Kevin Drum posts about the latest outrage from the airline industry: To summarize, then: (1) Airlines spent years hassling customers about their carry-on bags and persuading them to check their luggage instead. (2) After that finally started to work, they suddenly began charging for checked luggage. (3) As customers scurried to adapt once again, overhead… Continue reading The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the ______
Links for 2010-08-19
slacktivist: Please forgive me for the actions of extremists I have never met who commit acts of violence that I have never advocated “As a white male Baptist, it is my duty today to denounce the violence perpetrated by Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, who yesterday attacked the police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, in a heavily… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-19
Poll: Working Late
Daniel Lemire has a new blog post arguing that working long hours is stupid. This collided with Bee’s Backreaction post on what keeps physicists up at night, included in this morning’s Links Dump. This got me to thinking about academic work habits, which led to the following poll: How long will you keep working, continuously,… Continue reading Poll: Working Late
1491 by Charles C. Mann
We picked up a used copy of Charles Mann’s pop-archeology book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus a while back. I didn’t read it at the time, because I was a little afraid that it would be rather polemical in what I think of as the Neil Young mode– wildly overstating the awesomeness… Continue reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann
Quantum Optics from the Opposite Direction: QED Limits on Laser Intensities
Most of the time, when we talk about seeing quantum effects from light, we talk about extremely weak beams– looking at intensities where one photon more or less represents a significant change in the intensity of the light. Last week, though, Physics Buzz wrote up a paper that goes in the other direction: they suggest… Continue reading Quantum Optics from the Opposite Direction: QED Limits on Laser Intensities
Links for 2010-08-18
The Should I Skip Class Today? Calculator Here’s a clue: If you need to use a web-based “calculator” to decide whether to go to class or not, it doesn’t matter whether you go to class or not. (tags: education academia stupid internet) Backreaction: Worries “At first sight, physicists seem like normal people. But ask what… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-18
Scott Pilgrim
So, I blew off stuff I should’ve been doing, and went to see a matinee of the Scott Pilgrim movie this morning (it’s very much not Kate’s sort of thing, and I would feel guilty ditching her with SteelyKid to see it during the evening or on a weekend). Actually, first I went to Borders… Continue reading Scott Pilgrim
Wind and Temperature: Why Doesn’t Windy Equal Hot?
I got forwarded a physics question last night asking about the connection between wind and temperature, which I’ll paraphrase as: Temperature is related to the motion of the atoms and molecules making a substance up, with faster motion corresponding to higher temperature. So why does it feel warmer when the air is still and why… Continue reading Wind and Temperature: Why Doesn’t Windy Equal Hot?
Synchronicity and “Administrative Bloat”
At Inside Higher Ed this morning, they have a news squib about a new report blaming the high cost of college on “administrative bloat.” Coincidentally, the Dean Dad has a post pre-emptively responding to this in the course of arguing with a different group: In terms of administration, what would you cut? Should we stop… Continue reading Synchronicity and “Administrative Bloat”
Links for 2010-08-17
For Lean Budgets, a Plug-and-Play Solar System – Green Blog – NYTimes.com You know you’re a physical scientist when “Plug-and-Play Solar System” suggests something like “… then you put Jupiter here, and you’re all set. See, they’re orbiting already! And it’s open-source, so it’s free.” Sadly, this is actually about some home photovoltaic thing. (tags:… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-17