, 2007Today's Tree of SCIENCE!!! ornaments salute this here series of tubes:
On the right side of this picture, you see two little clothespin soldiers in sailor outfits with semaphore flags. These guys represent communications technology.
Communications technology, from crude semaphore all the way up through the Internet, is both an outgrowth of SCIENCE!!! and essential to it. Particularly today, when SCIENCE!!! is an international endeavor, it's impossible to do science if you can't communicate with your collaborators and disseminate your results.
As a special bonus, to the left side of the…
drorzel | December 19, 2007
The Year In Film 2007 | The A.V. Club
I don't see enough movies to do a sensible "Year's Best" list any more, but the AV Club is one of the most reliable review sites out there.
(tags: movies)
Are We Not Men?
Jon Zobenicaoverthinks Playboy and Maxim
(tags: culture gender journalism sex society)
Ampere could be defined one electron at a time - physicsworld.com
A new scheme for a single-electron transistor might make it possible to do a better definition of a current standard.
(tags: precision-measurement physics news materials)
Physicists make ripples with their 'magic carpet' : Nature…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Having ranted at great length about the awfulness of Dick Vitale's caterwauling during games broadcast on ESPN, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he's having vocal cord surgery. In his own words:
The past six weeks have been very emotional for me and for my family as we've visited some of the most outstanding throat specialists. Fortunately, I am currently under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Deems in Sarasota, Fla. and he is an outstanding ear, nose and throat specialist. Dr. Deems strongly recommended that I visit Dr. Steven Zeitels, who is recognized as one of the premier throat and…
drorzel | December 19, 2007A former Michigan law professor is suing the university because he was denied tenure:
The professor, Peter Hammer, won a majority of votes of the faculty of the law school in his case. But the 18-12 margin was two shy of the two-thirds requirement to win tenure, so he lost his job, and now is a professor of law at Wayne State University. He says he was the first male faculty member rejected by the faculty for tenure in 40 years.
Like lots of tenure disputes, this one has many facets -- debates on Hammer's scholarship, disputes on deadlines and technical parts of the tenure and grievance…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Why does my new car stereo (with spiffy direct iPod connection) come with a remote control? Just where do they think I'm going to go?
drorzel | December 19, 2007Another cold December day, another ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! This one's for the doctors in the house:
That's a little elf guy smoking a pipe, and he represents the science of public health.and epidemiology.
I'm a little dubious about some of the more extravagant claims made regarding the dangers of secondhand smoke, but there's really no denying that one of the most important and beneficial societal transformations in my lifetime has been the implementation of smoking bans in restaurants and workplaces, and the decrease in the acceptability of public smoking. You don't really…
drorzel | December 19, 2007Travis Hime of Arcane Gazebo has just finished his Ph.D. on Solid-State Qubits with Current-Controlled Coupling. Go congratulate him on bringing quantum spam that much closer to reality.
("Dear sir or madam, I may or may not be the widow of the former president of Nigeria, and I may or may not have the sum of ninety billion dollars...")
drorzel | December 18, 2007
Monkeys perform arithmetic as well as college students
I knew that.
(tags: academia education biology math psychology news science)
Merck Manual for Pet Health - Ferret Hit by an Arrow? Here's a Book for You - New York Times
The Merck/Merial Manual for Pet Health: Home Edition: Because hypochondriacs have pets, too.
(tags: animals medicine books silly)
Teenage Risks, and How to Avoid Them - New York Times
"We found that teenagers quite rationally weigh benefits and risks," Dr. Reyna said. "But when they do that, the equation delivers the message to go ahead and do that, because to the…
drorzel | December 18, 2007I could probably tease this information out of the Particle Data Group website, given enough time, but somebody with a background in particle physics can probably answer this in two seconds, so I appeal to the Internets:
What is the shortest lifetime of a particle that has been directly detected?
By "directly detected" I mean, well, directly detected. Something that has been identified from a track in a detector, or a click in a calorimeter, and not something whose existence has been inferred from a resonance observed in the production of other things.
My half-assed guess would be a neutral…
drorzel | December 18, 2007There's a chance that, if I make a serious push this week, I can have a first pass through the book complete before Christmas. So, of course, I'm procrastinating madly.
I understand it's traditional to post pictures in these circumstances, so here's one of my favorite shots from the Japan pictures:
This is Kate getting some water out of the awesome dragon fountain at one of the Hongwan-ji temples in Kyoto. They're doing major renovations at the moment, hence the white construction fence, which made a very nice plain background for the dragon, and made this come out really well.
