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Fleur

A flower -- can anyone identify the species? (I have a guess as to its identity but I might be wrong). Image: David Harmon. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if…

Lizards

The lava lizard, hitching a ride on the marine iguana was on Isabela Island in the Galapagos. The photographer says, "I think the iguana is saying 'scratch a little to the right, little more, YES! Perfect.' " Image: Annie. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice…

Beetles

Unknown beetle species on wild prickly rose at the photographer's house in Eagle River, Alaska 25 June 2006 using a Canon 5D, with a 100mm macro lens. Image: David Lee. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them…

Appreciate Your Sistahs Week

Thanks, Cheri, for making me smile. Reasons that it is good to be a woman: 1. We got off the Titanic first. 2. We can scare male bosses with the mysterious gynecological disorder excuses. 3. Taxis stop for us. 4. We don't look like a frog in a blender when dancing. 5. No fashion faux pas we make could ever rival the Speedo. 6. We don't have to look at the opposite sex to amuse ourselves. 7. If we forget to shave, no one has to know. 8. We can congratulate our teammate without ever touching her rear end. 9. We never have to reach down every so often to make sure our…

Pay To Work Hard at Science Camp

Chad asks if we could charge grown-ups for fantasy science camps... I suppose idle millionaire trips to the International Space Station don't count, because, er, they don't actually do any science up there... but, as always astronomy leads the way: I happen to know that the Carnegie Institute (west coast edition), as part of their centennial function, had an auction of various astronomy related things, and one was to accompany a senior researcher (and I hope some postdocs to, like, actually do the work) on an observing run to Hawaii (I want to say Keck, but I'm not sure); it sold, for a lot…

in which I create alife...

Avida is Caltech's Digital Life Laboratory "auto-adaptive genetic system". I first came across it when I heard one of the DLab researchers (Adami, I think) give talk at Astrobio'04. Thought it was neat. And filed under "check it out sometime". The recent discussion on evolution and synthetic life made me think of it again, so I visited the DLab website, and behold, there is an Avida executable for the Mac. 5 minutes later I am command of my own 100x100 world, running a 10,000 generation mutation and adaption experiment - few thousand generations in I see 12 surviving lineages, and it looks…

Nuclear Compton Telescope crashes on launch

NASA loses a balloon in the outback The Nuclear Compton Telescope (PI Boggs at UCB's SSL), a soft γ-ray telescope designed for balloon launch, observations in the stratosphere, and recovery, crashed because of a wind gust during an attempted launch in Australia earlier today. ABC News (Oz) on youtube NCT is an wide field imaging telescope with polarization capability. Science goals were galactic nuclear emission lines for studies of nuclear synthesis in supernovae, and γ-ray polarization studies. It flew last year out of the SFBF in New Mexico - guess they were going after southern…

iPod iChing - Lifes of the Phoenix

Still friday mountain high, and proposal season is finally over, for now. So we bounce to the Mighty iPod and ask breezily: will Phoenix dig up evidence for life at last? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Þá líður okkur vel - Hemmi Gunn The Crossing: Le Glace Au Citron - Henri Des The Crown: Like Cockatoos - Cure The Root: Goalhanger - Billy Bragg The Past: Yellow Submarine - Beatles The Future: Peter Prepares to Catch the Wolf - Prokoviev The Questioner: Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus - Half Man Half Biscuit The House: Revolution Rock - Clash The Inside: La Fourmi Amoureuse…

iPod iChing - school's out...

