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Reader Request: Graphene

Last week's Reader Request Thread produced a bunch of good suggestions, some of which I'll be responding to this week as I put the last touches on the book draft and send it off. We'll start with a good physics question from Moshe: So, what do you think about graphene? the next big thing, or just the latest fad? Doug might be a better person to answer this, as it's a little closer to his field. It's unquestionably the latest fad, the question is whether it's a fad with legs or not. Graphene, for those not up on the subject, is basically just carbon in one-atom-thick sheets. It's two-…

Links for 2010-07-17

News: Technologically Illiterate Students - Inside Higher Ed "The assumption that today's student are computer-literate because they are "digital natives" is a pernicious one, Zvacek said. "Our students are task-specific tech savvy: they know how to do many things," she said. "What we need is for them to be tech-skeptical." Zvacek was careful to make clear that by tech-skeptical, she did not mean tech-negative. The skepticism she advocates is not a knee-jerk aversion to new technology tools, but rather the critical capacity to glean the implications, and limitations, of technologies as they…

Links for 2010-06-04

slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 2 "I'm being too polite here. I need to state this more vigorously because I need to put it in a way that will make my accusers fruitfully angry. So let me try this: The Bible is not a book about homosexuality and it will not allow itself to be treated as a book about homosexuality. Nor is the Bible a book about sex. But the Bible is, in fact, very much a book about wealth, possessions and the poor. That is not the central theme, but it is a massively important theme that pervades every portion of the book. If you don't agree with that then I don't know…

Links for 2010-06-02

BOOK EXPO AMERICA LUNCHEON TALK "The Future, capital-F, be it crystalline city on the hill or radioactive post-nuclear wasteland, is gone. Ahead of us, there is merely...more stuff. Events. Some tending to the crystalline, some to the wasteland-y. Stuff: the mixed bag of the quotidian. Please don't mistake this for one of those "after us, the deluge" moments on my part. I've always found those appalling, and most particularly when uttered by aging futurists, who of all people should know better. This newfound state of No Future is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It indicates a kind of…

Alternate History of Physics

Kind of an arcane philosophical point, here, so I'll be a little surprised if anybody responds, but this occurred to me while writing the previous post, and I thought I'd throw it out there. In the previous post, I quoted Feynman's one sentence for the future: Everything is made of atoms. and suggested as an alternative: Light is both a particle and a wave. Part of the idea behind these is that the sentences would allow people who had received that bit of information as Revealed Truth to reconstruct much of modern physics. If you take seriously the idea that material objects are made of…

Lousy feedback analogy

It has come up in the comments a couple of times now, so I would like to state for the record that the following is a lousy analogy of a negative feedback. As far as I know, Richard Lindzen came up with this in his speech at the recent Heartland climate sceptic conference. The analogy is this: In your car, the gas and brake pedals act as negative feedbacks to reduce speed when you are going too fast and increase it when you are going too slow. (You can find Lindzen's presentation, with that quote in it, at WUWT) Lindzen goes on to imply that the climate models act like a car with the brake…

Dodos triumphant!

Ah, I'm back home again, and just in time…the snow started falling just as I crossed the Morris city limits. I was at the Minneapolis screening of Flock of Dodos, and they had a big crowd at the Bell Museum auditorium, including many of the usual suspects in the struggle against creationism in our state. Greg Laden has posted a review, and so has David Wilford (and I agree—this would be an excellent movie to show at a con). Everyone seemed very positive about it. The discussion afterwards was great, too—movie theaters ought to do this everywhere, setting aside a block of time after a showing…

The falcon eats tonight ...

My car was parked a block away owing to the plethora of construction equipment and dumpsters around the house. On my way over, I was looking at the storm clouds coming in and wondering what kind of weather we would have tonight, when I noticed the crows going nuts across the street. It sounded to me like they were mobbing something, and my first thought in these situations is "Great Horned Owl." So I stood in the gathering breeze and watched in the direction of the crows to figure out what was going on. Suddenly I spied rapid alate movement among the mid size trees and shrubbery of the…

Gun Nut Kills Three Cops in Pittsburgh

You have probably heard about the shooting in Pittsburgh. The details are still sketchy, but word on the street is that the shooter, who killed three cops, was upset about a law placing some restrictions on gun ownership. He was also upset about secret government activities that "they are not telling us about." Do what extent does Gun Nut = Paranoid Maniac who should not be trusted near firearms? UPDATE: Police chief Nate Harper says the motive for Saturday's shooting isn't clear. Friends say the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and that he feared the Obama administration…

Coleman rests, pays fine, asks Judges to overturn election.

