drorzel | April 26, 2007Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle got a nasty letter from a publisher over a blog post in which she reproduced a part of a figure and one data table from a paper. It's more than a little surprising to me that the publisher thinks this is a good use of their time, but who knows? Maybe they're overrun with "Editorial Assistants" and have them trolling through blogs in order to keep them out of the editors' hair.
Anyway, like most of the rest of the ScienceBlogs crowd, I think this is kind of ridiculous. One graph and one table certainly seems like it ought to fall under the "fair use" exception…
drorzel | April 25, 2007I'm currently on a committee that's investigating whether to switch to an honor code system for academic honesty issues, and possibly social violations as well. This is about as much fun as it sounds like.
For those not up on the internal practices of academia, schools with honor codes require students to sign a pledge promising to behave in accordance with community standards, and are expected to hold to that on their own honor. This is a popular system among snooty private colleges-- Williams has an academic honor code, which is part of why I was tapped for this committee-- and a few larger…
drorzel | April 25, 2007The other day, I was talking to our neighbor in the back, and she said "Your flowers are coming in really nicely."
"Um, thanks," I said, "but I sort of think those might technically be weeds..."
They are pretty, though:
Close-up below the fold:
Of course, even if they are weeds, I can't really complain, because the adjacent area of the yard looks like this:
One of these days, I'll probably end up paying somebody a great deal of money to make grass grow here. For the moment, though, scattering seed underneath the gigantic oak tree whose trunk is seen in that picture is my annual quixotic…
drorzel | April 25, 2007I have two labs on Tuesdays, which is even more exhausting than it sounds, so I went to be early last night. And woke up to find a whole new planet. You guys need to give me some warning about these things...
Anyway, the planet in question orbits a red dwarf star a mere 20 light years from Earth, has a mass of roughly five times that of Earth and an estimated radius half again Earth's (which would mean a bit more than double the surface gravity, for those planning to set SF stories there). It orbits its star in about 84 days, which seems pretty short, but is much slower then the previously…
drorzel | April 24, 2007From an all-campus email this morning:
A non-specific bomb threat was discovered overnight in [Building]. A note was discovered at 4:16 a.m. Following our emergency response plan, the Schenectady Police were immediately notified. A sweep of the building was conducted by the Schenectady Police, State Police and the Sheriff's Department and it was determined there was no immediate threat and the building was deemed safe to reopen for classes at 8 a.m.
However, in light of the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, we have decided to cancel or move all classes scheduled to meet this morning in […
drorzel | April 24, 2007Until I get around to making an iTunes run, I'm listening to the four-and-five-star playlist, which is much better fodder for the "Random Ten" thing than a bunch of filler tracks off really recent albums. We'll do this in guess-the-lyrics fashion because, well, because I can.
Despite the title, there are some absolute meatball songs on this list, that ought to be pretty easy to guess (1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 19, 20). There are also some things that are really damn near impossible-- I'll be absolutely stunned if anybody recognizes #16, and Google didn't turn up lyrics for #3 or #6..
Here's the list…
drorzel | April 24, 2007Another way of reading some of what I said last week would be as a statement that I would say something about the Virginia Tech killings, and what I think they mean in policy terms. This is really tough to do, in part because I still think it's kind of tacky to be making political points with this horrible situation, but mostly because there isn't much to say.
I mean, 33 people are dead because one kid was deeply and profoundly screwed up. I think it's the height of tacky to attempt to diagnose exactly how he was screwed up from the videos-- shades of Bill Frist and Terri Schiavo-- but it's…
drorzel | April 24, 2007An important discovery in Arkansas:
You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they ?"
Via James.
drorzel | April 23, 2007I usually listen to music on the computer using the "Party Shuffle" feature of iTunes on a playlist consisting of recently acquired music. It gives me a chance to get a good feel for new albums, and then when I'm at work or on the road, I listen to the four-and-five-star playlist.
I haven't bought much recently, though, so the playlist just clicked over to only one album, the new Fountains of Wayne record. Which just isn't that good-- it's not terrible, but it's not so good thhat I want to listen to it exclusively for any length of time.
So, what should I buy when I hit iTunes for new music…
drorzel | April 23, 2007SFWA, your source for train-wrecky goodness on the Internet has indirectly caused International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day:
On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn't matter if it's a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn't matter if it's already been published or if it hasn't, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood.
Here's the central index of free stuff, which doesn't include everything-- for example, Kate has posted her law review article-- but does include more than enough free professional-…
drorzel | April 23, 2007So, back when I was cussing a lot about the premature politicization of the Virginia Tech shootings, I threatened to give my real opinions on the subject of gun control on Monday. It's Monday, and I try to be good to my word, so, this is that post.