Last friday! And, somewhere, it is snowing. So, we skip joyfully to the Mighty iPod, and ask, intrepidly: what interesting things are we in for this summer? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Orgasm Addict - Buzzcocks The Crossing: III Menuetto & Trio - Mozart The Crown: Know Your Rights (Live) - Clash The Root: And She Was - Talking Heads The Past: Sgt Rock (Is Going to Help Me) - XTC The Future: Senses Working Overtime - XTC The Questioner: Trust - Billy Bragg The House: Why, Oh Why - Woody Guthrie The Inside: Vizka Einsteins - Utangarðsmenn The Outcome: Death of a…

economist catfight

First Krugman makes a snarky comment about the grownups coming (though I seem to have heard that one before, a few years ago, how did that work out?). Then Greg Mankiw gets all in a snit about it. So, Krugman has to apologise, sort of. Ok, I start to see some of the disadvantages of non-pseudonymous blogging for academics. But, that is now what is interesting about this. What is interesting about this is that Greg Mankiw points to a standard ranking of economists' academic accomplisments, and compares positions. 'course Krugman outranks Mankiw... shouldn't it stop there? But, we're not done…

Rhabdophis tigrinus

The Asian snake, Rhabdophis tigrinus, obtains toxins from toads it eats and uses the potent chemicals as a defense against predators, according to a new study. Image: Old Dominion University, Alan Savitsky. [much larger image] As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a…

Grunion

Grunion spawning (California). The photographer writes; Here's a fresh fish foto -- this is from last week's run, the first (official) of the season. It was a great run. More pictures from last week's run. Image: Carl Manaster. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a…

Gulf Fritillaries

Gulf Fritillaries, Agraulis vanillae, mating in Houston. The butterflies were swarming the garden at the W. 11th St. Park. Image: Biosparite, 2006. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-…

Velvet

These are from a 1988 trip to the Grand Canyon, taken by my father Charles. They rafted down the river -- mind you, they were 66 at the time! Image source: Charles, the father of a regular reader. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these…

Stork

The Storm's stork, Ciconia stormi, is the most threatened bird species found so far - there may be only 250 left in the wild. (Sumatra, Indonesia) Source: BBCNews. As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in…

Pope says it's all our fault

The Pope has become an environmentalist, and he has figured out who is causing all our ecological difficulties: the atheists. Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the 'final authority,' and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible. Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, has a pithy reply. This is rich coming from the leader of…

Fatal work injury that killed Tim Cooper, 49, was preventable, OSHA cites Independence Tube

Tim Cooper’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings from OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer Independence Tube. The 49 year-old was working in October 2015 at the company’s plant in Decatur, Alabama. The initial press reports indicated that Cooper was struck by a 6,000 pound steel coil. I wrote about the incident shortly after it occurred. OSHA issued citations against Independence Tube for four serious violations. The company paid a $17,290 penalty. The violations included failure to have an effective lockout/tagout program and appropriate…

Fatal work injury that killed John Dunnivant was preventable, OSHA cites Kia Motors

John Dunnivant’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s citations against his employer, Kia Motors. The 57-year old was working in October 2014 at the company’s plant in West Point, Georgia. The initial press reports indicated that Dunnivant was crushed by a stamping machine in the steel-press section of the facility. I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press. Inspectors with federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the facility following the fatal incident. The agency recently issued citations…

My House is a Wasp Condom

I lost the battle against the wasp nest: no matter how many workers I vacuumed, it still hung on. And now our house is full of groggy young queen wasps. It seems that the last thing a wasp nest does before shutting down for good is discharge a bunch of queens who will hibernate and then start new nests come spring. But these queens are racing into a trap. The nest has two main exits. One out into the chilly open air. The other into the comfy warmth of the Rundkvist household. And we haven't been able to locate and stop up the latter opening. So when one of these young ladies is set to leave…

Hairyplanes

A little while ago, I ventured into aircraft CO2, and as good as said that the climate impact of aircraft fuel use should be weighted up by a factor of 2-3 because of various side effects: I thought of water vapour being dumped in the stratosphere. It turns out I'm wrong on that: at the altitudes planes fly at that effect is small, and the extra radiative forcing is dominated by ozone (via NOx) and contrails. There is lots of uncertainty, but a figure of about *3 for the radiative forcing is plausible. The govt website http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/index.html says it uses a factor of two. But…

