I should queue up some more PNAS posts, but I think I’m going to save a bunch of them for when we’re at Worldcon. And I do have more serious science-related stuff that I’ve marked to talk about, but it’s Friday, and everybody could use a break. So here’s a silly pop-music thing instead. As […]
Month: July 2009
Precision Measurement Smackdown Explained
Yesterday’s historical physics poll was about precision measurements. Who were those people, and why are they worth knowing about?
The Witten Thing
I had a bit of a discussion via Twitter with Eric Weinstein yesterday, starting with his statement: Ed Witten has no Nobel Prize. Now tell me again how this era’s physics just feels different because we are too close to it. Basically, he appears to feel that Witten is sufficiently smart that he ought to […]
Links for 2009-07-31
Guided By Voices | Music | A.V. Club “Dozens of people can say they were members of indie-rock institution Guided By Voices during its 21-year run, but the Dayton, Ohio-based band was chiefly a creative outlet for a music-obsessed former schoolteacher named Robert Pollard. And Pollard was very creative, capable of writing an album’s worth […]
Thursday Baby Blogging 073009
It’s really getting difficult to get good Baby Blogging pictures, now that SteelyKid is mobile. We’ve had to resort to trying to sneak Appa into the background when she pauses to regroup by chewing on an outgrown outfit: That’s not the best Appa-for-scale picture, I know, but it’s tough. This one is better, but you […]
Historical Physicist Smackdown: Precision Measurement Edition
Keeping up the string of poll questions about less-well-known physicists (started here), here’s a list of physicists who are known for having made very precise measurements of physical quanitites. Which of them is the best? Which of these physicists who made precision measurements is the best?(poll) (Note: I have deliberately limited this to physicists who […]
Optics Smackdown Explained
Yesterday, I posted a silly poll about optical physicists. Who are those people, and why should you care about them? In inverse order of popularity:
The arXiv: When You Can’t Plot Well Enough for Analog
There’s another paper about the Fermi Paradox highlighted on the arXiv blog today. This one describes extensive numerical simulations which purport to show that no more than 1,000 spacefaring civilizations can be exploring the galaxy with non-replicating slower-than-light robotic probes. Of course, this is highly contingent on a bunch of assumptions about the behavior of […]
Links for2009-07-30
The missing research program for space colonization — KarlSchroeder.com “No amount of data about how the human body reacts to zero-G is going to answer the important question, which is: how does the human body react to extended periods under fractional gravity–like the moon’s 1/6 G or Mars’s .38 G? If there’s a potential show-stopper […]
PNAS: Off-Site Edition
The semi-nonymous Phillip H. at DC Dispatches liked the idea behind the Project for Non-Academic Science, but he didn’t want to reveal his secret identity. So he wrote up and posted his own interview: 1) What is your non-academic job? I’m the National Program Coordinator for Protected Species at my Federal Agency. This means I […]