drorzel | September 10, 2007I'm checking a last few things and putting papers into an envelope when the dog wakes up from her nap. "Hey," she says, stretching, "What're you doing?"
"I'm getting ready to mail this," I say.
"What is it?"
"Several copies of a book contract that I just signed."
"It's a book about me, right?" she says, wagging her tail hopefully. "Because I'm the best."
"Well, sort of. It's a popular science book, based on our conversations about physics."
"That's a good idea, too."
"Well, some people obviously think so, because they're going to pay me to write it."
"How much are you getting?"
"Well..." I…
drorzel | September 10, 2007I don't normally pay much attention to preseason or off-season sports, and my isolation has been better than usual this year with regard to the NFL, what with being in Japan for the past three weeks. As a result, I vaguely expected my Giants to suck this year, but I was not prepared for the season to be effectively over after one game.
Hyperbole, you say? Maybe, but it's not just about the loss to the hated Cowboys, or even the injuries to key players, it's about the way they lost, and the players they have left.
Consider: what were their weaknesses last year? Well, their big problem was a…
drorzel | September 10, 2007Many thanks to Aaron and Nathan, my guest bloggers over the past few weeks-- they did a great job, and if anything probably raised the tone around here. If you've got an academic job opening, and aren't afraid of those blog-reading types, they're both looking for permanent positions... Hint, hint.
They both posted expressing amazement that I manage to find stuff to post daily, and, frankly, after three weeks away, I'm kind of wondering about that myself. I'll get back into the swing soon, I'm sure, but jet lag may keep me dopier than normal for a few days yet. Also, my posting frequency may…
lundblad | September 9, 2007Well, as a lot people seem to have written in my high-school yearbook, "it's been real."
I've enjoyed standing in for Dr. Oilcan and appreciate his gracious offer to have an experimentalist representative on his guest-blogging squad. As Aaron said, I don't know how he does it, but whatever juice he's on, he sets a high bar. The number of posts I had envisioned before I started outnumbers the actual number by about a factor of three, and I'm sure you're sad at the lack of six more book reviews and at least two interminable posts about rugby (Caltech rugby in particular). Maybe next…
bergman | September 9, 2007Well, Chad's back, and I guess that means that this guest-blogging stint has come to an end (free! I'm free!). I want to thank Chad again for the opportunity to play in his sandbox for a few weeks. I didn't get the chance to write every post I had planned. Real life -- or at least the closest academic imitation thereof -- does sometimes get in the way of blogging. Anyways, having seen it from the other side now, this blogging stuff isn't easy. I don't know how Chad manages to come up with two or more things to say every day, but I guess that's why he's the blogger and I'm the guest-blogger.…
drorzel | September 9, 2007A few general observations from three weeks on vacation in Japan, in no particular order:
Thirteen hours is a long goddamn time to spend on a plane.
The Japanese can and will pickle damn near anything.
The Japanese love paper. This is not an exotic-art-of-origami reference, either: every commercial transaction in the country generates at least two pieces of paper, often with multiple stamps applied to them.
They also love packaging. If I didn't remember to tell her that it was ok to put all the croissants in the same bag, the clerk at the bakery in Yokohama would individually wrap each of…
drorzel | September 9, 2007Friday morning, we woke up in Osaka, and from there, the "day" went something like this:
1 hour on the train from Osaka Station to Kansai Airport
2 hours at the airport
12 hours on a plane to Detroit
2 hours in the airport at Detroit
2 hours on a plant to JFK
2 hours on Long Island (getting our luggage and some food)
3 hours driving from Long Island back to Niskayuna
"Day" is in scare quotes, because I'm not really sure how much time passed between waking up in Osaka and falling into bed here. It was a lot. And, thanks to the miracle of jet lag, I'm wide awake at six in the freakin' morning,…
bergman | September 8, 2007I remember the last time I saw the milky way. I was at my aunt's house in the foothills of the Sierras, and late at night the dense river of stars emerges. But that is still not the true milky way, or so I hear. And, in more urban areas, the detritus of our incandescent society reduces the night sky to an inchoate glow. This article in the New Yorker talks about the poorly designed night time illumination that has resulted in our current situation, and what can be and is being done about it.
(via Slashdot)
lundblad | September 7, 2007Ah, what loyal citizen of California doesn't remember singing the state song, I Love You, California, every morning. Or was it saying the Pledge...my memory's hazy.
