Links for 2010-12-19

slacktivist: One win; one loss “At the end of the day, what this means is that if you want to serve your country and put your life on the line to defend the freedoms enjoyed by Republican U.S. senators, those senators will begrudgingly and belatedly allow you to do so if you are gay or… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-19

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Links for 2010-12-18

Eric Cornell: an experimental maestro – physicsworld.com “Winning the Nobel prize aged just 39 could easily have gone to the head of Eric Cornell, the physicist who shared the 2001 prize for creating the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). But when Physics World reporter, James Dacey, caught up with Cornell he encountered a firmly grounded… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-18

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Friday Invalid Blogging

I sprained my ankle yesterday. That’s not an official medical diagnosis– I have a doctor appointment later today to get that– but I’ve done this before, and I know the feeling. Sadly, I did not injure myself saving orphans from a burning building (as I usually do on Thursdays), or while dunking a depleted-uranium basketball… Continue reading Friday Invalid Blogging

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Links for 2010-12-17

Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » QCut “Let me end this post with a request: I want all of my readers to visit the YouCut page, and propose that quantum computing and theoretical computer science research be completely eliminated.  Here’s my own CAREER Award; go ahead and cite it by number as a particularly egregious example of government… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-17

Links for 2010-12-16

The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010 | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine Pretty pictures, plus science. (tags: astronomy science pictures space planets blogs) very small array » United States of America Map A map filled in with the first result from Google’s auto-complete. Don’t read the comments. (tags: internet technology pictures us) Poetry in… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-16

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How Does Light Travel Through Glass?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m answering the occasional question over at the Physics Stack Exchange site, a crowd-sourced physics Q&A. When I’m particularly pleased with a question and answer, I’ll be promoting them over here like, well, now. Yesterday, somebody posted this question: Consider a single photon (λ=532 nm) traveling through a plate of perfect… Continue reading How Does Light Travel Through Glass?

…As Long As They Spell Your Name Right

As previously noted, the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is selling very well via the Guardian‘s online bookshop, among other UK venues. It’s doing well enough that I might need to start referring to the original text as the American edition of How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog…… Continue reading …As Long As They Spell Your Name Right