There are two things creating some buzz at the moment on ScienceBlogs that I don’t intend to write about because I’ve already commented on them. They’re oddly similar, too, though they’re being approached in different ways. One is this op-ed by Paul Davies, which is basically a shorter and more contentiously worded version of one […]
Month: November 2007
The Magazine Experiment: Fantasy and Science Fiction October 2007
A couple of months ago, I embarked on an experiment to read some SF magazines, and see if I was really missing out on the wonderful stuff that people are always haranguing con-goers about. I bought paper copies of Analog‘s November issue and the October/ November Asimov’s, and commented on them here. I was unable […]
College Football Wackiness
LSU lost to Arkansas in “overtime” yesterday (scare quotes are because the college overtime system is bizarre), becoming the latest highly-ranked team to lose to an unranked opponent. This throws the BCS championship system into chaos for the Nth time this season– by the end of the weekend, at least three of the top ten […]
Math Nerds Need Social Networks, Too
It turns out that there’s a Facebook group for quantum information types called the Church of the Larger Hilbert Space after a remark by John Smolin (Facebook link here), which I thought was the nerdiest thing I ever saw. Until I looked at the “Related Groups,” and saw “I support the right to choose one […]
links for 2007-11-24
Web Log — Charles Bernstein: “Doping Scandal Rocks Poetry ‘Cooper pairs’ can be found in insulators as well superconductors They explain superconductivity, and also some insulating behavior– is there anything they can’t do? (tags: physics quantum experiment science news) Have we sealed the universe’s fate by looking at it? In which the Quantum Zeno Effect […]
Tablet PC Software Query
As mentioned a while back, I recently obtained a Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet PC, which I’ve been playing around with a bunch. I like it quite a bit– the handwriting recognition is a whole lot better than the older Toshiba model I used for a while last year, and the interface works a little more […]
Local Green Construction
We live just a few blocks away from the local high school, which has had some sort of massive construction project going on for a few months now. I’ve been wondering what created the giant pile of dirt to one side of the grounds, but haven’t been bothered enough to actually, you know, look it […]
links for 2007-11-23
[0711.0745] Imaging the Internal Structure of the Earth with Atmospheric Neutrinos “The absorption of neutrinos with energies in excess of 10 TeV when traversing the Earth is capable of revealing its density distribution.” (tags: physics theory articles science) mmcirvin: Retract your ad homonyms Matt McIrvin explains a classic of Usenet debate. (tags: politics blogs computing) […]
Thanksgiving 2007
Kate and I will be hosting Thanksgiving again this year, but not until Saturday, for reasons having to do with pet-sitting– the Queen of Niskayuna will not tolerate inferior dogs (i.e., any dog who isn’t her) in her house, and for some reason, it’s hard to find a pet-sitter for Thanksgiving Day. Imagine that. Anyway, […]
links for 2007-11-22
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education – Inside Higher Ed :: More Doctors of Philosophy (and Science) The number of Ph.D.’s awarded goes up, but most of the increase is among foreign-born researchers. (tags: academia US education) Confessions of a Community College Dean: Access and Limits A “law and order liberal” on […]