Links Dump
drorzel | July 7, 2009
LIGO: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
A comprehensive review article on LIGO, free online for a limited time.
(tags: articles science gravity astronomy physics relativity precision-measurement)
Never build a relationship on books | Books | guardian.co.uk
"I don't know if Borders will actually be making recommendations for dates in the same way as they recommend books, but it would be priceless if members got regular email updates: "Did you enjoy, Mark, 34, of Swindon? Then you should try Gareth, 36, of Slough." Or: "After dating Sally of Birmingham, 86 per cent of…
drorzel | July 6, 2009
Star Formation
"This blog is for the Physics and Astronomy Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR, the sort of acronym that takes some real self esteem to embrace) to communicate with CUR members, the wider scientific community, and the general public."
(tags: science academia education blogs)
Salt Office Life » 10 Ways to Take a Bad Author Photo
Note to self: talk to Matt M. about getting a good author photo.
(tags: books writing pictures publishing)
Chart of the Day | Mother Jones
"I'd agree that Palin's appeal is essentially based on class resentment. She gets her…
drorzel | July 5, 2009
Field-sensitive addressing and control of field-insensitive neutral-atom qubits : Abstract : Nature Physics
"Here, we demonstrate the selection of individual qubits with external fields, while the qubits are in field-insensitive superpositions. We use a spatially inhomogeneous external field to map selected qubits to a different field-insensitive superposition, minimally perturbing unselected qubits, despite the fact that the addressing field is not spatially localized. We show robust single-qubit rotations on neutral-atom qubits located at selected lattice sites. This precise coherent…
drorzel | July 4, 2009
slacktivist: The short straw
"Tony Perkins looks nervous, unsure if he should be glad he gets to go first. He reaches out and makes his choice. Grinning broadly, he holds up the long straw for the others to see and, chuckling to himself, makes his way to the back of the room.
âItâs not fair,â says George Weigel of the Ethics & Public Policy Center. âWe had to take Santorum. We should get a pass this time.â"
(tags: politics US silly stupid blogs slacktivist)
Answers to Selected Questions
"As I promised a week ago, I am posting answers to a few of the 42 questions which constituted the…
drorzel | July 3, 2009
Charlie Rose - An interview with David Foster Wallace
A 1997 interview, when Wallace was promoting A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, covering a wide range of topics.
(tags: video writing books literature movies humanities academia society culture)
In Which Your Host Witnesses a High-Speed Chase : Built on Facts
"Conservation of momentum happened. The collision was not entirely inelastic nor was it entirely elastic. The truck struck the car very solidly on its right side behind the center of mass of the car, sending the car into a spin more or less along its original trajectory.…
drorzel | July 2, 2009
Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm: Rosters: Managing the list
"Overall, I like administering the list because I can virtually guarantee that any time I want to play, there will be others to play with. I also like the fact that I have some control over who gets on the list, and more importantly, who is excluded from it. Now don't get me wrongâthis isn't some velvet rope thing, and it certainly isn't as exclusive as this basketball list. I invited almost all the regular players at the gym. However, I was also able to subtly exclude a few bad apples by intentionally failing to…
drorzel | July 1, 2009
Newton, P.I. | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"Happily, Tom Levenson (of The Inverse Square, and one of our honored guest bloggers) has provided us with a fascinating peek into a telling episode in Newtonâs later life â his career as a criminal investigator. Not really âP.I.â, as Newton was acting in his capacity as a government official, the Warden of the Mint. The story is closer to something from Law and Order or CSI â remarkably close, in fact. "
(tags: history physics science books levenson blogs cosmic-variance)
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Strong Basis in Confusion…
drorzel | June 30, 2009
Acephalous: Infinite Summer: Morbid? Culturally Imperial? Morbidly Culturally Imperial?
"In the end, whatâs interesting about the 25-year-old Kleinâs post about the 46-year-old Foster Wallaceâs novel is the notion that someone who was 18 years old when the Clash first performed in America and someone who was 18 years old the year Joe Strummer died can be said to belong to the same generation. How does that work? Iâm tempted to blame it on the Internet"
(tags: blogs society culture literature music humanities acephalous)
Views: Books Aren't Everything - Inside Higher Ed
"Some in…
drorzel | June 29, 2009
Physics Buzz: A day at the International Submarine Races
"Last weekend, travelers at a rest stop in Minnesota became alarmed when a group of college kids pulled up in a U-haul truck, carefully unloaded a large, sleek object from the back, and set to work on it with power tools. About the length of a person, it was painted white and resembled a torpedo. Fearing the worst, someone called the police."
(tags: science physics gadgets blogs physics-buzz)
Views: Poverty Studies - Inside Higher Ed
"Now that acute socioeconomic suffering has hit home or threatens to hit home among university…
drorzel | June 28, 2009
Cocktail Party Physics: dial-a-scientist
"It all started Wednesday, when I got an email from Brandon Webb, who handles PR for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UT Dallas. He wanted to know if I could talk to a reporter who wanted to know whether a Styrofoam cup could break a windshield. (That's an advantage to being officially mediagenic - I don't get contacted directly now - they go through my 'people' a.k.a Brandon.)"
(tags: physics journalism media science cocktail-party blogs)
Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat - Cats are great subjects for bad…
drorzel | June 26, 2009
Hacker News | I was a theoretical physicist for 13 years, and struggled a lot with this questi...