The reason I bring up state songs is not to bring up the ill-fated campaign to make "Born to Run" the New Jersey state song (this town rips the bones from your back; it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap; we've gotta get out while we're young.) but rather to point out that the state I currently work in (but do reside in; I'm taxed but not represented, myself) has its own state song, Maryland, My Maryland! Astounding, jaw-…
lundblad | September 7, 2007I should probably sneak in a few posts before Chad gets back. It's been a hectic week, as the time came for my current experiment (as it does for all experiments) where one stops futzing around trying to make things better, and takes the actual data, with an eye to moving on. This means that you want good, clean runs with lots of attention to detail (as opposed to the semi-qualitative exploration of parameter space, when you're first seeing an effect), and the first thing life-wise that suffers during this phase is blogging.
But the second-worst blog post in the world is the why haven'…
bergman | September 6, 2007Now that I'm back in College Station, it's time to start getting applications ready for the great job search. I don't know how it is in other fields, but in math/physics, this generally involves three to four letters of recommendation, a CV, a research statement, sometimes a teaching statement and maybe an annotated bibliography. In high energy physics, we have the Theoretical Particle Physics Job Rumor Mill run by the now nonymous John Terning. In addition to listing offers and educated guesses at short lists, it also serves as a nice clearinghouse of positions. SPIRES, the APS, Physics…
bergman | September 5, 2007Steinn reports that the NRC has made its recommendations for NASA's Beyond Einstein program. The winners appear to be LISA, a gravity wave observatory, and JDEM, a competition of dark energy focussed satellites. Steinn has lots of links to the various projects. The executive summary of the report is availabe here (pdf).
I know next to nothing about these things, but from afar it always seemed like LISA was one of those neat ideas that was never actually going to happen. The basic idea is to put three satellites in orbit around the sun and bounce lasers around to measure gravitational waves.…
bergman | September 5, 2007Well, I'm back in Texas and just in time for Steve Jobs to introduce new toys I can't afford. At the risk of turning Chad's blog into an Apple advertisement, every time I pass an Apple store, it takes significant willpower to not walk out of there with a new iPhone. I find it endlessly amusing to load up my papers on the demo models -- yes, I am easily amused. A certain theorist was showing his off at Aspen, too. Well, you don't want a phone with your iPod? You can now get an iPod touch, WiFi included. 8 and 16 gigs. iPod Nano? Smaller with really tiny video. Old school iPods? 160 gigs now.…
drorzel | September 4, 2007Worldcon wrapped up Monday morning, with a panel on blogs and LiveJournals in SF, which was recorded for a possible Tor podcast (it's not up yet, but may turn up in the next few days). If you'd like to hear what I sound like when I find myself moderating a con panel with no real preparation, that'll be your best chance.
After that, Kate and I made a swing out to the Ramen Museum (those who have been to grad school are groaning, but ramen can actually be pretty tasty when you use actual ingredients), and then into Tokyo for an evening stroll around Ginza. Tuesday, we made the trip out to Nikko…
bergman | September 3, 2007Happy Labor Day to everyone. I'll be traveling back to Texas, so no blog for me for a day or so.
bergman | September 2, 2007Because my team, the Forty Niners, aren't. Neither apparently is Michigan. On the other hand, my co-guest blogger is surely happy.
drorzel | September 1, 2007Several days ago, I mentioned that I had taken over 1,000 pictures on the trip thus far. That number has increased somewhat since then, and I offered a prize to the person who comes closest to guessing the final number, without going over. Specifically, I promised something cheap and tacky from Japan.
I can now announce what the cheap and tacky item is: It's an honest-to-God glow-in-the-dark Great Buddha key chain, purchased at the official Great Buddha gift shop. so, if that sounds like the sort of ironic kitsch item that you just have to own, leave a guess in the comments as to the number…
drorzel | September 1, 2007If you really care about the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards, you probably don't need me to tell you this, but the winners of the 2007 Hugo Awards were announced last night. The ceremony went off pretty well, and clocked in at just over two hours, so it was much better than the Academy Awards.
As for the actual results, I'm pretty happy. The fiction prizes went to works that I'm at least OK with-- I didn't vote the McDonald novelette first, but I didn't hate it. John Scalzi gave Dave Langford a really good run for "Best Fan Writer," but Langford got more second and third-place votes than John…
bergman | September 1, 2007The Principles proprietor is currently at WorldCon where the Hugo awards are given out. This year's winners are available (among many other places, I'm sure) at Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden's blog. I wasn't a huge fan of Rainbows End myself. I did like "The Girl in the Fireplace", a Doctor Who episode. The writer, Steven Moffat, also wrote "Blink", this season's best episode.
bergman | September 1, 2007Taking a break from all this physics, I thought I'd talk a little about music and some related mathematical coincidences. One of the fundamental concepts of music is that of consonance and dissonance. Consonant things sound nice when played together and dissonant things do not. For example, if you play two Cs together on a piano (or your instrument of choice), it's a pleasing sound, but playing a C and an F# together sound unpleasant.
It could have been the case that what we find pleasing and displeasing on this simple level could be purely random, but our tastes align with a very elementary…