Abstruse Goose » How Stuff Works "Science killed my unicorns." (tags: science comics silly abstruse-goose) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Hugo Nominations Including a few links to recommended-reading lists. (tags: movies SF literature books hugos) Physics and Physicists: What Did Galileo Actually Do? Most People Don’t Know "The name "Galileo"… Continue reading links for 2009-02-20
Month: February 2009
Thursday Baby Blogging 021909
For this week’s Baby Blogging, SteelyKid couldn’t decide whether to show off her ability to grab Appa or her ability to touch her toes, so she tried to do both at once: The color scheme of this outfit is undoubtedly going to lead to some irritating interactions with people in malls (“Why is her outfit… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 021909
Journalists Are Amplifiers
A few days ago, Bee put up a post titled Do We Need Science Journalists?, linking back to Bora’s enormous manifesto from the first bit of the Horgan-Johnson bloggingheads kerfuffle. My first reaction was “Oh, God, not again…” but her post did make me think of one thing, which is illustrated by Peter Woit’s latest… Continue reading Journalists Are Amplifiers
links for 2009-02-19
slacktivist: Why I’m peeved "House-of-cards fundamentalism allows for no distinctions between babies and bathwater, between the central tenets of the faith and the adiaphora and error. So once one part of this belief system begins to collapse — as it inevitably will since young-earth creationism is disprovable — then it all has to go." (tags:… Continue reading links for 2009-02-19
Random Physics We Don’t Understand
I’ve already mentioned two of the program items I was on at Boskone (global warming and quantum physics for dogs). I should at least comment on the other two, “Physics: What We Don’t Understand” and “Is Science Addicted to Randomness?” They both featured me and Geoff Landis, but other than that were very different. “Physics:… Continue reading Random Physics We Don’t Understand
links for 2009-02-18
US LHC Blog » Higgs Hunting News "Depending on what the mass of the Higgs boson is, it will decay into other particles that are easier or harder for an experiment to detect. So for example if the mass turns out to be about 170 GeV, the Tevatron experiments say their chances are almost 100… Continue reading links for 2009-02-18
Is It Better to Be Lucky or Good?
My cold from last week has shifted into a bit of bronchitis (and here I thought my virus-fighting strategy of staying up really late drinking beer would clear everything up), so I’m kind of groggy and lethargic. And I have book edits to work on, which precludes taking a long time to write blog posts… Continue reading Is It Better to Be Lucky or Good?
Gravity Probe B Is in the Air
I no longer remember the context, but the Gravity Probe B experiment came up in discussion around the department last week, and nobody could really remember what the status of it was. It came up again during the “Physics: What We Don’t Understand” panel Saturday morning, where Geoff Landis was able to supply a few… Continue reading Gravity Probe B Is in the Air
links for 2009-02-17
immlass: You have no privacy. Get over it. "Facebook may be sleazy and selling more of your information than you like to advertisers, but the idea it wants to steal your IP and do something with it seems vanishingly unlikely. I suspect the change in TOS has something to do with protecting their asses against… Continue reading links for 2009-02-17
Quantum Physics for Dogs: Many Worlds, Many Treats?
On Saturday at Boskone, I gave a talk on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM. This was held up a bit by waiting for the projector to arrive (I was busy enough with other stuff that I didn’t notice that I hadn’t received confirmation of my request for a projector until late Thursday night, so this… Continue reading Quantum Physics for Dogs: Many Worlds, Many Treats?