Norm Coleman had to pay a $7,500 fine yesterday for failure to disclose important evidence in the 26 day long Franken-Coleman Senatorial Election Challenge Trial. The plaintiff, Coleman, also claimed in a written statement to the court that since the number of illegal votes cast in this election exceeds the narrow margin of difference between the two candidates (which has Franken as the winner), the election needs to be set aside. However, Coleman has failed to show that any votes were actually cast illegally, or to make any compelling legal argument that this extraordinary request be…

Starbucks Awash in Accusations by Water Watchers

But is it fair? Normally, I enjoy seeing Starbucks get slammed by pretty much anybody, for the usual reasons. But this time I'm wondering if we have a case of environmentalists being narrow minded, near sighted, and dumb. A group identified by the BBC as an "environmental group" called "Water UK" claims that Sarbucks is wasting water by running the cold water tap in each establishment continuously. Starbucks claims that this tap is running a particular cleaning system through which water must flow continuously, and that the tap is not at very high pressure. No one has explicitly stated…

The Big Debate!

You always remember your first! I have now participated in my very first debate about evolution and creationism. Earlier today I was a guest on Harry Allen's radio show, where I discussed things with Sean Pitman, who maintains this pro-ID website. “Discussed” is a polite term for what transpired. The first segment was cordial enough. Things got more heated in the second segment, during which Sean and I were often talking over each other. Not so informative, perhaps, but probably good for ratings. Let me know how I did! Click here for the audio. But don't tell me I say “y'know” too…

Chess in the Schools?

Just a quick post today, so have a look at this essay by Alex Beresow, over at Real Clear Science. He is advocating for chess to be a required subject in schools: In the above video, the math/chess teacher says, “Chess trains logical thinking. It teaches how to make decisions, trains memory, strengthens will power, motivates children to win and teaches them how to deal with defeat. It's the only school subject that can do all this.” That is a very interesting insight. Not only does chess help train the brain, but it also teaches children basic life skills. In our culture, we hand out…

Where in the World is ERV? III

Buenos Aires! 1-- I have no idea what anyone is saying. The last time I took Spanish was like 10 years ago. So even if people say something I know, it takes me 5 minutes to translate. And then, I have this 'ear popping issue' when I fly on planes. Fine going up, severe pain coming down, ears dont pop until like a week later. Not exaggerating. So people are speaking to me in Spanish, and I cant really hear them, and I cant really understand them, so I basically just stare at people like a dazed cow, only occasionally shrieking 'DONDE ESTA EL BANO???" with a thick Southern accent. 2-- The…

Genes + Virus + Timing = CRAP!!: Crohns Disease and Noroviruses

Thanks to BleachGate, this is probably the first time many of you all in the Skeptical Community have heard about Crohns Disease (SPOILER: kid with Chrons gets booted from a 'support' forum for speaking out against woo-'treatments'). Crohns is an inflammatory bowl disease (IBD), where your guts do fun things like shrink until your bowls are obstructed, or your body decides you need more passages out of your intestines (Google 'fistula'. I dare you.), and some times you just good-old-fashioned poop blood. So, dont confuse IBD with IBS, and dont get me started on IBS. Crohns is the usual grab-…

The limited representation of movie atheists

I saw the new Will Smith movie, I Am Legend, last night. In short, it was far worse than I expected, with a drawn out and rather boring beginning (Smith is lonely, everyone is dead except for his dog. Got it), and the ending felt like a stapled-on feel-good absurdity that didn't follow from the premise—and is only a happy ending if your dream of paradise is an armed camp of Christians. The only virtue I'd heard about the story is that the hero is openly atheist … but that was a disappointment, too, because I discovered he was the wrong kind of atheist. Atheists in the movies aren't that…

The Great Banff Adventure!