Right. With…
drorzel | December 18, 20072006 Was Just This Year, You Know: I lost a lot of weight, read a lot of books, taught a lot of classes, did a bit of research, and oh, yeah, I got tenure.
Dorky Poll: Favorite Tool: In the comments to the post where I noted how many more people had least favorite textbooks than favorite ones, dr. dave writes: "Textbooks... particularly SCIENCE textbooks, are not really written to be ENJOYED by anyone."
Maryland vs. Duke: One-sentence review of this game: I don't think I've ever seen so many two-foot shots missed in a Division I game.
On the Superiority of String Theory: As we look at…
drorzel | December 18, 2007Today's ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is in honor of the cold water dripping into our kitchen cabinet yesterday:
That's a glass icicle, with bonus dramatic shadows. If you're a homeowner, you might think that this stands for ice damming, but this is about SCIENCE!!! not property mishaps. This ornament stands for phase transitions.
Phase transitions are a big part of physics and chemistry. Exactly what constitutes a "phase of matter" is a little murky, and seems to proceed on a sort of Damon Knight/ Potter Stewart rule, but transitions between phases are a rich area of study. Solid to…
drorzel | December 17, 2007
Video Clip - The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 2007
If you have 86 minutes to kill, go ahead. I watched the 1997 ceremony, which is where I learned that you don't need to speak the language to identify a boring speech.
(tags: Nobel video)
St. Lawrence University: All-Nighters Equal Lower Grades
' "The data indicate that procrastination is not associated with all-nighters, although both practices significantly correlated with lower GPAs," she says.'
(tags: academia education science psychology)
drorzel | December 17, 2007Chris Mooney posted a couple of things last week-- one article at ScienceProgress and one blog post-- talking about the supposed shortage of scientists in the "pipeline." Following an Urban Insitute study, he says that there's really no shortage of scientists being trained, but rather a shortage of jobs for those scientists. Coming as he does from the policy/ journalism side of things, he brings the article to a ringing conclusion:
The numbers presented by the Urban Institute lead to an uncontestable conclusion: Some young scientists aren't going to be working in purely scientific positions.…
drorzel | December 17, 2007A quick photo poll question: Which of these statues seen on the street in Japan is more disturbing? This chubby nude saxophonist from Himeji:
Or this small child riding a giant carp from Takayama:
Leave your answer in the comments. You can only pick one.
drorzel | December 17, 2007Last week, GrrlScientist posted a cool video showing a trick with two forks and a toothpick:
http://view.break.com/410281 - Watch more free videos
It's a nifty demonstration of some physics principles, so I thought I would explain how it works, with a couple of pictures (several of her commenters have the right idea, btw).
The key concept here is the idea of the "center of mass" of a system, which is basically the point at which you consider all the mass to be concentrated if you need to treat an extended object as a point particle. If you're going to throw it through the air, for example,…
drorzel | December 17, 2007I've been scanting the physics content so far with the Tree of SCIENCE!!! posts, so here's one from my own branch of science:
This one is a little Santa/ elf guy with a one-man-band rig, which of course stands for the venerable science of acoustics.
There's lots of great physics material in this one. The tone of the bell that he's carrying will be determined by resonance of sound waves inside the cavity of the bell, and the normal modes of waves on a drumhead is a rich and fascinating topic. The mathematics used to describe these situations is the same basic mathematical apparatus used to…
drorzel | December 16, 2007
Bell Labs Is Gone. Academia Steps In. - New York Times
The pros and cons of partnerships between major corporations and research universities.
(tags: academia economics science industry)
Matter-Wave Interferometry with Phase Fluctuating Bose-Einstein Condensates
A new paper from the Ketterle Empire, on interference between different parts of a split BEC.
(tags: physics low-temperature experiment articles science)
Testing for Lorentz Violation: Constraints on Standard-Model-Extension Parameters via Lunar Laser Ranging
Measuring the distance to the Moon to within a few centimeters gives…
drorzel | December 16, 2007Way to screw it up for everybody. The Jets held up their end of things, but you blew it.
(Actually, if somebody had to lose to the hapless Dolphins, it couldn't've happened to a better team. Well, OK, the Cowboys, but I really do hate the Ravens, whose defense is the absolute pinnacle of the strutting, dancing, chest-pounding horseshit that infects the NFL (and most pro sports) these days.
(Shut up and play football, already. If I want to see chest-thumping and bellowing, I can get a Tarzan movie from Netflix.)