Pix wanted

Sciblogs has channels (e.g env, which is where I live, except for posts like this, which go onto chatter) and they are looking for new pix to adorn the banners, which will rotate on a weekly basis. The instructions are: "It's not too hard: the image needs to be at least 465 pixels wide. Readers should send their photos to photos@scienceblogs.com. They should send only photos that they have the rights to (eg, photos they have taken themselves), and they should include a line of text to the effect that we have permission to use their photo on ScienceBlogs. They should also add how they'd like…

Weekend Fun

Been a while since I wrote one of these. Here's what I did for fun this past weekend. Attended an afternoon scifi mini-convention at the Tech Museum, organised by my dear old Tolkien Society buddy and gaming group regular Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf. I heard good talks by journalist Jörgen Städje, scifi scholar Dr. Jerry Määttä, and gaming giants cum fantasy novelists Erik Granström and Anders Blixt. And I gave a talk of my own on the prevalence of time-travel evidence in the archaeological record. Played Settlers of Catan and Qwirkle. I rarely get Settlers to the table because unlike me…

Hot times in the Solar System

"The warming of other solar bodies has been seized upon by climate sceptics; but oh how wrong they are, says Oliver Morton". But then he is writing in that dodgy rag Nature, so what does he know? "If the shooting of fish in barrels offends you, look away. The publication this week of a Nature paper on global warming on Mars offers a fantastic opportunity to kill off one of the silliest climate-sceptic arguments, and I'm more than happy to be pointing the gun at the water. The sceptical 'argument' -- using the word loosely -- in question is that global warming on Earth should be seen as a…

Skeletons in the Closet

I'm not really a big fan of digging way into the past for embarassing or otherwise damning quotes to bring up in a present day campaign. With John McCain there really is not much need for it anyway, he is a hypocritical emarrassment (IMHO). But this really repulsive bit of history (h/t to CrooksAndLiars) does not seem like the kind of thing that you can dismiss or minimize due to unknown context or the passage of time. According to a report (from 1986 no less! [PDF]) John McCain made the following repulsive attempt at a joke: Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the…

Highway to hysteria

I swear, they're trying to see how stupid they can get before my head explodes. Read Isaiah 35:8: And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. Obviously, to any brain-dead literal-minded pismire of an evangelical Christian, that is a reference to I-35, the interstate that cuts through Minnesota and Texas. Obviously. Never mind that unclean PZ Myers has driven on it quite often, or that this is the road with the bridge that collapse,…

Weekend Diversion: Street Fighter, The Later Years

"My strength is much greater than yours!" -Zangief, Street Fighter II I hope everyone had as great a halloween as I did, and -- although I know it's sad -- it's time to bid a fond farewell to my Zangief avatar that once graced the top this blog. To be honest, I'll miss Zangief quite a bit. Image credit: Capcom / IGN, retrieved from http://www.torontothumbs.com/. But that doesn't mean that we can't reminisce about Street Fighter II every now and again, and that I didn't enjoy this tremendous nine-webisode-miniseries by CollegeHumor about what's happened to each of my favorite characters…

Two Odd Examples of Pre Ebola "Ebola"

I used Google N-gram Viewer to inspect the occurrence of the word "Ebola" in the Google-indexed literature. A few instances of Ebola came up earlier than the disease being known, so I figured they were references to the place name in Zaire/Congo, after which the disease is named. And that was in fact the case. But, of handful of early instances I checked out, two were interesting. The Ngram is above. Note that I have smoothing set to zero, which I recommend, and I've got the date set for early on in the use of the term so pre-disease uses are more visible. The two interesting instances I…

Clay Higgins: McCarthyism

Scientists are now being subjected to unbridled McCarthyism. Eventually the transcript will be available, but for now you'll have to just trust me on this. Congressman Clay Higgins, Republican on Lamar Smith's alt-Science committee, demanded today to know if climate scientist Michael Mann (author of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, and By Michael E. Mann - Dire Predictions, Second Edition: Understanding Climate Change">this book…

