Ethan Zuckerman has the sort of life that every academic dreams of: He travels all over the world going to conferences where really smart people, some of them famous, talk about interesting things. And he doesn’t even have to grade exam papers, or attend boring faculty meetings. His latest jaunt was to the Idea Festival… Continue reading Ideas All Over the Place
Author: Chad Orzel
Buffalo Tom, LarkFest 2007
One of my favorite underappreciated bands of the mid-90’s is the Boston-based three-piece Buffalo Tom. They got a little bit of play with songs like “Sodajerk” and “Treehouse” (both of which have turned up in commercials, and the former apparently figured prominently in an epsidoe of “My So-Called Life”), but they had a string of… Continue reading Buffalo Tom, LarkFest 2007
Atheist Charity: The Final Chapter
A while back, I posted a call for non-religious charities, and donated $200 to two organizations recommended by readers. Having done that, I would be remiss in my duties as a blogger if I didn’t mention the ne plus ultra of atheist charities, the newly launched Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Ten of… Continue reading Atheist Charity: The Final Chapter
The Story of Dark Matter
Speaking of science explanations in SF, or at least science explained by SF authors, there’s a very nice history of dark matter at SFNovelists.com by Mark Brotherton (via Tobias Buckell): The story of dark matter starts back in the 1930s with Fritz Zwicky, a brilliant but difficult Caltech astronomer, who was studying galaxy clustering. Galaxies… Continue reading The Story of Dark Matter
Teaching Science in SF
In a comment to my Worldcon wrap-up, “fvngvs” asks a question following up on the science in SF panel: So Chad, now that you’ve had some time to think about it, can you think of a list of books/stories with a really good treatment of science concepts? It’s a good question, and deserves a full… Continue reading Teaching Science in SF
Particle Physicists Have All the Blogs
The particle physics community in the US has rolled out a new site promoting the Large Hadron Collider, because, you know, there was a danger that we might forget that it’s there. As part of the site, they’re featuring four new physics blogs, by Monica Dunford, Pam Klabbers, Steve Nahn, and blogosphere veteran Peter Steinberg.… Continue reading Particle Physicists Have All the Blogs
True Lab Stories: Why I Am Not a Biologist
Every now and then, usually in the summer or early fall, when the sun is shining and it’s just pleasant to be outdoors, I find myself almost regretting my career choices. After all, had I chosen a career in the biological sciences, rather than laser physics, I could do my research outside in the nice… Continue reading True Lab Stories: Why I Am Not a Biologist
This Is a Scandal?
So, Bill Belichick has been fined half a million for the incident last week in which a Patriots assistant coach was caught videotaping Jets signals. The team was also fined $250K, and will lose at least one draft pick over the incident. Now that the punishment has been handed down, can somebody explain to me… Continue reading This Is a Scandal?
Student Sustainability Video
One of our senior physics majors has made a video promoting sustainability to students, and posted it on YouTube. I need to figure out the best way to link it from the department web page, but it occurs to me that I have this big Internet platform I can use to plug it: It’s a… Continue reading Student Sustainability Video
Doctorow on Asimov
Discussing Isaac Asimov’s non-fiction a bit yesterday reminded me of my absolute favorite panel at Worldcon, Saturday’s “Mundane or Transcendent?” with Cory Doctorow, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Charlie Stross, and Robert Silverberg as moderator. They’re all really smart people, and they’re all good at turning phrases on the fly, so it was terrifically entertaining. Some of… Continue reading Doctorow on Asimov