Looking over my scheduled posts for today, I see that there isn’t anything stridently political. Not wanting to shock the systems of readers still coming down off the election, let me add my voice to the chorus of ScienceBloggers expressing concern over the idea of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Environmental Protection… Continue reading RFK Jr.
Category: Science
Puzzling Solar Panel Press Release
Getting back to science, at least for the moment, I was puzzled by a press release from RPI, with the eye-catching headline Solar power game-changer: ‘Near perfect’ absorption of sunlight, from all angles. The article describes work published in Optics Letters (that I haven’t been able to put my hands on yet), developing new anti-reflection… Continue reading Puzzling Solar Panel Press Release
Quantum Computing Candidates: Liquid State NMR
Continuing the series of descriptions of candidate technologies for making a quantum computer (previous entries covered optical lattices and ion traps), we come to one that’s a little controversial. It’s the only remaining candidate I can describe off the top of my head without doing some more background reading, though, so I will plunge ahead… Continue reading Quantum Computing Candidates: Liquid State NMR
Why Doesn’t Blogging Generate More Science?
Steinn responds to yesterday’s post about his comments about science blogging. I’m going to continue the tradition of responding here, rather than in his comments, because, well, I need something to post today. He concedes that outreach is a worthy purpose of blogging, but continues to be concerned about blogging as a tool for more… Continue reading Why Doesn’t Blogging Generate More Science?
Selling Science to Congress
Via Facebook, of all things, a message reporting a conversation with Representative Bill Foster (D-Fermilab), talking about the best ways to encourage Congress to take science seriously. First, he addressed what’s been done in the past: On the effectiveness of the APS letter-writing campaign: *Recently I sent my chief of staff to a meeting of… Continue reading Selling Science to Congress
Quantum Computing Candidates: Optical Lattices
Last week, I wrote about ion traps as a possible quantum computing platform, which are probably the best established of the candidate technologies. This week, I’ll talk about something more speculative, but closer to my own areas of research: neutral atoms in optical lattices. This is a newer area, which pretty much starts with a… Continue reading Quantum Computing Candidates: Optical Lattices
What Is the Use of [Academic Discipline] Blogging?
Steinn asks a provocative question: has science blogging done any good? I can think of science policy issues where blogging has made a contribution, and the general spread of information and communication done by blogs has probably had some impact, but has any actual science been directly impacted by blogs, or discussion on blogs? I… Continue reading What Is the Use of [Academic Discipline] Blogging?
The Visual Display of Political Information
The closing narrative of the McCain campaign is apparently going to be “Obama’s a pinko commie socialist who wants to raise your taxes,” which means it’s time for all good liberals to bust out the graphs to show why this is false. Well, graph, singular. You know the one: I don’t remember who first posted… Continue reading The Visual Display of Political Information
Think Like a Videogame Physicist
Over at Dot Physics (which might be the best physics blog in the world at the moment), Rhett Allain has a pair of posts exploring the physics of Fantastic Contraption. The posts don’t really lend themselves to excerpting, so you need to go over there and read them, but I think they’re brilliant, and deserve… Continue reading Think Like a Videogame Physicist
Optimism and the Depression
This week’s department colloquium was Roel Snieder of the Colorado School of Mines on The Global Energy Challenge. I have to admit, I was somewhat rude, and spent a lot of the talk futzing with my tablet, but really, while his presentation of the material was very good, the material itself wasn’t new to me–… Continue reading Optimism and the Depression