drorzel | June 14, 2007As a science fiction fan, when I see a dramatic headline like Computer Flaw Could Imperil Space Station, I can't help thinking of murderous AI's. Sadly, the real problem is much more prosaic:
The [International Space Station] depends on Russian and American computer systems to maintain the attitude of the station as it orbits the earth. The United States computer system runs the network of gyroscopes that provide stability, and the Russian system controls thrusters that correct the orientation of the station when the gyroscopes alone cannot do the job and shift position for operations like…
drorzel | June 13, 2007Another itme from yesterday's Inside Higher Ed that's worth a mention is a report about a new call for improved science teacher in the public schools:
The report by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) is distinguished from the many other recent reports on the subject, the forum's leaders said, by the group's emphasis as much on increasing the number of undergraduate majors in scientific fields as on getting more scientifically adept people into teacher preparation programs. One of its major initiatives is to double the number of college graduates earning degrees in science, technology…
drorzel | June 13, 2007His Holiness posts a YouTube video of a cartoon explanation of double-slit interference. Apparently this was made by the "What the Bleep" people, and it sort of shows in the gosh-wow tone that shades toward mysticism at the end.
As always with YouTube, though, the real fun is in looking at the related videos, which includes some total crap (a video talking about how to explain traditional Chinese medicine with quantum mechanics), but also this charming home demonstration from Down Under:
Fire and science: two great tastes that taste great together.
And, as long as I'm embedding things, a…
drorzel | June 13, 2007Bora's probably already aware of this, but the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies is currently underway in Minnesota. Like many professional society meeting, this has led to a giant blort of press releases on EurekAlert, as the PR office for the conference tries to drum up some attention.
The press releases in question came across my RSS feeds this morning, and they're notable for the "Well, DUH!" quality of the headlines:
College students who pull 'all-nighters' and get no sleep more likely to have a lower GPA
Students with medical-related majors more likely to…
drorzel | June 13, 2007As regular readers of this blog know, I'm a college basketball junkie. As far as I'm concerned, the NBA is just a giant methadone program to easy me into the summer, when there aren't any sports worth watching on tv. I'm a big fan of NCAA basketball, but I'm starting to think about how I can manage to watch it without funneling any money to the NCAA, who become more loathesome with every passing day.
The latest incident involves the ejection of a credentialed reporter for reporting on the game on his paper's blog:
Should the National Collegiate Athletic Association be able to demand that…
drorzel | June 12, 2007Clifford Johnson is pointing to a pair of stories about extrasolar planets. One is a news piece about the "flood" of new discoveries, and the other is a Top 10 list from space.com (warning: irritating web design).
This provides a good excuse to roll out a blog suggestion from Ron Walsworth, who pointed out a possible connection to the ultra-stable lasers that Jun Ye and Jim Bergquist talked about on the first day of last week's conference. He suggested that, in the future, these ultra-stable lasers may be useful not only for comparing clocks on Earth, but as a crucial reference to help detect…
drorzel | June 12, 2007The current tempest in the teapot of the academic blogosphere is the stalking of Scott Eric Kaufman. John Holbo has a decent summary, with links to most of the relevant original posts. The short form is this: Scott commented negatively on the "Jesus' General" blog about what he thought was an overreaction to a post by a Nashville blogger. As a result, he offended a commenter there, who responded by sending a bunch of letters to the administration of Scott's university accusing him of being a white supremacist. Things went downhill from there.
This whole episode is yet another sad example of…
drorzel | June 12, 2007Via the Little Professor, I learn that Geoffrey Chaucer can hath cheezburger.
For many dayes ich haue desyred to maak Lolpilgrimes from the smal peyntures that Mayster Linkferste hath ymaad for my Tales of Canterburye - not oonly wolde it be a thing of muchel solaas to me, but it wolde be a good "pre writing exercise" (the which myn tutor, Archbishop Arundel, did alwey saye were of gret necessitee). And thus to-daye whanne ich had a smal spot of tyme bitwene a meetinge wyth a feng shui consultant and a recopyinge of the inventorie of carpentrie supplyes in Windsore, ich did go unto the…
drorzel | June 11, 2007I need to disappear into a swamp of paper grading, exam writing, and committee meetings for a while, so here's a comment thread topic inspired by somebody else's typo:
Librarians or Libertarians?
I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm asking for-- it could be "Which of these groups have done more good for humanity?" or "Which of these groups is a bigger threat to the American way of life?"
Whatever you think the question is after, pick one of those two, and leave your choice in the comments. For bonus points, state what question you're answering.
drorzel | June 11, 2007One of the few glitches in the DAMOP meeting program was the way the poster sessions were run. For those from regions of academia that don't do poster sessions, it's pretty much what the name implies: rather than delivering short talks about their work, the presenters in the session prepare posters describing their work, and then stand near the poster to explain the results to people who wander by.