OMG you guys! I have had such a day (in a good way)! 1-- We barely made it out of OKC. Barely. As in, our plane left, and then they shut down Will Rogers Airport for a while, cause our plane had to be de-iced three times to get off the ground. 2-- We barely made it on to our flight to Calgary. Seeing as the plane from OKC was 2 hours late, and we factored in a 2 hour layover (just in case), we should have missed this flight. Except, by Teh Grayce of GAWD, the flight to Calgary was held up for a random 15 minutes, allowing us enough time to careen to the appropriate gate. 3-- Since we…

Two Big Fat Frauds

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons two totally different ways: 1. NEWSFLASH! Gabourey Sidibe is fat! Boy I never noticed that before! I bet you all didnt either! I bet this is like, a divine revelation for Ms Sidibe, too. Thank goodness this fact is pointed out to all of us! Look, Gabourey knows her own damn weight. If she ever wants to drop some of it, I hope she does it in a healthy way. THE WRONG WAY to try to lose weight is using stupid supplements. Stupid supplements like 'AcaiSupply.com': FLUSH THE POUNDS AND LOSE THE WEIGHT (pdf) This 'news' is all over the place--…

XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome: LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAAAAAAAAAIN!

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesnt belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish my blag post? #1-- Chronic Fatigue Sufferers Find Vindication in a Virus News that chronic fatigue syndrome may be linked to a virus has been met with excitement by many sufferers whose symptoms and sanity have been doubted over the years. #2-- Is a Virus the Cause of Fatigue Syndrome? The new report has intrigued scientists, been seen as vindication by some patients and inspired hope for a treatment. "I just feel like the whole future…

Green tea component kinda helps prevent HIV-1 infection. Sorta.

Before I write this post, Im writing this major for realsies 'notice', because people have an amazing capacity to do stupid things: The following study demonstrates how a component of green tea, EGCG, can help negate some factors involved in certain kinds of HIV-1 transmission. This does not mean green tea stops HIV-1 transmission. This does not mean that if you drink a ton of green tea, you cannot transmit to your partner. This does not mean you can roll a green tea doobie, shove it up your vagaygay, and youre 'protected'. Same for shoving a One-A-Day Weight Smart up your butt, or dipping…

HIV-1 Vaccine-- Good news!

No Debbie Downer HIV-1 post today! The gods of HIV-1 research have a new paper in PLOS Pathogens, and to me, its real good news for those of us looking for an HIV vaccine. Inflammatory Genital Infections Mitigate a Severe Genetic Bottleneck in Heterosexual Transmission of Subtype A and C HIV-1 Im probably going to do several posts on this paper (lots of cool findings), but I want to get this one bit of good news out there before some ass 'science journalist' mangles it :P Haaland et al followed about 2,000 (2,000) discordant couples (one partner was infected with HIV-1, the other was not).…

Virus Mind Control, Revisited

Though HIV-1 is the retrovirus that gets all the press these days, it was not the first human retrovirus discovered. The 'first' human retrovirus was discovered in 1980-- Human T-lymphotropic virus, HTLV. HTLV has a couple of things in common with HIV-1-- Though it is not a lentivirus, it is still 'complex', meaning it has gag, pol, env and a couple accessory genes. And it likes to infect activated CD4+ T-cells like HIV-1. But there is an interesting difference-- You cant take a bunch of HTLV viruses, throw them on CD4+ T cells, and infect the cells. That is, 'free' virus is relatively non…

Another holiday effort from a group of atheists

A number of readers were peeved at the Connecticut Valley Atheists' choice of a holiday display — I was not, and I applauded their assertiveness. So what do you think of the Chester County Atheists' display? The group's display, "The Tree of Knowledge," will include a 15-foot evergreen with color copies of book covers as decorations. Some of the book covers will include the Holy Bible, the Quran, "Ethics Without God," "Why I Am Not a Christian," and "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism." Better? Personally, I would have left off the first two listed since they're actually more a…

[Student Post] What i lerned in skool today part deux.

WARNING. What follows is a a bit of a rant. Worse, it's an undergraduate rant. If awkward phrases, fallacious arguments and poor grammar offends you, I would suggest skipping this post. It could be that I'm seeing the world through cobalt-colored glasses-- it is winter in MN and very cold and dark-- and it is highly probable that the onslaught of medical school rejection letters biases me, but I think today was the most depressing day of school I've had in recent history. It started with neurobiology (Ok...this one's a bit of a stretch) when we learned about the development of nervous tissue…

