Via Victor Revelles (among other sources), news of a proposed experiment to follow up an earlier experiment that reportedpolarization shifts of photons in vacuum in a strong magnetic field. There’s a similar news story about the new experiment. The idea here is to try to nail down the cause of that earlier rotation, which isn’t […]
Month: July 2006
Handicapping the Hugos
There’s a comment to the most recent Open Thread at Making Light asking why there isn’t more handicapping of the Hugo Awards. The commenter, Kathryn from Sunnyvale, makes reference to a comment on John Scalzi’s “Please Vote” thread, that suggested there was a clear favorite in the balloting: There is a certain book on the […]
Family, Academia, and Rock Stars
The academia and family life discussion continues on ScienceBlogs and elsewhere, and continues to be fascinating (at least if you’re fascinated by this stuff…). The Female Science Professor has two more posts on the topic since I last linked her, one on awkward interview questions (though nothing to compare to this anecdote), and another on […]
Before and After
The internal distribution of picture of the ScienceBlogs get-together in NYC (referred to here) prompted several calls for me to update my picture. I have, after all, lost rather a lot of weight since the picture in my profile was taken. Thus, I had Kate take a new picture of me post-weight-loss: For the sake […]
Sunday Times Round-Up Addendum
One item I forgot to mention in the previous post: The Times Book Review section today features an article on backlist books and the so-called “Long Tail” exploited by on-line sales. It has some interesting stuff on the business of publishing and the sales of backlist books. As with the medical story referenced in the […]
Sunday Times Round-Up
Miscellaneous stories that caught my eye in today’s New York Times: First, on the science sdie of things, a long article about how people are living longer, not to mention bigger and healthier, than their ancestors. It compares medical records for Civil War veterans with people of similar age today, and finds amazing reductions in […]
FYI
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position starting in September 2007. The position is open with respect to research specialization and candidates with an active research program in any area of physics or astronomy are invited to apply. A Ph.D. in physics or a closely […]
Hard-Rockin’ Physicists
The prolific Bora at A Blog Around the Clock is looking for the rock stars of science, as part of a long chain of people picking up this quote from Morgan Spurlock: We’ve started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry–people wusing p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. […]
Having a Life is Hard
For those following the discussion about having a career and a life, referenced in this post, there have been some interesting additions in recent days. Janet Stemwedel added a post clarifying some terms, and Rob Knop offers his own thoughts, and points out that academics aren’t the only ones struggling to have a life and […]
A Little Perspective, Please
I’ve linked to Inside Higher Ed almost every day this week, so why stop now? Today’s Views section features Terry Caesar being outraged over RateMyProfessors.com (which he refers to in BLOCK CAPS throughout). Among the many sins of the site, he includes this paragraph: In fact, students at RATE don’t even have to be students! […]