drorzel | October 28, 2007The Times today has an article on famous scientists who have nutty ideas, inspired by the James Watson kerfuffle of the last couple of weeks. Of course, they had to mention at least one kooky physicist, leading to this wonderful set of paragraphs:
Sometimes the wandering from one's home turf extends all the way to the paranormal. In 2001, when officials of the Royal Mail, the British postal service, issued a package of stamps commemorating the centenary of the Nobel Prize, they sought the counsel of Brian Josephson, who shared the prize for physics in 1973 for his superconductivity research.…
drorzel | October 28, 2007
NIST demos industrial-grade nanowire device fabrication
A method that produces nanowires in specific places with specific orientations.
(tags: physics materials experiment science news)
Video shows buckyballs form by 'shrink wrapping'
Graphits sheets wrap around and shed pieces, eventually leaving a sphere. With obligatory YouTube link.
(tags: materials physics experiment science news youtube)
American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history
"We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock…
drorzel | October 27, 2007Via Physics Buzz, a Mechanical Aptitude Test for diesel technicians. It's fifty basic physics questions, covering a wide range of material from introductory physics: basic concepts of force and torque, a little bit of electrical circuits, and even some thermodynamics.
I got 45/50, which is a passing score. I suspect that I bombed the handful of questions involving specific engine terminology, because I know as much about cars as I do about 11-dimensional superstring theory.
Somebody needs to sit down with the authors and explain how units work-- forces are not measured in kilograms-- but…
drorzel | October 27, 2007Bora has tagged me, and nagged me in comments for this "Happy Hallowmeme" thing where people post links to clips from their favorite scary movies. The problem with this is that I really don't have that much interest in horror in general, or scary movies specifically.
I do, however, retain some affection for 80's cheese, which includes some of the campier scary movies of that era, along with this gem:
Can't you just smell the hair spray?
I saw this as half of a double feature at a drive-in (!!) during the summer after my senior year of high school. The other movie was one of the Nightmare on…
drorzel | October 26, 2007
slacktivist: Gay-hatin' Gospel (pt. 4)
Blogdom's best writer on religion and politics continues his series on why evangelicals are so hostile to gays.
(tags: religion society politics gender)
It Is Written - Books & Culture
Christianity Today reviews The Year of Living Biblically
(tags: culture religion books review society)
Casimir Forces between Arbitrary Compact Objects
A new theoretical approach for a fiendishly difficult problem
(tags: physics quantum articles science theory)
Experimental Violation of Bell's Inequality in Spatial-Parity Space
A new system, closer than most to…
drorzel | October 26, 2007They're too cheap even to donate to DonorsChoose, and--
Oh. Wait. They are, aren't they?
This is the worst fundraising idea ever.
(I have no great love for China Mieville, either, and found that piece kind of annoying, on the whole, but I couldn't resist the joke. This may indicate that playing the dreaded "one more game" at lunch today deprived my brain of critical oxygen...)
drorzel | October 26, 2007As part of the "Buy This Blog" incentive for the DonorsChoose fundraiser, Ewan McNay asks for a post on
the superiority of Commonwealth sports (cricket, football) over the
US-favoured kind (baseball, american football) ;-). Oh, OK, then; I'll
setle for cricket.
Cricket? You want me to talk up cricket?
The best I can do is this: If you've ever been watching a baseball game, and said to yourself "Boy, I wish this could go on all week," well, then, have I got a game for you...
I can, however, make a case for the superiority of rugby to American football:
Now, don't get me wrong-- I'm a big fan…
drorzel | October 26, 2007Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo links to an article by a physicist, posted on the arxiv, that claims to explain visual perceptions using quantum mechanics:
A theory of the process of perception is presented based on von Neumann's quantum theory of measurement and conscious observation. Conscious events that occur are identified with the quantum mechanical ``collapses'' of the wave function, as specified by the orthodox quantum theory. The wave function, between such perceptual events, describes a state of potential consciousness which evolves via the Schr\"odinger equation. When a perceptual…
drorzel | October 25, 2007
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: 'Inside Greek U.'
Surprisingly sensible comments about a new book on fraternities and sororities
(tags: academia education books)
Books: The Musical Mystique
"The discourse supporting classical music so reeks of historical blindness and sanctimonious self-regard as to render the object of its ministrations practically indefensible."
(tags: music books review)
denialism blog : Phenomenon: It's just magic tricks (and not very good ones)
Mark Hoofnagle watches psychic tv so you don't have to.
(tags: stupid television…
drorzel | October 25, 2007Blah blah, blah-blah blah blah blah-- blah (blah)-- blah, blah blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah-blah blah.
Chicken chicken chicken, chicken-chicken . Chicken, chicken chicken chicken. Chicken, chicken-chicken, chicken.
Badger badger badger, badger badger badger. Badger, badger badger. Snake!!!
(I figure, this is pretty much what people are hearing at this point with the DonorsChoose stuff, so why not cut out the middleman?)
drorzel | October 25, 2007This was a topic yesterday on Mike & Mike, but I already had a full slate of blog posts. I like the question, though, so I thought I'd put it up here:
If you're a fan of a team in a sport with a championship playoff, who do you root for when your team is out?