My LonCon Schedule

Since lots of other people are posting their Worldcon progrm(me) schedules, I might as well share mine, too. Frankly, I find it a little baffling: Kaffeeklatsch Thursday 18:00 - 19:00, London Suite 5 (ExCeL) Kay Kenyon, Chad Orzel Banksian Saturday 11:00 - 12:00, Capital Suite 9 (ExCeL) 'Banksian' has become a commonplace descriptor in SF reviews, but what do we mean by it? What are the characteristics we associate with Iain M Banks' work? How far has his influence travelled? Who is writing Banksian SF today? Chad Orzel (M), Michael Cobley, Jaine Fenn, Paul Kincaid, Ruth O'Reilly We need to…

Two Assistant Professors of Physics

Text of the ad we're running for our searches this fall. This will go live on the usual sites at the start of August, but as a sort of experiment in the power of social media, I'm going to share it here first, and see what that gets us. ------ We invite applications for two tenure-track Assistant Professor positions starting in September 2015, one in any area of theoretical physics or astrophysics, the other with a strong preference for biophysics or soft condensed matter (either experimental or theoretical). We encourage applications from interdisciplinary scientists and those who could make…

Mysteries of Introductory Physics

Every now and then, I run across a question in class that I genuinely don't know how to answer. If I'm lucky, this happens when I'm prepping a class, rather than when a student asks it live. Like today, when I noticed the above discussion question in my slides (reproduced at the bottom as well for those reading via RSS). The discussion question itself is perfectly straightforward-- the current in the wire creates a magnetic field, the moving electron interacts with that, and getting the direction of the force is a straightforward right-hand-rule problem. I'll pose this to the class and ask…

How to Think Like a Scientist: Taking Stock

For the last several months, I've been poking along on the book-in-progress in a very constrained manner-- basically, I get to work on it in three-hour chunks on Tuesdays when I don't have class (and this term, Thursdays as well). This is, as you might imagine, incredibly frustrating, though I do get some book-related stuff done in the evenings, mostly reading history of science books and the occasional textbook after the kids go to bed. Other stuff ate up a lot of this week's meager writing time, and next week's going to be a dead loss, as I'll be at DAMOP in Quebec City, then my 20th…

An Amusing Brainteaser

A relative of mine just sent me the following brainteaser. Since it never hurts to flex one's mental muscles, I thought I'd pass it along: It is the month of August; a resort town sits next to the shores of a lake. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 dollar bill on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one. The hotel proprietor takes the 100 dollar bill and runs to pay his debt to…

Cloning as solace

You all may recall the memorable, late Tito the wonder dog. Hank Fox has done something thought-provoking: he has frozen away some of Tito's cells, on the chance of cloning him. At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps. I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company that stores tissue samples of pets, and they told me the culturing of the samples I'd sent them was successful. I now have about 10 million cells waiting for the future moment — if ever — when the technology and the money coincide to allow me to clone him. This is a personal decision, and I wouldn't…

Links for 2009-09-19

Views: In Loco Parentis, Post-Juicy Campus - Inside Higher Ed "With the digital age in full swing, colleges must reconceptualize what it means to act in loco parentis, and how, to the extent they can do anything, they can best serve their students. The answer is not to read into OCR investigations a new era of control and responsibility. Disaggregated problems require disaggregated solutions. Colleges cannot wrap their students in bubble wrap whenever they venture outside of their comfortable residence halls, and even bubble wrap does not protect against digital slander. Rather than…

Links for 2009-08-22

Dan Brown tops Oxfam's chart of most-donated books | Books | The Guardian "But as secondhand bookshop shelves flood with battered editions of Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress, Brown can comfort himself with the fact that he's also Oxfam's second most bought author: there are, apparently, still readers out there who have yet to follow the adventures of the dapper symbologist Robert Langdon. There's no such consolation for Grisham, whose legal thrillers fail to make Oxfam's bestseller charts at all." (tags: books literature business silly) A modest proposal for improving football: the…

Links for 2009-08-17

In a Queens Park, Duke Riley Leads a Battle on the Low Seas - NYTimes.com "This was an art exhibition -- a term that perhaps conjures a more subdued event. But the art in this show, called "Those About to Die Salute You," involved humans in motion, boats on water and those tomatoes. It was the creation of Duke Riley, whose work skews aquatic and unpredictable: He once built a wood and fiberglass submarine, floated it too close to the Queen Mary 2 and was arrested. His vision for Queens on Thursday night was a Roman-style staged naval battle among representatives of museums in four New York…

