As I said in the introduction to the previous post, this was the first paper on which I was the lead author, and it may be my favorite paper of my career to date. I had a terrific time with it, and it led to enough good stories that I’m going to split the making-of […]
Month: August 2008
Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions
This paper is the third of the articles I wrote when I was a grad student, and the first one where I was the lead author. It’s also probably my favorite of the lot, not just because of the role it played in my career, but because it packs a lot of science into four […]
Thursday Baby Blogging 082808
Here’s your scaled baby picture for the week: OK, “scaled” isn’t entirely appropriate, as I haven’t bothered to keep Appa a constant size in these, but it is the weekly picture of SteelyKid with her standard reference bison. She continues to grow at an impressive rate, thanks to inheriting her father’s appetite. Kate’s been making […]
links for 2008-08-28
America Needs To Have A Superficial Conversation About Race | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source "The time for vagueness is now." (tags: race politics silly internet US diversity society culture) The Energy Challenge – Wind Energy Bumps Into Power GridâÂÂs Limits – Series – NYTimes.com âÂÂWe still have a third-world grid,â Mr. Richardson […]
Pop-Science Science Book Project
Jennifer Ouellette was inspired by the recent book “meme,” and is putting together a similar list of pop-science books. It might surprise some people, but I haven’t been a big reader of pop-science books over the years. In fact, I’ve read few enough of the books on her list that I’m only going to copy […]
Singularity and Its Discontents
The New York Times, its finger squarely on the pulse of SF as always, has a very nice profile of Vernor Vinge. That last bit isn’t sarcastic– it’s a good piece. The earlier snark is just because the focus is on a book that’s a couple of years old already. Of course, any Vinge piece […]
Shorter Advice for Hiring Committees
Over at Sciencewomen, they have a list of six things departments should do to make academic job interviews more comfortable. It’s excellent and reasonable advice. Of course, while it is an excellent post, it also contains more words than it really needs to. In the spirit of physics, which always tries to boil things down […]
links for 2008-08-27
Street Corner Science with Leon Lederman | ScienCentral In which a Nobel laureate answers science questions on the streets of Manhattan. (tags: science physics education video internet society culture) ‘Physics for Future Presidents’ :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs IHE interviews Richard Muller about his book (tags: physics […]
Congratulations to Dave Wineland
NIST’s Dave Wineland has been awarded the National Medal of Science. Wineland is one of the most impressive figures in modern AMO physics, with a long list of accomplishments. As the NIST release explains: Wineland is internationally recognized for developing the technique of using lasers to cool ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) to near […]
It’s 4am
It’s four am, and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in a white house, and it’s ringing. Something is happening in the lab. What do you want to answer that phone? Is it a physicist with the experience and knowledge to deal with the apparatus? Even if he’s only just gotten […]