drorzel | July 17, 2006It's not as sexy as Strings 2006, but it's easier to understand what the talks are about: Nathan Lundblad is blogging from the International Conference on Atomic Physics in Innsbruck, Austria (the bastard). Posts so far:
First day introduction.
First day talk recaps.
(The latter includes the announcement of the [Norman] Ramsey Prize, "to be given to the first credible measurement of a nonzero electron EDM, with the caveat that it be done in his lifetime." For those not in the field, Ramsey is 91, so that's an important caveat...)
Now that I've plugged this, Nathan will no doubt crumble under…
drorzel | July 17, 2006As you know, Bob, clumsy exposition, particularly in the form of lengthy "infodump" sequences in which large quantities of information are blasted toward the reader in the manner of a shotgun or a firehose, is often held to be one of the hallmarks (or, perhaps, banes) of the SF genre (where "SF" means "speculative fiction," encompassing both "science fiction" and "fantasy"), which is why I was amused to discover the Little Professor (the nom de net of Miriam Burstein) discussing infodumps in Victorian literature, in response to a more general discussion of infodumping by Matthew Cheney,…
drorzel | July 17, 2006We get the Sunday New York Times delivered, because there's something infinitely more civilized about reading an actual paper than sitting at the computer browsing news stories on the Web. The message isn't any different, but the medium makes a difference. Also, I'm more likely to stop to read a story on paper than I am to click on a headline link in a page of links.
What with travel and all, I didn't have as much time as usual last weekend, so the Book Review ended up being set aside, and read this week. Two quick items from reading two weeks of the Times Book Review section back to back:
1…
drorzel | July 16, 2006
In the lecture hall yesterday, from left to right: A dewar of liquid nitrogen, a tube of racquetballs, a squeaky dog toy, a handful of yellow balloons, a vase of flowers, an inflated red balloon, an insulated glove, and a 4-liter jug of liquid nitrogen.
The dewars, the vase, the glove, and the dog toy survived the day.
More details, and video, tomorrow.
drorzel | July 16, 2006Slow blogging this weekend, as yesterday was taken up with activities that will be blogged about later. Today promises to be a sticky and unpleasant day outside, so I'll probably end up doing a lot of blogging in my nice, comfortable, air-conditioned home office. Of course, there's not much point in posting lots of stuff on a Sunday, so I'll probably just schedule posts for later in the week. But, you know, that's something to look forward to. Or something.
If you'd like a way to pass the time, Scott Aaronson has announced a Best Anthropicism Contest, to see who can come up with the best…
drorzel | July 14, 2006My plan was to spend yesterday and this morning doing deep and substantive blogging while sidelined by a medical test. That sort of fell through, which means I get to spend an extra day in the lab, but also means you get lazy blogging. And what could be lazier than the classic "Random Tracks from iTunes"?
My recent listening has been dominated by live tracks from the KBCO discs posted at jefitoblog-- there's some great stuff there, check it out. For the sake of this, though, I'll give you ten tracks from the four-and-five-star playlist, plus ten tracks from the entire music library, as a…
drorzel | July 14, 2006I was scheduled for a deeply unpleasant medical test yesterday, which I thought was going to leave me lots of time for blogging. yesterday afternoon and this morning. The preliminary test turned out to be so unpleasant (if anybody ever offers to stick a tube through your nose into your stomach, decline politely) that I didn't go through with the test, and, in fact, was kind of wiped out all last night. Hence, yesterday's light blogging, and today's lazy blogging.
One of the controversial things that China Miéville said on the Readercon panels I went to was to sort of dismiss the whole idea…
drorzel | July 14, 2006There's been some behind-the-scenes tweaking of the ScienceBlogs framework, which has caused some problems with commenting on other blogs (along with some other embarassing glitches, involving posts being blocked by spam filters, and fun stuff like that). I haven't heard any complaints here, but it's entirely possible that people have had comments blocked, and just given up in despair.
So, if you've had comments blocked by the system, please drop me a line (orzelc at steelypips dot org) and let me know. And if you've noticed anything else wrong with the site, this would be a good place to…
drorzel | July 13, 2006The Dean Dad, spinning off an article in the Chronicle, has some interesting thoughts on the economic benefits of colleges and universities:
Apropos of my minor obsession with the economic conditions in Northern Town, the Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story noting that the University of Rochester is now the largest employer in Rochester. A quick check on the always-reliable Wikipedia (I know, I know...) reveals that SUNY-Buffalo is the largest employer in Buffalo, and Syracuse University the largest employer in Syracuse. Binghamton University (a.k.a. SUNY-Binghamton) is the largest employer in…
drorzel | July 13, 2006Over at Backreaction, Bee has posted a fairly readable introduction to extra dimensions, including a sort of taxonomy of different models. If you're interested in that sort of thing, take a look.
It almost makes up for the dreadful visual pun from a little while back.
