Like every other media outlet, Slate has a Best Books of 2009 list, in this case featuring one book chosen by each of their 22 editors. Editor in chief Jacob Weisberg chose Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder, and writes: If, like me, you didn’t study much science after high school, this absorbing narrative will… Continue reading Best Books, With Bonus Irony
Category: Science
Unclear on the Concept
I was sitting in my office on campus, working on some computer stuff, when I noticed a bunch of guys from Facilities out in the hall, bustling around doing something. A few minutes later, one of them stopped right outside my door, and called into the main Facilities office on his cell phone. “We’re up… Continue reading Unclear on the Concept
Poll: Cat Vacuuming
A purely hypothetical situation for today’s poll. Purely. You have agreed to read and review six grant proposals by Sunday. Today is Thursday, and you have not read them yet. What do you do?(poll) If anybody needs me, I’ll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
Months ago, during the DonorsChoose fundraiser, I offered to answer questions from people who donated to the Challenge. I then promptly forgot to respond to the questions sent in. Mea maxima culpa. Here’s a way-too-late response to a good question from “tcmJOE”: I’ve spent the past few years trying to explore physics and figure out… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: Why AMO Physics?
Snowy Poll
I just finished shoveling six-plus inches of snow off our cars and driveway (the forecast called for something like 3-5″, but we’ve got more than that, with no slowing in the fall). In honor of the first significant snowfall of the year, a poll: It’s snowing:(survey) This one has ticky-boxes, which will play hell with… Continue reading Snowy Poll
On Market Rates
There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in the SF blogosphere about what writers should be paid for short fiction, which has led to a lot of people posting lists of their short fiction and what they were paid for it (Scalzi has links to most of them). This naturally leads me to wonder what… Continue reading On Market Rates
Gold, Frankincense, and Mars
I’m kind of fried from all the recent driving, and I’ve got some stuff to catch up on. So we’ll ease back into regular blogging, by posting a clip from last week’s Colbert Report with everybody’s favorite Jesuit, Brother Guy Consolmagno, talking about how alien life would affect Christianity: The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs… Continue reading Gold, Frankincense, and Mars
Correlation, Causation, and Reputation
I spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday reading an economics paper, specifically the one about academic salaries and reputations mentioned on the Freakonomics blog. There’s a pdf available from that post, if you’d like to read it for yourself. The basic idea is that they looked at the publication records of several hundred full… Continue reading Correlation, Causation, and Reputation
Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
I’ve made a couple of oblique references to this over the past couple of months, but I have an article in the new issue of Physics World, on experiments using molecules to search for an electric dipole moment of the electron: When most of us think about searching for physics beyond the Standard Model –… Continue reading Using Molecules to Search for New Physics
On Scandalous Emails
The big topic-of-the-moment is the hacked stash of emails from a major climate research group. The whole climate change discussion is one of those “no upside” topics that I try to stay out of, but I have some thoughts and comments about issues surrounding the email incident. These are largely based on reactions to yesterday’s… Continue reading On Scandalous Emails