World
drorzel | May 2, 2011Over in Scientopia, Janet notes an interesting mis-statement from NPR, where Dina Temple-Raston said of the now-dead terrorist:
[O]ne intelligence officials told us that nothing with an electron actually passed close to him, which in a way is one of the ways they actually caught him.
As Janet notes, this would be quite a feat, given that electrons are a key component of ordinary matter. But for the sake of silly physics blogging, let's take this seriously for a moment. Suppose that Osama bin Laden really could make himself utterly devoid of electrons: would that be a good way to hide?
To…
drorzel | March 6, 2011I've been sticking to my "no Internet before writing something" quota fairly well the last several days, with a couple of exceptions: 1) writing or no writing, I read a bunch of RSS feeds on my phone when I'm putting SteelyKid to bed at night, and 2) I keep following events in the Middle East via Al Jazeera online, mostly their live blogging from Libya. It's fascinating to watch.
Of course, this blog also has an official Senior Middle East Correspondent, namely my friend Paul, who is a journalist based in Cairo. When the Egyptian revolution started, he was out of the country on a family…
drorzel | February 4, 2011I've been watching the Al Jazeera English livestream off and on this week to keep up with events in Egypt. At some point, SteelyKid came in while I had it on, saw shots of the cheering crowds from Tuesday, and said "People dancing!"
Sometime on Wednesday, she marched over to me, and demanded to watch a video. I asked what she wanted, and she said "People dancing!" At that point, though, the live video was of people throwing Molotov cocktails off a hotel roof onto protesters below. I didn't think that was really appropriate toddler fare, so I showed her this instead:
Three-ish years later,…
drorzel | January 7, 2011A story to improve your opinion of humanity:
Egypt's majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.
From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as "human shields" for last night's mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.
"We either live together,…
drorzel | June 11, 2010This was supposed to go up earlier, but it turns out that thinking you selected "Scheduled" in the MT back end is not, in fact, enough to schedule the post to appear. So this is showing up after games have already begun, but nothing of consequence has happened yet, so it's no biggie.
Anyway, the soccer World Cup has begun, making this one of the rare summers with sporting events worth watching on television. And time for the quadrennial spectacle of Americans pretending to know/care about soccer.
So, anyway, there's a big tournament going on, and it seems only fair to offer space to discuss…
drorzel | December 18, 2009I've been dimly aware that physics in the UK was being hit hard by a financial crisis for a while now. It seemed to be a bit deeper than what people in other countries complain about, but I hadn't given it much thought until I read this Physics World story on the latest cuts, which includes the following explanation:
The origin of the cuts can be traced back to December 2007 when the STFC announced that it had an £80m budget deficit for the UK government's current spending round that lasts from 2008 to 2011. It is thought that the deficit emerged by an accounting mistake was made when the…
drorzel | December 2, 2009The big topic-of-the-moment is the hacked stash of emails from a major climate research group. The whole climate change discussion is one of those "no upside" topics that I try to stay out of, but I have some thoughts and comments about issues surrounding the email incident. These are largely based on reactions to yesterday's posts by Derek Lowe and Coby Beck, so if you're looking for something to read to understand what I'm talking about, those are the two.
The unifying thing in all of these is the intersection of science and politics. Most of what's described is normal scientific behavior…
drorzel | November 30, 2009It's always nice to be reminded that the US is not the only country in the world prone to acts of petty and childish xenophobia. The last eight years have been especially rough, but between the Obama administration acting like adults and now this silly minaret ban, we no longer look like the most infantile Western nation.
So, thanks, Switzerland. I'll be sure to pick you up some chocolate later.
drorzel | October 9, 2009The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize went to Al Gore and the IPCC. The 2008 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel went to Paul Krugman. And now, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Barack Obama.
Really? I mean, really? I like the guy as much as the next person, and it's nice to see somebody in Washington trying "to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But he really hasn't accomplished anything, yet.
Seriously, the best explanation for this is that they're trying to make American right-wingers' heads explode. That, or they're still trying…
drorzel | August 17, 2009I mentioned a few times that one of our physics graduates from 2008 was spending a year in rural Uganda, working at a clinic and school there as part of a college-run fellowship program (with Engeye Health Clinic. Steve is back in the US now, and headed to graduate school in Seattle in Atmospheric Sciences.
Steve's replacement in Uganda turns out to be another physics major, Tom Perry, who is now in Uganda and blogging about it. This is purely coincidence, by the way-- there's nothing physics-specific about the position, we just happened to have two really good physics majors in consecutive…
drorzel | March 3, 2009Back before things went pear-shaped this weekend, Jonathan Zasloff had a good post about why "clean coal" is important:
I think it's terrific that the Coen Brothers are making funny, effective ads against relying on "clean coal" as part of the US energy program. But I worry that the clean energy community is really missing the boat here.
Clean coal research and development is absolutely crucial in fighting climate change not for us, but for India and China. India has the fourth largest reserves of coal in the world -- most of it very dirty, with high ash content. It currently imports 70%…
drorzel | February 28, 2009One of last year's physics majors is spending the year in rural Uganda working at a clinic/ school there. He's keeping a blog, which is intermittently updated by western standards, but remarkably up-to-date given where he is.
This week, he blogged about putting his physics education to use:
I have been doing a lot of electrical work the last two days. I connected a laboratory and rewired the whole system so that some safety switches would be in place and so that I would be the sole person with the knowledge and ability to decide who will have light. Actually, it is to break it up so that we…
drorzel | February 27, 2009Via email, Mike Steeves points me to an Ars Technica article about a Thomson Reuters report on the "decline in American science":
The US is beginning to lose its scientific dominance. That's
the message from Thomson Reuters, the people behind EndNote and impact factors.
According to a report in their publication ScienceWatch, the US' science
output is in a shallow decline at the same time that Asia is in the ascendancy.
If it sounds like you've heard that before, you've been
paying attention. Back in 2006 the National Science Foundation's biennial
Science and Engineering Indicators report…
drorzel | December 21, 2008Steve Po-Chedley, a recent Union graduate and physics major, is spending the better part of a year in Uganda, as part of a new program set up by the college. As part of the program, he's maintaining a blog, and recently posted some reflections on his work to date. The most interesting part is where he has some second thoughts about the project:
After a few weeks, some of the criticisms of this program haunted me. There are few metrics in how effective you are - I was a fairly major component of the P6 class, but I felt uncomfortable asking to give exams - homework was tough to give because…