slacktivist: Oh, and Tony Perkins? He lies. A lot. For money. “Please don’t clutch your pearls and get the vapors that such an impolite thing is stated so honestly. That Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council lies a lot in order to scare people into sending him money is not surprising, or new, or… Continue reading Links for 2009-10-16
Month: October 2009
Thursday Baby Blogging 101509
SteelyKid has cast Appa aside in favor of bigger and better things: That’s right. She’s not allowed to have candy yet, but she’s already gearing up for Halloween… The pumpkin bucket is actually a bribe– I bought it for her to play with while we waited for her prescription to be filled yesterday. This is… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 101509
A Brief History of Timekeeping
I gave a guest lecture this morning in a colleague’s sophomore seminar class about time. She’s having them look at time from a variety of perspectives, and they just finished reading Longitude, so she asked me to talk about the physics of clocks and the measurement of time. I’ve long considered using “A Brief History… Continue reading A Brief History of Timekeeping
Room Temperature Kook Signifiers
I was surprised to see Tom linking to a site claiming a superconductor at 254K. Not because the figure isn’t newsworthy, but because somebody sent me this about a week ago, and I decided not to link to it. It’s absolutely dripping with kook signifiers. The two biggest things tripping my kook alarm are: 1)… Continue reading Room Temperature Kook Signifiers
Links for 2009-10-15
Electrons flow forever in metal rings – physicsworld.com “[I]f a metal ring is very small – about 1 μm diameter or less – quantum mechanics says that its electrons should behave in much the same way as electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus. And in the same way that electrons in the lowest energy configuration of… Continue reading Links for 2009-10-15
My Doomsday Weapon
In the time that I’ve been at Union, I have suffered a number of lab disasters. I’ve had lasers killed in freak power outages. I’ve had lasers die because of odd electrical issues. My lab has flooded not once, not twice, but three different times. I’ve had equipment damaged by idiot contractors, and I’ve had… Continue reading My Doomsday Weapon
Imagine Science Film Festival
Both Physics Buzz and the X-Change Files are noting the Imagine Science Film Festival starting tomorrow in New York City. As the Buzz notes: This is only the film festival’s second year, but it’s already attracted the attention of major sponsors. Last year the journal Nature co-sponsored the festival, and this year the American Association… Continue reading Imagine Science Film Festival
Silly Poll: Scary Creatures
SteelyKid has a fever, and can’t go to day care, so I’m staying home with her. This pretty much rules out significant serious blogging, so here’s a poll to keep you amused: Which of these threats is most threatening?(survey) Choose only one.
Links for 2009-10-14
AdLit.org: Adolescent Literacy – William Farish: The World’s Most Famous Lazy Teacher “Thomas Jefferson was arguably one of the most well-educated Americans of his time. He was well-read, thoughtful, knowledgeable in a wide variety of topics from the arts to the sciences, and the founder of the University of Virginia. The same could probably be… Continue reading Links for 2009-10-14
Adventures in OA
The abbreviation here has a double meaning– both “Open Access” and “Operator Algebra.” In my Quantum Optics class yesterday, I was talking about how to describe “coherent states” in the photon number state formalism. Coherent states are the best quantum description of a classical light field– something like a laser, which behaves very much as… Continue reading Adventures in OA