Optics Smackdown Explained

Yesterday, I posted a silly poll about optical physicists. Who are those people, and why should you care about them? In inverse order of popularity: Bringing up the rear in this race is John William Strutt, who, even more than Lord Kelvin in the thermodynamics poll, is hurt by the fact that people know him by his title, Lord Rayleigh. His notable achievements in optics include a formalization of the resolution limits for optical devices, and the phenomenon known as "Rayleigh Scattering," which is the short answer to the question "Why is the sky blue?" (The long answer requires a whole book.)…

links for 2009-07-18

slacktivist: TF: Bruce's sermon, part 1 "There's a monster at the end of this book. And if the authors succeed at what they've set out to do, that monster is you. That's part of why one should only read these books slowly, in small, weekly doses, while pausing to scream at or mock every page." (tags: books blogs slacktivist religion ethics society) Physics Buzz: Crazy (in a good way) "After a month of cramming for finals and living off raw ramen noodles, there's nothing more appealing to a college student at the end of May than a long summer doing nothing, punctuated, if you're feeling…

Two people vying to out-stupid each other

Ben Stein and Bill O'Reilly. Bill made a thousand creationist hearts flutter in dismay when he opened with his introductory definition: "intelligent design, that is, a deity created life". It was, unfortunately, the last hint of intelligence in the whole segment. Ben Stein is an astonishingly ignorant person. He goes on and on about several themes. Evolution (or as he called it, "Darwinism") is a weak theory with many gaps that was fit for the 19th century, but not the 21st. This is a ludicrous statement; Darwin would scarcely recognize what we were talking about if he attended an…

links for 2009-06-12

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive « alex.moskalyuk "50 scientifically proven ways constitute 50 chapters of the book, longest of which take 7 pages. The authors take the position that persuasion is a science, not art, hence with the right approach anybody can become the master in the skill of persuasion. So, what are the 50 ways?" (tags: psychology marketing business advertising science blogs) Learning Curves: New Adventures in Cheating "The two exam papers had many identical wrong answers, many to word problems that required the answer to be given in a full sentence.…

What Should I Say to High School Graduates?

I'm in a line of work where I have to listen to a lot of graduation speeches-- at least one per year. Yesterday, though, I got a phone call asking me to give one at my old high school's graduation in three and a half weeks. This is kind of a weird situation, because while it has been 20 years since I graduated (twenty years this year, in fact), and I have had a fairly successful career to this point, I'm not sure I can distill any generally applicable advice from that. I've been very lucky in a lot of things, and most of the coolest stuff I've had the opportunity to do has been through some…

Two Responses to Hate

I've said before that I think Fred Clark of Slacktivist is the very best blogger writing about religion and politics in America today. It's not even close. His recent series on things the government ought to be doing to help the economy is also outstanding-- that link goes to the most recent, and you can check my Links dump posts for most of the rest of the series. I end up tagging a lot of his posts for the Links Dumps, but he's good enough that every now and then I feel I need to give him a little more prominence. His Wednesday post is one that deserves more. He describes two occasions…

The Internet Is Making Me Hate Your Website

Every year, John Brockman asks a big selection of smart people to answer some question or another, and posts it on the Internet to provoke discussion. This year's question is "How is the Internet changing the way you think?" This always seems like a better idea than it ends up being in practice, because the whole thing is presented using Brockman's mad circa-1997 web design skills (at least, I hope he's doing it himself. If he's paying someone to put this together, he's being ripped off). On my large-ish desktop monitor, I have to hit "Page Down" five times to get from the top of the page to…

Links for 2010-01-02

Interstellar Cyclers -- KarlSchroeder.com "To me, the idea that you should expend billions or trillions of dollars to accelerate a starship, only to decelerate it again, is pure lunacy. 90% of the ship's mass is support structures--either power or life support systems. The key to viable interstellar transport, in my view, is simple: if you've got it all in motion, keep it in motion and re-use it. The only thing you want to decelerate at your destination is your cargo." (tags: space sf astronomy physics relativity energy books) How to Teach Physics to Your Dog at Barnes & Noble -…

Quantization of Books 2: What Does One Sale Get You?