(There's other good stuff there, including a list of stupid paper titles, and a review of Peter Woit's book. There are worse ways to kill time than spending a few minutes poking around that blog.)
drorzel | July 12, 2006There are two main reasons why I don't write a great deal about politics here. The first, and most important, is that I tend not to like the way that I end up sounding when I go off on political topics. The second, only slightly less important, is that I rarely feel like I have anything worthwhile to add to the discussion that a hundred other homebrew pundits won't also say.
This is one of the exceptions. A good friend of mine from college-- the best man at my wedding-- is a journalist working for the French wire services in Baghdad. He sends occasional email updates about what's going on…
drorzel | July 12, 2006Over at Inside Higher Ed, there's an article by Laurence Musgrove on whether student writing has really gotten worse in recent years. He suggests a good mechanism for how faculty might be fooled into thinking so:
[...] I think the main difference between students then and now exists mostly in our heads, since in many cases what we are really doing is contrasting our students' experiences with our experiences in school. By that I mean, our expectations are pretty out of whack if we expect our students to be the kind of students we once were, because once upon a time we were the kind of…
drorzel | July 12, 2006Via Dave Sez, a Sports Illustrated columnist says that Zidane's head-butt was understandable because of all the flopping other players do:
So Zidane slammed a guy. He lost it. Writers all over the world are competing with themselves to heap scorn on France's greatest player. You know something? I don't blame him for getting sore. Almost every time I could find him on the screen, he had someone tugging at his shirt, tripping him or messing with him in some sneaky way.
The problem is he doesn't hit the canvas as the rest of those prima donnas do. So the ref must figure nothing is happening.…
drorzel | July 12, 2006An off-hand comment in my RHIC post has provided a lot more traffic and entertainment than I would've thought possible, and has also accidentally re-confirmed what we used to call "Furr's Law" back in my Usenet days-- namely, that the fastest way to get information on the Internet is to say something wrong, and let people rush to correct you. (Please note, I'm not saying I deliberately slighted string theory in order to discover RHIC resources-- I deliberately slighted string theory for the sake of a (not terribly effective) joke.)
Anyway, the responses have provided a wealth of String Theory…
drorzel | July 11, 2006Among other things, pointing me to silly bits of pop-culture ephemera that I haven't noticed before. Such as, for example, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny:
this is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see
and only one will survive, I wonder who it will be
this is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
(This is probably old news to those readers who spend more time watching silly Flash music videos than I do, but I only found out about it today, when some students put it on at the summer seminar series talks...)
drorzel | July 11, 2006Having spent the weekend at Readercon, I feel like I should talk about it a little. For those who have never been to a SF convention, it's not all people dressing up like space aliens and fairy princesses-- in fact, the cons Kate and I go to tend not to have all that much of the dress-up thing going on. Instead, they're run more like an academic conference, with lots of panel discussions on different topics relating to stuff in the genre. Why this happens is somewhat mystifying, when I stop to think about it, but it's entertaining enough in its way.
Anyway, I went to a handful of panels that…
drorzel | July 11, 2006Having spent the weekend at Readercon, I feel like I should talk about it a little. For those who have never been to a SF convention, it's not all people dressing up like space aliens and fairy princesses-- in fact, the cons Kate and I go to tend not to have all that much of the dress-up thing going on. Instead, they're run more like an academic conference, with lots of panel discussions on different topics relating to stuff in the genre. Why this happens is somewhat mystifying, when I stop to think about it, but it's entertaining enough in its way.
Anyway, I went to a handful of panels that…
drorzel | July 11, 2006This month's Physics Today has an article by Murray Peshkin on "Addressing the Public About Science and Religion", that is both a nice change of pace (as physicists don't do much of that sort of thing), and a reminder of why a lot of physicists don't do that sort of thing. It's not that he says anything stupid-- quite the contrary, his remarks are sensible and moderate. The problem is that, well, his remarks are sensible and moderate, and thus unlikely to please extremists at either end of the debate.
The key paragraph is probably:
Science and religion have different assumptions, different…
drorzel | July 10, 2006Rob Knop offers a nice discussion of the speed of light, in response to last night's question. This post is not about that, though you should go read it.
This post is about my odd reaction to Rob's title: "'Speed of Light' : a bad name for a great fundamental constant?" The notion of a "great fundamental constant" sort of suggests the possiblity of a not-great fundamental constant. Which leads to the extremely dorky poll questions:
What is your favorite fundamental constant?
What is your least favorite fundamental constant?
Post your answers in the comments (I'm too lazy to set up clicky-…
drorzel | July 10, 2006Via See You at Enceladus, a Canadian team has succeeded in making a flapping-wing airplane:
Yesterday Dr. James DeLaurier, an aeronautical engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies, fulfilled a lifelong dream, seeing his manned mechanical flapping-wing airplane, or ornithopter, fly ? a dream first imagined by Leonardo da Vinci.
And with the successful flight DeLaurier has been lucky enough to touch what many describe as the Holy Grail of aeronautical design, achieving a place for himself, his team of volunteers and students in aviation…