While I mostly restricted myself to watching invited talks at DAMOP last week, I did check out a few ten-minute talks, one of which ended up being just about the coolest thing I saw at the meeting. Specifically, the Friday afternoon talk on observing relativity with atomic clocks by Chin-Wen Chou of the Time and… Continue reading Relativity on a Human Scale
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Upcoming Events
Two noteworthy events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the next month: First, and most important, I’m going to be signing books at the Author’s Alley portion of the World Science Festival Street Fair. The fair itself is in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, though the name of the signing program… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Upcoming Events
Links for 2010-06-01
OPERA Sees Tau Neutrino Appearance!! “It is official: the OPERA experiment (above, in a sketch) has found its first tau lepton in one of its bricks (a picture of a brick is shown below). What gives, I am hearing some of you ask. It means that a muon neutrino launched from the CERN laboratories in… Continue reading Links for 2010-06-01
Irritating Poll: Stuck at Work
Today is Memorial Day in the US, which is a holiday to honor the dead of our various wars. It’s also the traditional start of summer-type activities, and most people spend it at cookouts and parades and that sort of thing. I say “most people,” because our trimester calendar means that we’re still in session,… Continue reading Irritating Poll: Stuck at Work
Links for 2010-05-31
slacktivist: Sex & Money, part 1 “For Nehemiah, charging 1 percent was shameful usury. The low-interest loans I was championing through our alternative investing still charged more than that. And the Gospels weren’t any help at all. Jesus did not merely reinforce the prohibition against usury, he reached past it — forbidding lending with the… Continue reading Links for 2010-05-31
Bird Blogging
Looking for something else, I was reminded of some pictures I took a week or two ago. This one came out pretty well: This also reminds me that it’s a really nice day here in Niskayuna, and I shouldn’t be spending it all at the computer. So, enjoy the bird picture, and I’ll post something… Continue reading Bird Blogging
Home from DAMOP
Some late nights and wireless problems conspired to keep me from posting anything Friday or Saturday, but I was still at the meeting, and saw some cool talks on coherent X-ray production with lasers, opto-mechanics, and ridiculously good atomic clocks, some of which I hope to talk about later. For the moment, I’m just enjoying… Continue reading Home from DAMOP
Thursday Substitute Baby Blogging 052710
Kate here with two pictures of SteelyKid at play. Here’s one from last night in which she is beginning to realize the difficulties with her plan: (Very shortly after this, she solved the problem by demanding that I put my sandals back on, and then leading me around by one hand while she pushed her… Continue reading Thursday Substitute Baby Blogging 052710
Anatomy of a Conference: DAMOP Day 2– The Rise of Precision Measurement
Since I sort of implied a series in the previous post, and I have no better ideas, here’s a look at Thursday’s DAMOP program:
My Wednesday at DAMOP
I was pretty sedentary on Wednesday, going to only two sessions, and staying for most of the talks in each. I spent most of the initial prize session getting my bearings in the conference areas, and talking to people I know from my NIST days. In the 10:30 block, I went to the session on… Continue reading My Wednesday at DAMOP