Dipping back into my shady past on Usenet, there's this old post, which turned up in .sigfiles for a while:
Actually, a smallish number of people with strong opinions and mind control powers would probably be the simplest possible explanation for the gun control debate, which typically involves critical reasoning diluted to near-homeopathic levels…
drorzel | April 22, 2007Whenever I post about the music I listen to, I get a comment or two from people commenting that they've never heard of any of the bands I talk about. This is always a little surprising to me, because I don't think I'm all that much of a High Fidelity type.
As proof, let me note that I really have never heard any of the albums on Bullz-Eye's list of The Fifty Best Albums You've Never, Ever Heard. I've never heard of any of the bands on their list. I don't think some of the people in those bands have ever heard these records...
(Link via jefitoblog.)
Any of you recognize any of these?
drorzel | April 22, 2007The highlighted article in Friday's Physical Review Letters is something Peter Woit has been going on about for months: "Cancellations Beyond Finiteness in N=8 Supergravity at Three Loops". It's been on the ArXiv for ages, but I'm old school, and don't think of papers as real until they're actually released in peer-reviewed journals.
The thing is, I'm really not sure what this means. That is, I know what the paper is about, but I'm not sure what the implications are.
My extremely limited understanding is that "N=8 supergraviy" is one of the early attempts at creating a theory of quantum…
drorzel | April 22, 2007I've seen several people link to the Scientific American piece on how to make your own "quantum eraser" experiment, which also includes a list of components and a detailed set of instructions, with pictures. There's a great "living in the future" kick to an article which assumes that you just have a laser lying around the house, and the basic demo is pretty cool.
The one quibble I have with this is that I think it's a bit of a stretch to call this a "quantum eraser."
The basic scheme here is that you take a laser, and diffract it off a small solid object taped between two perpendicular…
drorzel | April 21, 2007One of my Christmas presents was a small mileage/ speed calculator for my bike, because there are few activities that can't be improved by making them nerdier. Thus, I am able to report on today's ride:
Total Distance: 17.1 miles
Maximum Speed: 23.5 mph
Average speed: 13.4 mph
I'm actually a little surprised by the distance-- the bike path route to Lock 8 is longer than I thought. I checked the calibration against the posted mile markers, though, and while the readout is a little high, it's only off by about 6% (the above numbers are corrected figures).
Why am I posting this? Well, why not…
drorzel | April 21, 2007I went to school with a crazy person.
Well, OK, that in and of itself is not surprising, given the amount of schooling I have, and the subject I majored in. I almost certainly went to school with a lot of crazy people, and I can easily come up with several people who probably count as crazy in one way or another.
I can only think of one guy who was crazy in the manner that's on everybody's mind this week, though. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school, back in the mid-80's.
For a little while in seventh and eight grade, there was a group of kids in my school who used to regularly get…
drorzel | April 20, 2007There's a concert on campus this evening by Third Eye Blind, best known for the doo-doo-doo chorus of "Semi-Charmed Life" from about ten years ago. I wasn't aware that they were still together, but they're apparently here, and playing a show on the court where we usually play our pick-up basketball games.
When I was at Yale, one of their songs came up on the Internet radio thing I was listening to at the time, and one of the grad students in the group pegged them pretty accurately as a Car Radio Band: their better songs have a sort of doofy charm such that when you're driving alone, and they…
drorzel | April 20, 2007I want to see ample funding for scientific research, or failing that, at least adequate funding for scientific research. Good experiments should not have to go begging for research funding.
I want to see funding priorities set on scientific criteria, based on what projects and programs have the best chance of improving our knowledge of the universe. Research funding should not be redirected for ideological reasons, or to benefit politically connected contractors.
I want to see research scientists protected against undue infringemetns on their academic freedom to research topics of their…
drorzel | April 20, 2007Since I'm going to be voting for the Hugos this year, I feel obliged to actually read as many of the nominated books as possible, and Michael Flynn's Eifelheim was readily available, so I picked up a copy and read it a little while back.
The novel mixes two plot threads, one in a near-future setting, the other in medieval Germany in 1348, just before the Black Death. The modern thread concerns a couple of academics, a physicist studying new theories of time and space, and a historian looking into the mysterious abandonment of a place called "Eifelheim" in Germany. The medieval thread tells…
drorzel | April 20, 2007Via James Nicoll, a post he describes as "someone actively working in a particular field of science talk[ing] about how they went from embracing wingnuttery to more fruitful activities," in this case regarding the "Face on Mars."
Sadly, other than a couple of passing mentions (he name-checks Richard Hoagland and Carl Sagan, and mentions overdosing on Art Bell), there's very little detail about that transition. And, really, I think hearing the story of how the author went from believing in a real face on Mars to taking high-resolution pictures of the Cydonia plateau would be a lot more…