Editing Out Diseases with the Help of Bioengineering

I get a lot of "infographics" and many are quite good. But this medium has become a vehicle for commercial advertising. So, some company comes up with an info graphics, maybe makes a good one, sends it around to the bloggers and such, and thier name, somewhere down there near the bottom, gets around. I don't mind the commercial aspect too much, but unless I'm able to vet the graphic, I can't post it, I don't generally have time or resources to do that, so I therefore ignore them. But this one I'll post because it looks interesting and is produced by a university. Also, we often discuss GMOs…

The CS Detective by Jeremy Kubica

The CS Detective: An Algorithmic Tale of Crime, Conspiracy, and Computation by Jeremy Kubica is the tory of disgraced ex-detective and hardboiled private eye Frank Runtime. Frank Runtime knows REGEX and is not afraid to use it. From the publishers: When a robbery hits police headquarters, it's up to Frank Runtime and his extensive search skills to catch the culprits. In this detective story, you'll learn how to use algorithmic tools to solve the case. Runtime scours smugglers' boats with binary search, tails spies with a search tree, escapes a prison with depth-first search, and picks locks…

The Toughest Repair Job

Sometimes, it isn't just what's broken or how badly it's broken, but location can turn a trivial job into a virtually impossible one. Take the last shuttle repair mission to Hubble, for example. This mission caused all sorts of records to be set, including the longest spacewalk ever! What caused the tremendous setback? A stuck bolt. No kidding. All-in-all, the servicing took five separate spacewalks of many hours each. A nice writeup of the difficulty of these repairs is given by Julianne here. Consider this: if the telescope were on the ground, all repairs could easily have been done in…

Brain doping can be good for you

Shelley has a good post on the biology of ADHD—the lesson, once again, is that the mind is regulated by physical and chemical processes, and we're learning more and more about how seemingly nebulous, fuzzy, higher level functions of thought can be traced back to relatively simple material causes. The basic story is that norepinephrine is the molecule behind ADHD, and that what the stimulants given to people do is increase the effective concentration of NE. I've never been a victim of ADHD — as a kid, I'd say I was more often characterized as being the extreme opposite of what we see in ADHD…

Be a Lego Stud: The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide (new edition)

The other day I reviewed a guide to using the very high end Lego Technic system. Here, I've got a book that addresses the needs of those at the other end of the Lego Spectrum: The Unofficial LEGO Builder's Guide By "other end of the spectrum" I do not mean unsophisticated or easy, I simply mean no electrical gizmos and not too many gears and things. For example, you might use this guide to build a very realistic scale model of the Space Shuttle or a cool Train Station with People waiting for the Train model. Or, perhaps, a house with a chimney. But a really cool one. If you've not…

Breaking News: Virginia Supreme Court on Academic Freedom at UV [UPDATED]

UPDATED: Interview with Michael Mann on this court decision (and other matters). An important Virginia Supreme Court finding came out today, related to the hugely complicated maneno that I feel totally unqualified to explain to you ... but Michael Halpern of the Center for Science and Democracy is: The Supreme Court of Virginia today found unanimously in favor of the University of Virginia in its attempt to protect its employees from unwarranted intrusions into their privacy through the commonwealth’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). In doing so, the Court rebuffed efforts by the American…

Viking Imagery Contested On Pizza Box

A buddy & colleague of mine took this picture in an Eslöv pizza place, commenting drily that it's a fine example of how the cultural heritage can be used. We've got Thor's hammer, we've got two cartoon Vikings, we've got Swedish flags, and note the three yellow crowns on a blue background: the arms of the Kingdom of Sweden, a strong nationalist statement. Rural Eslöv municipality is one of the anti-immigration Swedish Hate Party's strongholds, with 22% of the vote in the last election. Vikings and Scandinavian Paganism are of course much beloved by the extreme Right, and stylewise the…

