Two papers in one post this time out. One of these was brought to my attention by Joerg Heber, the other I was reminded of when checking some information for last week’s mathematical post on photons. They fit extremely well together though, and both relate to the photon correlation stuff I was talking about last… Continue reading Bunches and Antibunches of Atoms: Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effects in Ultracold Atoms
Author: Chad Orzel
Links for 2010-08-24
The mismeasure of education « Confused at a higher level “Put simply, it makes just about as much sense to obsess over these numerical rankings as it does to try to numerically rank favorite restaurants, or jazz songs, or single malt scotches, or … you get the point. It is a false quantitative-ness about unquantifiable… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-24
Who’s the Oldest Science Blogger?
Derek Lowe’s doing a lunch thing at the ACS meeting, and in passing mentions the age of his blog: As the longest-standing chemistry blogger (perhaps the longest standing science blogger, for all I know), I’m glad to have a chance to speak. I was just telling a reader by e-mail that when I started this… Continue reading Who’s the Oldest Science Blogger?
High Excitement in Review: “Quantum information with Rydberg atoms”
I’m a big fan of review articles. For those not in academic science, “review article” means a long (tens of pages) paper collecting together the important results of some field of science, and presenting an overview of the whole thing. These vary somewhat in just how specific they are– some deal with both experiment and… Continue reading High Excitement in Review: “Quantum information with Rydberg atoms”
Academic Poll: On the First Day…
While I’m still trying not to think about the new academic term that starts in two weeks (yes, the first day of class is Labor Day, grumble mutter grump), it’s beginning to impinge on my consciousness. Thus, this poll on a frequent and annoying phenomenon that recurs with every new academic term: Students who miss… Continue reading Academic Poll: On the First Day…
Links for 2010-08-23
Washington, We Have a Problem | Politics | Vanity Fair “It’s Obama’s conviction–you hear this from the most senior White House aides again and again, because it reflects the thinking at the top–that by keeping his head down and doing his job he can also pursue a different strategy, one that doesn’t aim to win… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-23
Credibility Is Easy to Lose: Paleo-Chemical Edition
I was channel-surfing the other night, and stumbled across a History Channel program on paleoanthropology, talking about new-ish theories of how humans first populated the Americas. Coming off my recent read of 1491, this seemed like a good way to pass a little time. After a little bit, it started to talk about some guy’s… Continue reading Credibility Is Easy to Lose: Paleo-Chemical Edition
Idiom Poll: Sales
In honor of the people down the street who are trying to unload some excess personal belongings, a poll: When people take a bunch of stuff they no longer want, put it outside their house, and try to sell it to passersby, this is called:Market Research You can only choose one of these terms in… Continue reading Idiom Poll: Sales
Links for 2010-08-22
News: A Graphic Text – Inside Higher Ed A bunch of professors in MBA programs have written a textbook in graphic novel form. I’d make a joke here about what this says about our future captains of industry, but, really, do I need to? (tags: education comics business academia books) slacktivist: A bank run in… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-22
Charting Fantasy Art
Nobody who likes both SF and the graphing of odd things as much as I do could possibly fail to link to Orbit’s charts of fantasy art. These include the frequency plot of various elements seen at right, a comparison of fashion trends for urban fantasy heroines, color trends in cover dragons, and a study… Continue reading Charting Fantasy Art