The problem with this specific poster session wasn't so much a program issue as a space issue-- the room the posters were in for the first two days had a large aspect ratio, being very long and…
drorzel | June 11, 2007Friday at DAMOP ended up being more about socialization than science. I went to a few talks, but there wasn't that much on the program that looked exciting, and I had to spend some time in the middle of the day grading papers and dealing with some panicky emails from students.
As a result, the highlights of the day mostly involved talking to people. I spent a little while talkinging to frequent commenter Perry Rice about his poster, and quantum optics in general. Ron Walsworth offered a couple of suggestions for blog topics, including a couple of applications of frequency combs to…
drorzel | June 10, 2007For the third year running, the after-dinner speaker at DAMOP was a politician-- a Canadian one, this time, former MP Preston Manning (who also has his own official web site). I was a little surprised to see him described as a "right-wing populist" because he sounded very reasonable, but on reflection, this is Canada, and a right-wing populist Canadian probably maps to a moderate Democrat in the US.
His talk was on "the importance of scientists being able to communicate with politicians and the public, and how we can do a better job at such communications." In other words, as Nathan Lundblad…
drorzel | June 10, 2007You know those guys you see getting on planes with big shoulder bags that couldn't possibly be made to fit in those little test boxes they put by the gates that everybody ignores? I'm one of them, for good reason: whenever I check luggage, something goes wrong.
Take yesterday, for example. I was out late Friday night, and we were scheduled for a two and a half hour layover in O'Hare airport in Chicago, and I just couldn't cope with the idea of lugging my big bag all over that deeply unpleasant airport (about which more later). The larger of my two bags was just full of dirty laundry and…
drorzel | June 8, 2007I was trying to think of something deep and meaningful to post today, but I've been in conference mode too long to do anything all that deep. So here's a simple binary choice for all the nerds in the audience:
Bosons or fermions?
It's a tough call after a few days of conferencing: On the one hand, I'm typing this Thursday night, and I'm about to head out to get a few more beers, so I can appreciate the sociable nature of bosons, but then again, another day of this, and I may not want to talk to anyone at all next week. Plus, fermions in a spin-polarized sample are absolutely forbidden from…
drorzel | June 7, 2007The highlight of Day 2 of DAMOP was, obviously, the special Undergraduate Research session. OK, it's possible that I'm only saying that because one of my students was talking in that session...
Mike did a really good job with his talk, though there were a couple of phrases in there that I would've preferred not to hear in the final talk... The other two talks that I heard were also excellent, and as the session chair said, if that's the future of science, the future looks good.
In the present of science, there were some really good talks in the morning sessions. Ian Spielman of NIST gave a…
drorzel | June 7, 2007Sort of in the same spirit as yesterday's summer reading post, another book-related question:
What's the best book you were ever forced to read for school? What's the worst?
The best, for me, is probably The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a sort of metafictional Vietnam novel in stories. I had a loaner copy of this when I took a class on Vietnam in my junior year of college, and after I returned it to the lending library, I went out and bought myself a copy to keep, because it was that good.
The worst book I was ever forced to read for a class has to be Beneath the Wheel by Herman Hesse…
drorzel | June 6, 2007With attendees still trickling in after Tuesday's storms upset pretty much every mode of travel in Alberta, the DAMOP meeting opened with the Plenary Prize Session, and the first two talks were probably the highlight of the day, as far as I was concerned. Jun Ye and Jim Bergquist both work in precision measurement, and do some astonishing things.
Jun Ye talked about experiments with ultra-stable lasers, including so-called "frequency combs" which are lasers with a huge range of evenly spaced modes. The frequencies of these modes are all multiples of a single frequency, so they can be used to…
drorzel | June 6, 2007Greetings from sopping wet Calgary, where thunderstorms and local flooding delayed my arrival until after midnight (2 am my time), which really put a damper on the 8am talks. I had meant to schedule some book-related posts to appear here while I'm gone, but I'm an idiot, and didn't select "Scheduled" from the posting status menu, so it didn't show up.
Now that I have stable Internet access, I'll post some physics stuff later on, but for the moment, here's a much shorter version of the book-related post I wanted to do today: There's a Joe Queenan essay in the New York Times Book Review from…
drorzel | June 5, 2007I'm off to the 38th annual meeting of the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the American Physical Society this week, which will be in Calgary, Alberta. Another province on the list of North American place I've visited...
I'm taking the tablet PC with me, so there may be some conferecne blogging, but I can't guarantee it. I'm going to schedule some book-related items, though, so there'll be some posts on the site even when I'm in Canada, and we'll start with this:
What do you tend to read on airplanes?
I've got a mental category that I think of as "airplane books"-- they…
drorzel | June 5, 2007Inside Higher Ed reports on a new study of RateMyProfessors showing that the ratings correlate well with "official" evaluations:
What if RateMyProfessors.com -- the site that professors love to hate -- is more accurate than they think? Or what if officially sanctioned student evaluations of faculty members -- which many professors like to contrast with RateMyProfessors.com -- are just as dubious as RateMyProfessors?
Those are questions raised by a new study by two professors at the University of Maine who compared the ratings on RateMyProfessors.com of 426 Maine instructors with the formal…