It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with the Incoherent Ponderer, but he’s exactly right regarding Scientific American‘s “The Future of Physics” issue (via PhysMath Central): [T]his month’s issue of Scientific American has a special titled “The Future of Physics”. I was quickly disappointed when I realized that the article covers only “terascale” physics,… Continue reading Physics Contains Multitudes
Author: Chad Orzel
links for 2008-01-19
The Quantum Pontiff : The Contextuality of Quantum Theory in Ten Minutes “Elves, Santa, boxes, and quantum measurements. That’s the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem: quantum measurements are contextual.” (tags: physics quantum science computing) An Upsetting Outcome :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education “When the researchers crunched the data, though,… Continue reading links for 2008-01-19
Buy The Dragon Never Sleeps! Buy it Now!
Amazon conveniently informed me today of a very positive development in SF: Night Shade Books is republishing Glen Cook’s space opera novel The Dragon Never Sleeps, which I reviewed quite some time ago. I’ve re-read it since then, and if anything, my opinion of it improved. It’s “New Space Opera” written years before there was… Continue reading Buy The Dragon Never Sleeps! Buy it Now!
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman
Somehow or another, I have managed never to read Feynman’s famous book on Quantum Electro-Dynamics. It always seemed a little too much like work, but having found myself in the position of writing a pop-science book about quantum physics that includes a chapter on QED and Feynman diagrams, it seemed like it would probably be… Continue reading QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman
Dorky Poll: Physics or Stamp Collecting?
Ernest Rutherford once said In science, there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting. So, a really simple question: which do you prefer? Physics or stamp collecting? Leave your answer in the comments.
links for 2008-01-18
The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Smith Of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles Of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien (1967, 1949) | The A.V. Club “A friend who’s much smarter than I once theorized that the process of growing up involves going either through a Tolkien phase or a Beat phase, but never both.” (tags: books… Continue reading links for 2008-01-18
Waiting for the Jack of Hearts
They’re renovating a lab down the hall from mine (this is what led to the power shutdown that temporarily disabled my wavemeter). Today’s agenda apparently involves a lot of drilling. Or, possibly, a bank robbery. Whatever’s going on, the intermittent violent shaking of the floor is not so conducive to research with laser diodes. When… Continue reading Waiting for the Jack of Hearts
True Lab Stories: Fire Safety
Typing up the demolition story reminded me of another before-my-time NIST story. Again, the statute of limitations has run, so it’s probably safe to tell this. As mentioned in the earlier post, it was very expensive to get the official facilities team at NIST to do construction work, so a lot of things used to… Continue reading True Lab Stories: Fire Safety
The Importance of Connotations in Headline Writing
The Washington Post has an article this morning headlined Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif.: The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises. Environmentalists who… Continue reading The Importance of Connotations in Headline Writing
Increasing the Confusion Level
I’ve been in a bit of a funk this week, for reasons that don’t bear talking about, and everything in blogdom has seemed indescribably tedious: the same boring people having the same stupid arguments over and over, with no end in sight. And don’t get me started on politics. In an effort to shake myself… Continue reading Increasing the Confusion Level