slacktivist: They need help "The reason I’ve been writing about/obsessing over things like the P&G rumor or the usefulness of Snopes is that I’m trying to figure out how to liberate the captives of unreality. " (tags: politics psychology US society culture education) Images of the 2008 TC3 fireball from space! – The Planetary Society… Continue reading links for 2008-10-11
Author: Chad Orzel
College Novels
Over at Tor.com, Jo Walton has a post titled “College as magic garden: Why Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin is a book you’ll either love or hate”. Tam Lin, for those who don’t know it, is a version of the old ballad set at a liberal arts college in the upper Midwest (I believe it’s based… Continue reading College Novels
Hoedown Throwdown
It’s been a frustrating and annoying week here at Chateau Steelypips, so I was probably in the perfect mood for Mike Hoye’s subway busker story: After a relatively crappy day, I got off the subway, and there’s a couple of buskers playing a fiddle and a banjo at the station. And they’re really going at… Continue reading Hoedown Throwdown
That Kind of Week
I went to an evening talk last night by Brother Guy Consolmagno (about which more later, maybe), and one of my colleagues said “Hey, congratulations on your blog appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education.” Being quick on my feet, I said “Hunh?” So, of course, I checked it out when I got home. And,… Continue reading That Kind of Week
Nobel Peace Prize to Finnish Mediator
The 2008 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts.” Fortunately for uneducated boors like me, they provide a press release listing some of those efforts: Throughout all his adult life, whether as a senior Finnish public… Continue reading Nobel Peace Prize to Finnish Mediator
links for 2008-10-10
slacktivist: False Witnesses 2 "Far more interesting than those greedy sleazeballs, though, are the members of the much larger group of gossips who enthusiastically spread [rumors about Satanism at Proctor and Gamble]. This larger group has no financial interest at stake, so what’s in it for them? What motivates someone to accept the invitation to… Continue reading links for 2008-10-10
What’s Interesting About AMO Physics
In the spirit of the previous post, I thought I would provide a short list of the reasons why I am happy to be a physicist in the area of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical (AMO) Physics. Like nearly anyone who hung on long enough to get a Ph.D. in some field, I think the area… Continue reading What’s Interesting About AMO Physics
What’s So Interesting About Condensed Matter Physics?
If you go by physics-related stories in the mass media, you’d probably get the impression that about 90% of physicists work at the Large Hadron Collider or some other big accelerator lab. The other 10% would be dominated by people working on foundational questions in quantum mechanics– Bell tests, teleportation, quantum information processing– with a… Continue reading What’s So Interesting About Condensed Matter Physics?
Thursday Baby Blogging 100908
SteelyKid had her two-month check-up in Monday (her two-month birthday was Tuesday), and checking in with the medical profession means we’ve got the opportunity for some baby science. And it’s not science without graphs: That’s SteelyKid’s weight as a function of time. Like most babies, she dropped a bit immediately after birth, but shot right… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 100908
Literature Nobel to…. French Guy
The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” I’ll be honest, I’ve got nothing on this one. Anyone who knows anything about his work, please tell me about it in comments. My… Continue reading Literature Nobel to…. French Guy