I've been playing around with the spiffy sales rank tracker Matthew Beckler wrote, because I'm a great big dork, and enjoy playing with graphs. Here's a graph of the sales rank vs. time through 2pm EST today (plotted in Excel from the data table at the bottom of the page): As I noted in my previous post on this, the downward-going jumps are striking, and probably indicate discrete book purchase events. There also seems to be a clear trend that jumps starting at higher numbers are larger than jumps starting at lower numbers. If we assume that's the case, what does that tell us about the…

Links for 2009-12-18

Creating Citizen Scientists § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM "A few days ago, sitting in my office, I contributed to peer-reviewed scientific research in biology, astronomy, and psychology. Even though I don't hold degrees in any of these fields, my contributions will help advance science: I was doing real investigative work, not the prosaic replications of classic experiments that are typically taught in introductory lab courses. I was taking part in a blossoming "citizen science" movement occurring across a wide swath of scientific fields." (tags: science seed computing astronomy biology psychology…

Links for 2009-11-28

Colliding Galaxies For Fun and For Science! : Starts With A Bang "Galaxy Zoo has developed an outstanding game where you can help astronomers by doing something that humans easily defeat computers at: visually matching galaxies to simulations!" (tags: science astronomy computing internet blogs starts-with-bang) Should You Get a Ph.D.? : Mike the Mad Biologist "My very short answer: no." (tags: academia science jobs biology education blogs mad-biologist) December 2009: James Wolcott on Reality Television | vanityfair.com "The influence of Reality TV has been insidious, pervasive. It has…

With Polymaths Like These...

It's hard to say exactly why I found Edward Carr's article on polymaths so irritating, but I suspect it was this bit: The monomaths do not only swarm over a specialism, they also play dirty. In each new area that Posner picks--policy or science--the experts start to erect barricades. "Even in relatively soft fields, specialists tend to develop a specialised vocabulary which creates barriers to entry," Posner says with his economic hat pulled down over his head. "Specialists want to fend off the generalists. They may also want to convince themselves that what they are doing is really very…

Student Post: Neurochemicals' Role in Gender

Hello again, it's been a while so I thought I'd drop in a comment or two about what I've found recently in the news about neurobio. I've lately been reading about neurotransmitters and how they bind to sites in specific neurons, instigating depolarization across the membrane of the neuron and allowing for an action potential to communicate to hundreds of thousands of other neurons. This communication between neurons in the central nervous system is relayed into actions in the peripheral nervous system resulting in behavior. But how is this synchronized? What neuron does what? What must be…

links for 2009-04-13

Backreaction: Women in Physics "I was invited to the upcoming APS meeting in Denver to speak in a session on "Women and Minorities in Gravity: Science and Career Paths." And since I have somewhat of a bad conscience for never having been at never any APS meeting, not to mention never having been of any use for The Issue, I thought I should go. Now that the meeting is coming closer, I wonder what I know about women and minorities in physics (not sure what "in gravity" is supposed to mean). And their career paths. Or absence thereof." (tags: science blogs academia gender diversity…

links for 2009-04-08

Brigham Young U.'s Student Newspaper Is Pulled After Embarrassing Typo - Chronicle.com "The caption described a photograph illustrating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsâ General Conference, and it referred to the groupâs âQuorum of Twelve Apostatesâ rather than âApostles.â Rich Evans, editorial manager of The Daily Universe, the student paper, told the Tribune it was âthe worst possible mistake.â BYU is owned and run by the church, as the Mormon Church is formally known. The error was an accident: A student had misspelled the word âapostle,â and the articleâs editor chose…

links for 2009-02-18

US LHC Blog » Higgs Hunting News "Depending on what the mass of the Higgs boson is, it will decay into other particles that are easier or harder for an experiment to detect. So for example if the mass turns out to be about 170 GeV, the Tevatron experiments say their chances are almost 100 percent of finding it by 2011. If the mass turns out to really be 135 GeV, the chances are below 30 percent." (tags: science physics blogs experiment particles) RESONAANCES: Pauli's Other Principle "Fermions are discovered in the US, whereas bosons are discovered in Europe. " (tags: science physics…

Is It Better to Be Lucky or Good?

My cold from last week has shifted into a bit of bronchitis (and here I thought my virus-fighting strategy of staying up really late drinking beer would clear everything up), so I'm kind of groggy and lethargic. And I have book edits to work on, which precludes taking a long time to write blog posts about science, so here's some babble about card games. Saturday night at the Tor party, a bunch of people started playing poker using Tor.com buttons as chips. They were playing the obligatory Texas Hold 'Em, and there were a couple of guys standing off to the side (one of whom reminded me of…