This was brought up because some New York tabloids were calling Rudy Giuliani (a noted Yankee fan who used to avoid scheduling city business in October so he could attend playoff games) a traitor for saying that he was rooting for the arch-rival Red Sox in the World Series. The argument in Giuliani's favor is that he's rooting for…
drorzel | October 25, 2007I was most of the way through a long post in response to a donor request, when the power went out. It is, in fact, still out at home, and the power company's web site lists an estimated restoration time of 1pm. As you might imagine, this puts something of a kink in my morning.
I'm too dispirited to attempt to recreate the lost post, so here's a Dorky Poll to fill the gap. Jonathan Vos Post is out of town, so this is a good time to ask:
What's your favorite bit of numerical trivia?
My personal favorite numerical coincidence is the fact that the number of seconds in a year is π x 107 to three…
drorzel | October 24, 2007
Welcome to Syracuse University News.
"Andrea Farina, a senior communications design major in the College of Visual and Performing Arts' School of Art and Design, won the World Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) Championship"
(tags: silly sports)
Cocktail Party Physics: just an ordinary man
Celebrating 50 years of the Bardenn-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity.
(tags: physics quantum Nobel science low-temperature)
Three first-ever atomic nuclei created at NSCL; new super-heavy aluminum isotopes may exist
Exotic nuclei created at Michigan State
(tags: physics experiment nuclear science…
drorzel | October 24, 2007Dave at the World's Fair has an idea for a "meme":
[Y]ou will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google (preferably google.com, but we'll take the other country specific ones if need be), you'll find that you are returned with your blog as the number one hit.
This was, surprisingly, fairly easy:
Bunnies Made of Cheese
Many Worlds, Many Treats
True Lab Story
Physics Funding Fundamentalism
"Show Me the Pony" (requires quotes)
Of course, my own name also works, but that's kind of a cheat...
drorzel | October 24, 2007Mark Kleiman has rediscovered a semi-clever approach to the problems of smart kids:
So here's the puzzle: is there any justification for not treating high-IQ kids as having "special needs" and therefore entitled to individualized instruction? Yes, yes, I know that in the South "gifted" programs have been used as a technique of within-school resegregation. But that doesn't change the real needs of very bright kids.
I don't know how the special-ed laws are written. Is there a potential lawsuit here?
I say "rediscovered," because I've heard this proposed and rejected a dozen times in education…
drorzel | October 24, 2007Here's the crew I spent this past Saturday morning with:
The guys who are younger than I am are a bunch of students from the local chapter of Sigma Phi. The one guy older than I am is from a volunteer group who help maintain the local bike path. The stone wall behind us is part of a lock from the Erie Canal, built around 1839. We were there clearing away the bushes and weeds that overgrow the site every summer, as part of a restoration project organized by a colleague from the History department.
That's right, I spent my Saturday clearing brush. I feel all Presidential. I may just bomb…
drorzel | October 24, 2007One of the odd things about blogdom, and the commentariat in general, is the way that people will all seem to latch on to some particular idea at about the same time, despite the lack of any obvious connection between them. I keep having days when I scan through my RSS feeds, and find the same topics coming up again and again.
This week's emergent theme seems to be "Kids These Days." It started with this deeply silly complaint about the "whiteness" of indie music by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, which strikes me as a classic example of a writer straining to find deep cultural meaning…
drorzel | October 23, 2007
slacktivist: Gay-Hatin' Gospel (pt. 3)
Part three of Fred Clark's look at why evangelicals are so anti-gay.
(tags: religion politics blogs US gender)
The Big Three
How important are the major SF magazines, anyway?
(tags: SF books literature)
Evolving Thoughts
A taxonomy, of sorts.
(tags: religion science)
james_nicoll: How to save the SF magazines
A modest proposal.
(tags: SF silly books literature)
Nuclear power worldwide: status and outlook
Facts and figures from the IAEA
(tags: energy environment news science)
Uranium isotope ratios are not invariant, researchers show
The…
drorzel | October 23, 2007I was standing in the back of the Taiko Ensemble concert tonight, when two students I didn't know came in, carrying large, elaborate Nerf guns. They had a certain... hunted look about them.
"Hey," I said, "Who's winning?"
"Oh, man," said one, "The zombies are kicking our asses. They're multiplying really fast."
Yes, it's Humans vs. Zombies week on campus. Never a dull moment in academia...
drorzel | October 23, 2007The DonorsChoose fundraiser is winding toward its conclusion, which means I need to find some new way to raise money for a final push. So, here are two new offers, one for high rollers, one for small donations:
Incentive 1: Guest Post: Taking my cue from the Seed overlords, we'll add a random element to this, to enable small donors to take part. So, any new donation this week (from Monday Oct. 22 through Friday Oct. 26) will get you a chance to win a guest-blog post on this blog. This is distinct from the "Buy This Blog" incentive, in that it's not you choosing a topic for me to write about,…