drorzel | March 13, 2012The thoroughly loathesome Rush Limbaugh is reaping the whirlwind from his latest gaffe (defined, of course, as any instance where a political figure shares his actual opinion with the public), with advertisers fleeing in droves. This has led to a good deal of chortling among the liberal types in my social media universe, but Kevin Drum finds a cloud to go with that silver lining:
And yet....there's an obvious slippery slope here. Lots of advertisers already shy away from political shows of every stripe, and this episode could begin to drive them all away. Why take the chance, even on a host…
drorzel | March 13, 2012I finally got a copy of Cox and Forshaw's The Quantum Universe, and a little time to read it, in hopes that it would shed some light on the great electron state controversy. I haven't finished the book, but I got through the relevant chapter and, well, it doesn't, really. That is, the discussion in the book doesn't go into all that much more detail than the discussion on-line, and still requires a fair bit of work to extract a coherent scientific claim.
The argument basically boils down to the idea that the proper mathematical description of a universe containing more than one fermion is a…
drorzel | March 13, 2012
Fair Is Foul, But Fouling's Unfair - The Triangle Blog - Grantland
I would always prefer that the trailing team receive an opportunity to tie the game by hitting a shot from the floor. It's superior in every way: It doesn't force anyone to awkwardly miss a free throw on purpose, it's more dramatic than a bunch of guys trying to convert an offensive rebound, it entails more skill than chance, and it seems closer to the core principles of the game (i.e., making shots on offense and not creating contact on defense). This being the case, I think the NCAA (and perhaps the NBA) should consider a…
drorzel | March 12, 2012The Links Dump item about software patents this morning includes a lament that there are so many silly little software patents, organized so badly, that finding one you might be infringing would take forever. This may or may not be a convincing argument against them, but for a physics geek like me, my first reaction was "You just need a quantum computer running Grover's algorithm for searching an unsorted database." And I suppose there's a background element for a satirical SF novel in that-- quantum computers ultimately being developed not by banks or the NSA, but by lawyers looking to speed…
drorzel | March 12, 2012
Opinion: The problem with software patents? They don't scale
Nathan Myhrvold, the Microsoft veteran who founded the patent-trolling giant Intellectual Ventures, loves to complain about the "culture of intentionally infringing patents" in the software industry. "You have a set of people who are used to getting something for free," he told Business Week in 2006. Myhrvold is right that patent infringement is rampant among software firms. But in demanding that this infringement stop, Myhrvold isn't just declaring war on what he regards as Silicon Valley's patent-hostile culture. He's declaring…
drorzel | March 10, 2012I've gotten out of the habit of booklogging recently, which is sort of a shame, because it means I've also gone back to the problem that led Kate and me to start booklogs in the first place: people ask what I've been reading recently, and I can't remember... As a sort of corrective to this, though, here's a post lumping together short comments on my three most recent reads: Karl Schroeder's Ashes of Candesce (excerpt at Tor.com), Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising (excerpt at Tor.com), and Myke Cole's Shadow Ops: Control Point (which isn't a Tor book, so they didn't do an excerpt).
Ashes of…
drorzel | March 9, 2012I had planned to catch up on blogging a bunch of things this afternoon, but I decided I needed a nap more than I needed to pump up the blog traffic. So, here's a cute-baby picture to make up for it:
This is The Pip, trying to figure out what's up with the little dude in the mirror in his portable crib. He had his four-month check-up this morning, and got a clean bill of health, other than some mild concern that he's a skinny little dude-- his weight has gone up, but down in percentile terms. SteelyKid had the same thing happen when she was little, and she's a solidly built preschooler these…
drorzel | March 9, 2012
Still not as bad as Division I revenue sports § Unqualified Offerings
Still, at the end of the day, there's at least some notion of accountability and standards behind the assessment movement. I don't think it's been a very effective effort at accountability and standards, but somebody somewhere was clearly pushing for standards. However, I haven't heard a peep about assessment in more than a year. I have, however, heard all about graduation rates. Now, they swear up and down that they want to raise standards while raising graduation rates, and they've even put token money toward pilot…
drorzel | March 8, 2012Yesterday was a really grueling day, and I'm home with The Pip today, so no substantive blogging. But here's a song about the universe, written and performed by one of my colleagues:
If this becomes the next LHC Rap, remember you heard it here first.
By a weird coincidence, we've been watching our Animaniacs DVD's with SteelyKid, and just a couple of days ago got to this one:
So that's not one, but two songs about the universe. Which ought to be enough to keep you entertained for the day.
drorzel | March 7, 2012So, the news of the moment in high-energy physics is the latest results being reported from a conference in Europe. The major experimental collaborations are presenting their newest analyses, sifting through terabyte-size haystacks of data looking for the metaphorical needle that is the Higgs boson.
