For reasons that really aren’t important, I found myself doing some Google Image searches for pictures of political leaders, and I was struck by how many of the top results were caricatures. It occurred to me that you could probably say something about the collective emotional age of the Internet by looking at the distribution… Continue reading The Google Image Index of Emotional Maturity
Author: Chad Orzel
Science Outreach Through Fiction
Over at Tor.com, David Levine describes a really cool event he went to just before Worldcon: a crash course in modern astronomy for SF writers: The idea behind Launch Pad is Gernsbackian: getting good science into popular fiction as a form of public education and outreach for NASA. SF writer and University of Wyoming astronomy… Continue reading Science Outreach Through Fiction
links for 2008-08-22
Cocktail Party Physics: calculus is craptastic "Few science bloggers have the good fortune to write off a Vegas trip as "research", but that’s exactly what it was: my next book for Penguin is all about my experiences as a former English major learning calculus, inspired by a series of blog posts I wrote in 2006.… Continue reading links for 2008-08-22
Scooped; or, The Making of “Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices”
The experiment described in the previous post was published in early 1998, but the work was done in 1997. This was the year when things really turned around for me in grad school– the optical control paper was done in the summer 0f ’94, and ’95 and ’96 were just a carnival of pain. Everything… Continue reading Scooped; or, The Making of “Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices”
Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices
I announced my intention to do some research blogging a little while ago, and managed one pair of posts before the arrival of SteelyKid kind of distracted me. I’m still planning to complete the Metastable Xenon Project blog, though (despite the utter lack of response to the first two), and the second real paper I… Continue reading Suppression and Enhancement of Collisions in Optical Lattices
Thursday Baby Blogging 082108
We had a pediatrician appointment yesterday, at which it was declared that SteelyKid is in excellent health. She gained 8 ounces in the last week, or 1/16th of her weight (she was 8lbs even last week, and 8lbs 8oz this week). To put that in perspective, for me to make an equivalent change, I would… Continue reading Thursday Baby Blogging 082108
Modest Proposals Regarding Underage Drinking
The recent news about the Amethyst Initiative, in which a number of college and university presidents are calling for a lowering of the drinking age from 21, has sparked a bunch of discussion. Jake Young and Mark Kleiman have good contributions. There are two main arguments against lowering the drinking age: 1) Raising the drinking… Continue reading Modest Proposals Regarding Underage Drinking
links for 2008-08-21
Survival Blog for Scientists û Blog Archive û Giving your new results away too soon "[W]here do you announce your results first: in the title? In the abstract? In the introduction? Or, in the results paragraph?" All three of those, plus the Conclusion. (tags: academia writing science journals) Tolerant Faculty, Intolerant Students :: Inside Higher… Continue reading links for 2008-08-21
Make the Right Claims
Chris Mooney has a new Science Progress column on the number of scientists that challenges the claim that there are not enough students earning science degrees. The facts clearly say otherwise, no matter how you slice them. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2006–the last year for which data is currently available–the nation produced… Continue reading Make the Right Claims
Security Theater
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, Union, like most other colleges and universities, installed a new emergency alert system, which they test much more frequently than it can possibly require. This always produces a flurry of emails alerting us to the upcoming test, and then the test message itself (which is also read… Continue reading Security Theater