I’m going to be away from the computer for the long weekend, but I don’t want to have the site go completely dark, even over a weekend, so I’m going to schedule a few posts from the archives to show up while I’m away. Everyone else seems to be doing it (and pushing my posts […]
Month: June 2006
Brother, Can You Spare Four Dollars?
As you have no doubt seen elsewhere on ScienceBlogs, the great DonorsChoose blog challenge ends tomorrow. I won’t actually be here to do a final post on the subject, so this is the last prodding you’ll get from me. As of this morning, the Uncertain Principles challenge entry stands at $996.02, according to the leader […]
World Cup Dog-Blogging
The great thing about soccer is that even pets can get in on the game: Here, Emmy shows off her ability to bat things around on the floor, in honor of the Germany-Argentina game coming up today. The toy in question is a Buster Cube, which we heartily endorse– it’s a plastic cube with a […]
How Do You Judge an Interpretation?
Matt Leifer, whose blog I hadn’t previously encountered, has a long and fascinating post on evaluation criteria for quantum interpretations. “Interpretation” here means the stuff of countless “Isn’t Quantum Mechanics weird?” books– Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Bohmian hidden variable theories, all that stuff. These are the “meta-theories” that are used to explain how you get from all […]
Fun With Diode Lasers
I ended the previous laser post by noting that diode lasers need some additional wavelength selection to be done in order to be useful as light sources for spectroscopy experiments. In their natural state, they tend to emit light over a broader range of wavelengths than is really ideal, and we’d like to narrow that […]
So, CERN Has a Particle Accelerator?
A little while back, JoAnne at Cosmic Variance reported on the status of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the giant next-generation accelerator that is the cover story for the current print issue of Seed. Particle experimentalist Gordon Watts reports in with some more technical details about the delay in the proposed turn-on schedule. He’s also […]
The Perverse Incentives of Tenure
From America’s Finest News Source: Professor Pressured To Sleep With Student For Good Course Evaluation FAYETTEVILLE, AR–Alan Gilchrist, an associate professor of English literature at the University of Arkansas infamous for his tough grading standards and dry lecturing style, was coerced into sleeping with an undergraduate on Monday in order to earn a good course […]
Frickin’ Lasers
I haven’t posted much about life in the lab lately, because even though I’m getting to spend a bit of time in the lab, I’ve been so fried from this past term that I haven’t had much energy for blogging. Things are finally settling into the summer routine, though, and I’ve gotten a little rest […]
Academic Advising
Two links containing important advice for the academic set. First, Derek Lowe reminisces about summer in graduate school: When I was in graduate school, I had a law student as a neighbor for a while. We were both pretty quiet, and got along fine in our respective dinky efficiency apartments, but we couldn’t help but […]
This Isn’t SportsCenter
Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching): Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in Division III. They also topped the US […]