The dog marches up to my computer as I’m checking my morning email. “What the heck is the deal with relativity?!?” “Well, good morning to you, too. How are you this fine morning?” “I’m fine, but I’m confused about relativity.” Sarcasm is totally lost on her. “What are you confused about?” “Well, you’ve got Special… Continue reading Everything is Relative in the Magic Closet
Earth Saved Until Next Year
So, the LHC has been shut down until next year, after a major helium leak in on section. This means it will be March or April of next year before collisions in the ATLAS detector create dragons that will eat us all. Now you know why I didn’t make a big deal of the “start-up”… Continue reading Earth Saved Until Next Year
links for 2008-09-24
Playing the odds at the LHC: the luminosity frontier « Shores of the Dirac Sea "The chances (odds) of one proton hitting another in such tight conditions… are almost as bad as having to win a lottery three times in a row." (tags: physics particles science blogs education math) The Best of YouTube – bestofyoutube.com… Continue reading links for 2008-09-24
Bandwidth and Community Expectations
Derek Lowe has posted an article about X-ray lasers in chemistry, which amused me because of the following bit: Enter the femtosecond X-ray laser. A laser will put out the cleanest X-ray beam that anyone’s ever seen, a completely coherent one at an exact (and short) wavelength which should give wonderful reflection data. This is… Continue reading Bandwidth and Community Expectations
Science21 Highlights: Inclusive and Exclusive Definitions
One full day of the Science in the 21st Century meeting wound up being devoted to what might be characterized as defining what we mean by Science. This started off with a talk by Harry Collins (microblogging, video), a sociologist of science who has done a great deal of work on the nature of expertise,… Continue reading Science21 Highlights: Inclusive and Exclusive Definitions
The Blogging Papers
Two new articles appeared yesterday on the topic of science blogging and academic science: GrrlScientist posted the text of an article she wrote titled “Science Blogs Can Advance the Academic Process”. ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith have a new article in PLoS Biology, titled “Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between… Continue reading The Blogging Papers
links for 2008-09-23
Submission Form "Use this form to nominate a blog post for The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2008. " (tags: science blogs books) BuyMyShitPile.com: Hey Washington, can you buy my bad investments too? "Use the form below to submit bad assets you’d like the government to take off your hands. And remember,… Continue reading links for 2008-09-23
Drop and Give Me Twenty
Baby push-ups! She can’t maintain it for all that long, but SteelyKid can manage to push herself up and take a look around, when placed on her stomach. This is definite progress from a week or so ago.
Science Majors Follow-Up
I meant to follow up on some of the comments to my post calling for more science majors last week, but we had some Issues Thursday night, and I didn’t get to it on Friday. There were a number of people making negative comments about things that weren’t quite what I was saying, though, and… Continue reading Science Majors Follow-Up
How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure
Your must-read academic link of the week is today’s Inside Higher Ed article by Gary Lewandoski, with the provocative title: Stop Trying to Get Tenure and Start Trying to Enjoy Yourself. His thesis is pretty much clear from the title: When I started my own tenure-track position I had the same questions. I perused published… Continue reading How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure