Last week, Dmitry Budker’s group at Berkeley published a paper in Physical Review Letters (also free on the arxiv) with the somewhat drab title “Spectroscopic Test of Bose-Einsten Statistics for Photons.” Honestly, I probably wouldn’t’ve noticed it, even though this is the sort of precision AMO test of physics that I love, had it not… Continue reading Photons: Still Bosons
Author: Chad Orzel
Crowd-Sourcing Physics Questions
There is a proposal for a Physics Q&A site along the lines of Stack Overflow for computer stuff. Like many such projects, this largely conflates “physics” and “theoretical particle physics,” so I’m not sure how much of a contribution I can really make. I’ve got plenty of theorist readers, though, so if this seems like… Continue reading Crowd-Sourcing Physics Questions
Insults Are Easy, Community Is Hard
Josh Rosenau makes an excellent and important point regarding prayer meetings and the Gulf oil spill: that the point is not so much that God will stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, but that religious groups are a key community organization point for getting people together to work on the problem. He puts this… Continue reading Insults Are Easy, Community Is Hard
Links for 2010-06-28
Power and making § Unqualified Offerings “A colleague was complaining yesterday about the way that some faculty are treated better than others. Not so much in my department as in certain other departments. Some people, for a variety of reasons, probably do get a better deal (even if not to the extent that he thinks).… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-28
Hold On to Your Hat…
… because SteelyKid is a baby on the move, and she moves fast: SteelyKid spent a long weekend with Kate’s mom, and we went down there yesterday to pick her up. This picture, snapped during a playground visit this morning, gives you some idea of her energy level. Accordingly, Kate and I are both exhausted.… Continue reading Hold On to Your Hat…
World Cup Update
The last two days of group play were kind of disappointing, with two games (Brazil-Portugal and Spain-Chile) barely being contested in the second half, as the teams involved were sure to advance, and just sort of kicked the ball around idly in the middle of the field until the clock ran out. In a just… Continue reading World Cup Update
Culinary Questions: Best and Worst Foods?
A couple of related items from the uncomfortable questions comments. First, from Elizabeth: What’s your favorite homemade supper? What is your favorite thing to cook? then a bit later from CCPhysicist: What is the WORST thing that Kate ever cooked? What was your own worst cooking disaster? This is a tough question, because I like… Continue reading Culinary Questions: Best and Worst Foods?
Links for 2010-06-26
Testing the Best-Yet Theory of Nature « Berkeley Lab News Center “”[I]t should be remembered that the Standard Model is not a final theory of all phenomena, and is therefore inherently incomplete,” says Dmitry Budker, a staff scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-26
Scientific Salary Stratigraphy: Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results
Inside Higher Ed has a news squib about gender disparities in academic science, which points to a Nature story about a survey on job satisfaction (bad IHE, giving a false impression on the story!). The gender portion of the story is limited to a short section at the end of the article, and one graph:… Continue reading Scientific Salary Stratigraphy: Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results
Unusual Question: Boxers v. Briefs?
A second uncomfortable question from tbell: boxers, briefs, or other? That’s an interesting question. Not many people would think to ask about a comparison between professional fighting and the products of the legal profession. Boxing, while no longer the cultural force that it once was, does occasionally provide for some compelling watching. Boxers themselves tend… Continue reading Unusual Question: Boxers v. Briefs?