"One unusual but very useful style was to set a goal like reading 15 papers in 3 hours. I use the term "reading" here in an unusual way. Of course, I don't mean understanding everything in the papers. Instead, I'd do something like this: for each paper, I had 12 minutes to read it. The goal was to produce a 3-point written LaTeX summary of the most important material I could extract: usually questions, open problems, results, new techniques, or connections I hadn't seen previously. When time…
drorzel | June 25, 2009
Technology & Middle Earth : Built on Facts
"Why doesn't anyone just use a telescope or binoculars? Ok sure, it's ancient middle earth and presumably a Galileo hasn't been born yet. But I see no reason that this ought to stop them. Middle Earth is not a completely pre-technological environment, there's science of some sophistication."
(tags: books literature SF silly blogs built-on-facts physics science technology)
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Stoned wallabies make crop circles'
Best. Headline. EVER.
(tags: animals drugs biology silly)
RIP Michael Jackson | Music | A.V. Club
"Jackson…
drorzel | June 24, 2009
Confessions of a Community College Dean: An Unmarked Car
"[A]t work, I can wear, say, a gray suit, and be both situationally appropriate and utterly impersonal. On dress down days, the alternate uniform of tie-less Oxford and khakis (or a close variant) gets the job done. There's nothing terribly interesting about either ensemble, but that's precisely the point. I don't have to think about them, and neither does anybody else. They're like driving unmarked cars. I go where I want without calling undue attention to myself.
Except that they aren't. Over the last couple of weeks, on three…
drorzel | June 23, 2009
Video analysis of hammer explosion lifting a guy | Dot Physics
Can an exploding hammer lift a guy? Inquiring minds want to know...
(tags: science physics video blogs education dot-physics silly)
The Last 100 Years: 1950s & The Tragedy of Fred Hoyle : Starts With A Bang
"This is the only instance in all of scientific history that the anthropic principle has been used to successfully predict anything. And for this, Willie Fowler won the Nobel Prize, and although he credits Fred Hoyle tremendously, Hoyle was left out. Somehow, understanding where practically all the matter on our world…
drorzel | June 22, 2009
Cynical-C Blog - » Sign for the Night
"Keep being AWESOME!"
(tags: silly food internet)
Unscientific America
"Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, a journalist-scientist team, offer an updated "two cultures" polemic for America in the 21st century. Just as in Snow's time, some of our gravest challengesâclimate change, the energy crisis, national economic competitivenessâand gravest threats--global pandemics, nuclear proliferationâhave fundamentally scientific underpinnings. Yet we still live in a culture that rarely takes science seriously or has it on the radar. "
(tags: books science…
drorzel | June 21, 2009
Scientists and Kool-Aid § Unqualified Offerings
"In my department weâll often produce documents that have lots of buzzwords, but nobody really takes it seriously. You can always get appreciative chuckles in a department meeting if you poke fun at your own handiwork. Higher on the food chain, they actually believe it."
(tags: academia science culture society blogs unqualified-offerings)
Sunday Function : Built on Facts
"You'd think mathematics could avoid the ambiguity of multiple meanings for the same symbol, but I regret to say it's not so. There's much less ambiguity to be sure, but…
drorzel | June 20, 2009
Cocktail Party Physics: body heat
"I am in Portland for the day, having dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly hour (4 AM) to catch my flight. (On the plus side, there is almost no traffic on LA freeways at that hour.) The reason: to visit the city's Green Microgym founded by personal trainer Adam Boesel last year. Perhaps you read some of the press coverage the opening generated: Boesel has retrofitted much of his exercise equipment (stationary bikes, treadmills, elliptical machines) so that gym members can produce a little bit of usable energy during their workouts -- not a lot, mind you…
drorzel | June 19, 2009
symmetry breaking » Blog Archive » The science of talking so people want to listen
"Connecting science to everyday experiences in jargon free terms is key to science outreach, something Turner excels at doing. He shared his insights and tips from more than a decade worth of talks with scientists at Fermilabâs annual Usersâ Meeting this month. The meeting featured a special Outreach Workshop with talks to help scientists adjust to a changing climate that requires every scientist be able to explain the value of research in language a banker with no science background would understand."
(…
drorzel | June 18, 2009
DNA Evidence Frees Man From Zoo | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Shortly after the findings were revealed, Phoenix Zoo staff tranquilized, crated, and transported Panovich by helicopter to his Mesa, AZ home, where he was released into his front yard and reintroduced to his mate and two young."
(tags: onion silly animals)
The Chocolate Chip Cookie Bowl Sundae - Ruhlman.com
"Last Sunday morning, my son James said, "Dad, what if you made a bowl out of cookie dough?"
I'm the first to admit that there are almost no truly new culinary innovations or ideas, only variations on what's…
drorzel | June 17, 2009
Miracle Diet Through Physics! : Built on Facts
"This immediately suggests a tempting diet plan, if not a very lucrative one: drink lots of cold water. Your body burns calories warming up the H2O, you lose weight without much effort. Plausible?"
(tags: science food blogs physics built-on-facts)
Career Advice: Fast Tracking a Ph.D. - Inside Higher Ed
"To finish in three years, there are important pieces that must fall into place. You must have an adviser/committee chair who is willing to support you in this goal and work with you. Itâs important to ask your adviser, âCan this be done?â Is…