Symmetry magazine has an article on travel tips for physicists, from other physicists. There are two scary things about this: 1) The degree to which the picture that emerges from the different tips aligns with unflattering stereotypes of physicists. Some of the items are funny travel stories, but the tips are all about keeping your… Continue reading Jet-Set Nerds
Month: October 2006
Ready for Some (Division III) Football
The preceding comments about my alumni oganization were brought on by a bunch of factors– the arrival of a Maryland alumni publication this week, the update-your-information questionnaire from the Society of Alumni, a visiting speaker last week who was two years behind me at Williams. Probably the biggest was the fact that this is Union’s… Continue reading Ready for Some (Division III) Football
Cult of the Purple Cow
No, it’s not another spoof religion like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and it’s not a real religion for people to get outraged over. The title refers to my college alumni organization– Williams uses a cow as the unofficial mascot, and the school colors are purple and gold, so little purple cows are all over everything.… Continue reading Cult of the Purple Cow
Power Outrage
The previous post was written at about 9:30 last night, and ends on an optimistic note. Of course, any hint of optimism demands retribution from the Lords of Karma, so I got a phone call at 9:45 telling me the power had gone out on campus. The power was apaprently off for something like an… Continue reading Power Outrage
Vacuum Technology is Black Magic
We’ve continued plugging away at the optical excitation experiment discussed in the Week in the Lab series last year, and have finally managed to get a decent metastable signal out of the thing. The signals are at pressures that are considerably higher than I would like (and quite a bit higher than the turbopump is… Continue reading Vacuum Technology is Black Magic
Bad Graphs
The silliest graph I’ve ever seen presented in public looked something like this: It was an after-dinner talk at a DAMOP meeting a few years back, and the speaker was somebody associated with the Hubble Space Telescope. I don’t recall what was being plotted, but he talked for a while about ho proud they were… Continue reading Bad Graphs
Something for the Humanists in the Audience
“Imperialism” “Colonialism” I have a vague sense that these two terms are not interchangeable, but I can’t for the life of me explain what the difference is. But there seems to be one, at least based on listening to colleagues from the other side of campus talk about their research. So, what’s the difference? (Some… Continue reading Something for the Humanists in the Audience
Mmmmmm…. Sacrilicious!
I’m inordinately amused by this Overheard in New York entry. Quite possibly because it reminds me of the Jesus Bread-Golem Project, or maybe just for the suggested headline “If Jesus Wanted Us to Eat Him with Salsa, He’d Be Appearing on Tortillas…. Oh… Wait.” I’m a Bad Person. Also, I miss Fafblog. Update: See also… Continue reading Mmmmmm…. Sacrilicious!
The Efficient Part of Campus
There’s an academic joke that says that the job of a university president is really pretty simple. To ensure happiness on campus, all he or she needs to do is make sure that there’s sex for the undergraduates, food for the graduate students, and parking for the faculty. It’s certainly true that parking enforcement has… Continue reading The Efficient Part of Campus
Give the Rubes Some Credit
Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman both pick up on the new book from Dennis Kuo saying that the “faith-based initiatives” program was a political scam. The MSNBC piece contains a few colorful quotes about the shenanigans Kuo is reporting, which sound pretty bad. Kevin cites them, then asks: Like I said a few days ago,… Continue reading Give the Rubes Some Credit