“It’s a question of character, of friendship. Hell, Leo, I ain’t afraid to say it, it’s a question of ethics.” –Giovanni Gaspari I’m back to lunchtime hoops after a two-week layoff due to teaching responsibilities. And this has reminded me of one of the great character tests that sports provide. Imagine that you’re playing basketball,… Continue reading Poll: A Question of Character
Month: November 2009
Poll: The Computers of the Future
Today’s Quantum Optics lecture is about quantum computing experiments, and how different types of systems stack up. Quantum computing, as you probably know if you’re reading this blog, is based on building a computer whose “bits” can not only take on “0” and “1” states, but arbitrary superpositions of “0” and “1”. Such a computer… Continue reading Poll: The Computers of the Future
Links for 2009-11-06
Philip K. Dick | Books | The A.V. Club “Why it’s daunting: Science fiction and fantasy get a lot of mileage out of taking their readers to new worlds, but most classic genre fiction is really about making new worlds seem like home. The Lord Of The Rings would lose a lot of its appeal… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-06
Thursday Baby Blogging 110509
For this week’s Baby Blogging, we have a shot of Kate helping SteelyKid with her new favorite game: It’s called “Take off my shoes, and put them back on.” She can play this for hours. It would be even cuter if she could do the putting on and taking off herself, but alas, she’s still… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 110509
Sports Poll: Yankees Win
I have a lab all morning, so I won’t get to more substantive blogging before this afternoon. The Yankees won their 27th World Series title last night, though, and given their status as the most polarizing team in baseball, this seems like a good excuse for a poll: What do you think about the Yankees… Continue reading Sports Poll: Yankees Win
Beyond Rocket Science
It’s not getting as much press as the “X Prize” for private rocket launches, but NASA has quietly been running a contest for work toward a “space elevator,” offering up to $2 million for a scheme to transmit power to a small robot climbing a 1km cable. Yesterday, the team from LaserMotive, including certified rocket… Continue reading Beyond Rocket Science
Links for 2009-11-05
TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine | My philosophy: Alan Sokal “Physicists, when they do philosophy, often do it badly. They’re often confused about the conceptual foundations of their own physics, because sometimes you can compute and get the right results even if you don’t understand conceptually very well what you’re doing. That’s a criticism that not… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-05
A Question About Frost
It’s November now, which means we’re edging into winter, and my morning ritual has been expanded to include scraping the frost off the cars when I get back from walking the dog. I’ve had to do this half a dozen times already, and I’ve noticed a puzzling pattern. Our driveway is aligned almost exactly east-west,… Continue reading A Question About Frost
Generalists, Specialists, and the Slappable
There are at least as many ways to write really interesting essays as there are people writing really interesting essays, but for the most part, they break down into two broad types. There are the ones that completely change the way you look at some subject you thought you knew about, forcing you to change… Continue reading Generalists, Specialists, and the Slappable
Links for 2009-11-04
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Protecting aircraft from high-powered lasers Sadly, this does not involve giant laser cannons trying to shoot down planes. (tags: science physics lasers optics) Essay – What to Write Next – Picking a Genre for Your Next Novel – NYTimes.com “Thriller Nothing wrong with putting a little food on the table,… Continue reading Links for 2009-11-04