Today is Kate’s first day back at work (part-time), so I’m home alone with SteelyKid. This doesn’t leave me much time or mental energy for blogging, so here’s a bonus baby picture for the week: This one’s mostly for the grandparents, who bought her the Halloween outfit. You can’t see the jack-o-lantern face on the […]
Month: October 2008
Fermilab Discovers… Something. Maybe.
The high-energy physics blogosphere (well, two blogs worth) is abuzz this morning with the news that the CDF collaboration has seen something in collisions producing multiple muons (a muon is sort of like an electron, only heavier). You can get more from Tommaso Dorigo and Peter Woit. What they’re really seeing is not entirely clear. […]
Thursday Baby Blogging 103008
Today marks twelve weeks of SteelyKid: I spent pretty much the whole day at work, trying to get stuff done in advance of Kate’s return to work tomorrow, which will see me left home alone with SteelyKid all day for the first time. I’m a little apprehensive, to be honest. As for the picture, Kate […]
links for 2008-10-30
ICA Supreme Cuisine | Wii⢠& DS⢠Iron Chef America: The video game (tags: food games television computing silly) Setshot: Basketball for the Aging and Infirm: Careers: A 73 year-old college basketball player! There’s hope for me yet… (tags: sports basketball blogs silly) Mr. Dawkins, please report to the nearest shark tank, water skis in […]
Why Doesn’t Blogging Generate More Science?
Steinn responds to yesterday’s post about his comments about science blogging. I’m going to continue the tradition of responding here, rather than in his comments, because, well, I need something to post today. He concedes that outreach is a worthy purpose of blogging, but continues to be concerned about blogging as a tool for more […]
Selling Science to Congress
Via Facebook, of all things, a message reporting a conversation with Representative Bill Foster (D-Fermilab), talking about the best ways to encourage Congress to take science seriously. First, he addressed what’s been done in the past: On the effectiveness of the APS letter-writing campaign: *Recently I sent my chief of staff to a meeting of […]
Unsurprising Endorsements
In a move that I’m sure will surprise, oh, three or four people, the editors of Seed have officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. I doubt any regular reader of this blog will be surprised to hear that I agree with their endorsement. In fact, I’m on record as saying that I will not vote […]
Quantum Computing Candidates: Optical Lattices
Last week, I wrote about ion traps as a possible quantum computing platform, which are probably the best established of the candidate technologies. This week, I’ll talk about something more speculative, but closer to my own areas of research: neutral atoms in optical lattices. This is a newer area, which pretty much starts with a […]
What Is the Use of [Academic Discipline] Blogging?
Steinn asks a provocative question: has science blogging done any good? I can think of science policy issues where blogging has made a contribution, and the general spread of information and communication done by blogs has probably had some impact, but has any actual science been directly impacted by blogs, or discussion on blogs? I […]
links for 2008-10-29
The Frontal Cortex : Dangerous Models Why investment bankers are like cod fishermen (tags: economics social-science science environment animals blogs computing theory) Fear and Humiliation as Legitimate Teaching Methods :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education’s Source for News, Views and Jobs Teaching lessons from World of Warcraft. Seriously. (tags: academia education games internet psychology […]