And what are those results? It sort of depends on who you ask. Tommaso Dorigo points at the final data from the Tevatron and claims victory; Matt Strassler thinks the lack of evidence at the LHC is almost as important, though there is progress there in excluding some new regions. The net result is…
drorzel | March 7, 2012
Luis Alvarez: the ideas man - CERN Courier
Luis Alvarez - one of the greatest experimental physicists of the 20th century - combined the interests of a scientist, an inventor, a detective and an explorer. He left his mark on areas that ranged from radar through to cosmic rays, nuclear physics, particle accelerators, detectors and large-scale data analysis, as well as particles and astrophysics. On 19 November, some 200 people gathered at Berkeley to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Alumni of the Alvarez group - among them physicists, engineers, programmers and bubble-chamber…
drorzel | March 6, 2012The new book is out, which means it's time for lots of promotional efforts and links to radio shows and news articles and that sort of thing. Such as this one: I'll be talking about relativity and dog physics tomorrow night, Wednesday the 7th, on the Big Science radio program(me) at 9pm London time (in the frame of reference in which London is at rest, anyway). This'll be the first radio show for the new book, though I've done a few phone interviews for print publications (links as they become available...).
If you're in London, and have nothing better to do, tune in. (We are, after all, more…
drorzel | March 6, 2012My course on the history and science of timekeeping has reached the home stretch, with students giving presentations in class for the remainder of the term. My portion of the course was wrapped up with two lectures on "quantum timkeeping," as it were: a lecture on the development of quantum mechanics:
History of Quantum Mechanics
View more PowerPoint from Chad Orzel
And one on the development of atomic clocks:
A History of Atomic Clocks
View more PowerPoint from Chad Orzel
These are pretty fast-moving, but by this point in the course, students were already working on their final…
drorzel | March 6, 2012
Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"I honestly thought he was just playing up to the far-right voters, because that's what Republicans are supposed to do in the primaries," said Grand Rapids, MI resident Dan Banks, who explained he had dismissed as manipulative campaign rhetoric Santorum's assertion that President Obama would send Christians to the guillotine. "But now it's dawning on me that this guy means it, all of it. Every single thing he says is an accurate depiction of how he sees the…
drorzel | March 5, 2012The birth of The Pip required converting our spare bedroom into a nursery, which is a small price to pay for such a cute little dude. Other than the fact that we were using that room to store a lot of our paper books. Which means those need to move somewhere else, somewhere that is not inside our house.
The bulk of them will undoubtedly end up being donated to the local library book sale, but we are willing to ship them to good homes, homes that are willing to pay the cost of shipping. Kate has the details, and a list of the books being purged.
If you'd like some cheap books, mostly genre…
drorzel | March 5, 2012My timekeeping course this term is a "Scholars Research Seminar," which means it's supposed to emphasize research and writing skills. Lots of these will include some sort of poster session at the end of the term, but I decided I preferred the idea of doing in-class oral presentations. Having assigned that, of course, I felt I ought to give them a class with advice on how to give an oral presentation. I went looking for advice on this, and found that I wrote a guide to giving good PowerPoint lectures back in 2006 (God, I'm a blogging dinosaur...), which holds up pretty well. So, I dusted that…
drorzel | March 5, 2012
What the research says | National Numeracy
The Skills for Life survey (2011) measured the numeracy levels of 16 to 65 year-olds in England, finding that: 22% of the population (7.5 million adults) are working at Level 2 or above - roughly equivalent to A*-C at GCSE - compared with 26% (8.1million adults) in 2003. The comparable figures for literacy are 57% of the population (19.3 million adults) in 2011 and 44% (14 million adults) in 2003.
What's the matter with white people? - 2012 Elections - Salon.com
Both the right and left suddenly have a lot of complaints about white people,…
drorzel | March 4, 2012
When There's More To Winning Than Winning : NPR
When last we left the NCAA, it was February madness, colleges were jumping conferences, suing each other, coaches were claiming rivals had cheated in recruiting -- the usual nobility of college sports. And then, in the midst of all this, the men's basketball team at Washington College of Chestertown, Md., journeyed to Pennsylvania to play Gettysburg College in a Division III Centennial Conference game. It was senior night, and the loudest cheers went to Cory Weissman, No. 3, 5 feet 11 inches, a team captain -- especially when he walked out onto…
drorzel | March 3, 2012
Making Light: Whisperado: Video! Release party! Free association!
Now available on YouTube: the video for Whisperado's "Teenage Popstar Girl." Song written by Sobel / Nielsen Hayden / Mills. Video concept and direction by Dan Azarian. Whisperado does not normally perform in black suits and ties. Contents may settle during shipping. Contains nuts.
On Making Yourself Right - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic
What you are left with is the obvious fact of a human being: confronted with his participation in an immoral act, doubling down on immorality. Accused of deception, he elects to…
drorzel | March 2, 2012
UPDATED X 6: YOU'RE RUINING NATHAN FILLION FOR ME, NATHAN FILLION. Alternate title: But I forgive you. -- TheBloggess.com
Conversation with my friend, Maile... me: Sooo...Nathan Fillion is making me doubt my own existence. Maile: Um...what? me: I've been asking him for a picture of himself holding twine for almost a year now, and he refuses to acknowledge me or the thousands of other people asking for twine pictures. Maile: Why exactly are thousands of people asking him for twine pictures? me: It's sort of a long story.
Patriarchy, modesty and training up children: Who are the babies? Â…