Cathedral-Building in Science

Tommaso Dorigo has an interesting post spinning off a description of the Hidden Dimensions program at the World Science Festival (don’t bother with the comments to Tommaso’s post, though). He quotes a bit in which Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru both admitted that they don’t expect to see experimental evidence of extra dimensions in their… Continue reading Cathedral-Building in Science

World Cup Open Thread and Poll

We’re several days into the World Cup now, and I have just about settled on my rooting strategy for countries I have no personal connection to: I’m going to root for countries where we’ve sold the rights for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog over countries where the rights haven’t been sold yet. This… Continue reading World Cup Open Thread and Poll

Links for 2010-06-15

In the Hunt for Planets, Who Owns the Data? – NYTimes.com “Astronomers everywhere, who have been waiting since Kepler’s launch in March 2009 to get their hands on this data, will be rushing to telescopes to examine these stars in the hopes of advancing the grand quest of finding Earthlike planets capable of harboring life… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-15

Published
Categorized as Links Dump

I Need a Pointless (But Cool) Graphic

At last weekend’s Hidden Dimensions event, Brian Greene had a graphic of a Calabi-Yau object (it wasn’t this one, but it’s the same idea). He put this up several times, but never actually explained what the hell it was supposed to show. It just looked kind of cool. Last week’s Through the Wormhole program segment… Continue reading I Need a Pointless (But Cool) Graphic

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Signing Saturday

There was a nice story in the Schenectady Gazette about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I’d love to link to it, but the Gazette paywalls everything, so all you really get is the story title, unless you subscribe. And if you subscribe to the Gazette, you don’t really need me to tell you… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Signing Saturday

Links for 2010-06-14

In Defense of Evolutionary Psychology: Why They’re Asking The Wrong Questions : The Thoughtful Animal “Evolutionary Psychology suffers from a PR problem, which can be mostly blamed on ignorant (even if well-intentioned) members of the population who don’t know what they’re talking about. Evolutionary psychology attempts to describe the evolution of the mind and of… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-14

Published
Categorized as Links Dump

Graduation Day 2010

A grey and dreary day here in Schenectady for the 216th Commencement at Union College. This is probably healthier for the graduates than the years when it’s sunny and hot and people pass out in their seats, but it isn’t the most pleasant send-off. Then again, my own college graduation was a grey and dismal… Continue reading Graduation Day 2010

Links for 2010-06-12

slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 3 “My conundrum was not unique — not to me and not to the question of usury. The same dilemma arises whenever we treat the Bible as a rulebook. That’s an approach that guarantees — that manufactures — conflicts between text and reason, text and experience, text and reality, text… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-12

Published
Categorized as Links Dump

(Belated) World Cup Contest

This was supposed to go up earlier, but it turns out that thinking you selected “Scheduled” in the MT back end is not, in fact, enough to schedule the post to appear. So this is showing up after games have already begun, but nothing of consequence has happened yet, so it’s no biggie. Anyway, the… Continue reading (Belated) World Cup Contest