Minister to admit failure on key climate change emissions target

Said the headline in this mornings Grauniad. And by the evening it had become Labour fails on climate change on the Grauniad blog; though the spin was Beckett unveils new measures to cut CO2 or Climate change programme unveiled. And similar from the BBC. How to read this? Labour clung stubbornly to its 20% target through 3 general elections; only now its become quite implausible have they retreated, a bit, to a 15-18% cut (note that this would still satisfy our Kyoto obligations). I'd be somewhat surprised if they make that, unless fuel prices keep going up. Speaking of which, one of those…

Consolidating Aard's Subscriber Base on Google Reader

Google Reader is an excellent blog reader, among whose strengths is that it resides somewhere off your computer. This means that you can read blogs from several machines without having to mark a lot of old entries as read. Nor do you have to subscribe to the same feed more than once. Looking at Aard on Google Reader, I've found that the blog has quite a number of subscribers there, but that they are spread across a number of different feed addresses. Dear Reader, I have a request for you. Could you please make sure that you subscribe to Aard on Google Reader with the following official feed…

Norwegians Grade Archaeology Journals

The other day I took a look at how the European Science Foundation's ERIH project grades journals in Scandy archaeology. Dear Reader Ismene pointed me to a corresponding list put out by the NDS, "Norwegian Data Support for the Social Sciences". While ERIH recognises three impact grades plus ungraded journals, the NDS has only two grades plus ungraded. Here's the list of relevant journals. Grade 2 Acta Archaeologica Fennoscandia Archaeologica Norwegian Archaeological Review Grade 1 Current Swedish Archaeology Fornvännen Journal of Danish Archaeology Journal of Nordic Archaeological Science…

Mostly Mute Monday: Lifting The Cosmic Veil (Synopsis)

“No matter how ‘normal’ people look, living ‘ordinary’ lives, everyone has a story to tell. And may be, just like you, everyone else is a misfit too.” -Sanhita Baruah Every century or so, possibly even more frequently, a supernova goes off somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. While the explosion itself is only visible for a few months, the remnant sticks around for many thousands of years. Although it isn't always visible in the portion of the spectrum our eyes are sensitive to, X-rays, Ultraviolet light, infrared and radio observations bring them to life. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, GALEX…

How to soar on Venus (Synopsis)

“I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.” -Pete Docter So, you want to colonize another world, do you? Want to send humans to go live somewhere new, on a habitable planet beyond Earth? Well you're not alone. But which planet will you choose? Will it be Mars, a smaller, colder, farther-out world than our own? Where perhaps you add a magnetic field, a thicker…

What the hell are Baryon Acoustic Oscillations? (Synopsis)

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.” -Philip K. Dick When it comes to measuring the expansion history of the Universe, the concept is simple enough: take something you know about an object, like a mass, a size, or a brightness, then measure what the mass, size or brightness appears to be, and suddenly, you know how far away that object has to be. Image credit: European Space Agency, NASA, Keren Sharon (Tel-Aviv University) and Eran Ofek (CalTech). Add in a measurement of the object's redshift, and you can figure out not only what the expansion rate of the…

Throwback Thursday: The Camera that changed the Universe (Synopsis)

“That I learned even as a three year-old that I see this world that is really a mess and I learned to say, ‘This is not me. I am not the one that is messed up. It is out there.’” -Story Musgrave It was 25 years ago this year that the Hubble Space Telescope first opened its eyes on the Universe. It wasn't as you might've expected, all that impressive. For one, there were flaws in the optics of the primary mirror, and for another, the camera we installed on it was, I hate to say it, pretty lame. Image credit: NASA, of the first Hubble servicing mission. But in 1993, a servicing mission was…

Ask Ethan #68: Choosing your (professional) life (Synopsis)

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” -Wayne Dyer We all can think back to that moment that happened where we knew our lives would be forever different, right? To that one moment in our past where we suddenly knew what it was that we wanted to be, what we wanted to do, what that special career move defining us would wind up becoming. Image credit: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Season 1 Episode 23. You know, that moment where you figure out what your special talent/passion is. Only, that isn't how real life works! It's actually a…

Weekend Diversion: The Universe in your home (Synopsis)

“I’m coming back in… and it’s the saddest moment of my life.” -Ed White, at the conclusion of the first American spacewalk, June 3, 1965 Adventures are funny things: we look forward to them, we enjoy them to the fullest while we're on them, and then we revel in the experience of having had them once they're behind us. But there are some adventures, as Steve Earle would sing you, that are Somewhere Out There, that we'll never experience for ourselves. I'm talking, for the most part, about the far reaches of deep space. Image credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI), C. R. O’Dell (…

Larry King Live and Stupid

Barbara Forrest was on Larry King Live tonight in one of the most absurd discussions of evolution and intelligent design imaginable. For some reason, they had a huge list of guests - a young earth creationist, Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute, Barbara, two senators (one on each side) and - bizarrely - Deepok Chopra. What the hell Chopra was doing there is beyond me. And just to give you a perfect example of why the media is the last place to look for accurate information on this subject, Larry King introduced Barbara with the question, "How can you reject creationism completely because…

Science is what made America great (Synopsis)

"Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for each other did not come before the love of their country." -David Scott You can't make America great 'again' without looking at what made us great in the first place. It wasn't industry or manufacturing or our morals or our military might; it was our investment in science, research and development that gave us the capabilities to do the extraordinary. Mendelian genetics underlie the science of inherited traits, and are essential to choosing the best agricultural crops. Public domain image by…

Why cosmic inflation's last great prediction may fail (Synopsis)

“The paradigm of physics — with its interplay of data, theory and prediction — is the most powerful in science.” -Geoffrey West Cosmic inflation, our earliest theory of the Universe and the phenomenon that sets up the Big Bang, didn't just explain a number of puzzles, but made a slew of new predictions for the Universe. In the subsequent 35 years, five of the six have been confirmed, with only primordial gravitational waves left to go. Image credit: NASA / WMAP science team. Inflation predicts that they could be large or small, but based on the simplest classes of models and the measured…

links for 2007-10-15

Friends, not policies, win elections - Physics World - physicsworld.com I am shocked-- shocked!-- to learn that voters don't always elect the candidate woth the best policies. (tags: politics physics stupid journals) C. Sample Citation and Introduction to Citing Blogs For those times when you want to use a LOLcat in a Science article... (via Neurophilosophy) (tags: blogs academia journals) Pure Pedantry : Crazy Useful Paper on Statistics Error bars, their use and misuse. (Months old, because I'm clearing some old stuff out of my RSS reader in advance of Big Changes) (tags: math science…

Maryland at Duke

My Terps lost to the hated Dukies 77-65 last night, in a game I barely watched. Vitale and Patrick had the call, and were their usual intolerable selves, and I needed to do some cooking for today's physics department luncheon, so I was in the kitchen more than in front of the tv. A few observations based on what I did see: -- This was a really simple game, and the box score reinforces my impression. Duke couldn't hang with the Maryland big men down low, Maryland's big men couldn't guard their Duke counterparts on the perimeter, and Maryland's guards have judgement issues. When your back court…

Everything Is Better With Experimental Physicists

In my write-up about the Hidden Dimensions panel, I mentioned in passing that: I also would've liked to see an experimental physicist up there, to provide a little more grounding about what the actual problems are, and how you might hope to look for something. But then, I always think there should be more experimental physicists involved in everything. I'm going to be traveling today, so I thought I would throw up a filler post offering a list of things that would be improved by the inclusion of an experimental physicist. Then I realized that that would be kind of difficult, as everything is…