Saturday finally saw some good action in the NCAA tournamnet. Three of the eight games went to overtime, and four of the remaining five were decided by seven points or less. VCU and Xavier came up short against Pitt and Ohio State, but made fantastic runs to get the games into OT, and #6 seed… Continue reading NCAA Tournament 2007: That’s More Like It
NCAA Tournament 2007: Day Two, More Chalk
I saw very little basketball on the second day of the tournament, because I had a meeting at 1:00 that ran until almost 3:00. I watched a bit of the second set of games between that and going to a faculty-student St. Patrick’s Day event at 4:30, and then dozed off during the games after… Continue reading NCAA Tournament 2007: Day Two, More Chalk
Slide Rule Update
A few days back, commenter igor eduardo kupfer compiled the log5 predictions for the first round, and tried to come up with a test of their validity. We didn’t agree on anything, but for the sake of intellectual honesty, here’s a breakdown of how those predictions fared, binned in 10% groups (so 0.5-0.6 collects those… Continue reading Slide Rule Update
Robert Putnam to the White Courtesy Phone
Via Inside Higher Ed, a story about a unique attempt to address student problems at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai: One of India’s top engineering schools has restricted Internet access in its hostels, saying addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students’ performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal. Authorities at the… Continue reading Robert Putnam to the White Courtesy Phone
Spring Showdown: This is ScienceCenter
Muiscal intro, fancy CGI effects Anchor 1 (voiceover): The Showdown begins! Four regions, eight games each, sixty-four top science concepts in a fight to the finish. Anchor 2: In today’s Orbit region action, two titans of Newtonian physics collide– will Universal Gravitation maintain its orbit, or will the upstart Second Law change its momentum for… Continue reading Spring Showdown: This is ScienceCenter
Trustees vs. Faculty
The Dean Dad posts lots of very interesting things that I end up not having time to link to– you should be reading his blog every day, if you’re interested in how academia operates. This one is too good to not link, though– a discussion of Boards of Trustees and how they operate. I particualrly… Continue reading Trustees vs. Faculty
NCAA Tournament 2007: Chalk on Day One
The first day turned out to be a little disappointing, from a fan’s perspective. There were only two upsets by seed, and one of those was an 8-9 game. Other than that, the higher seed won all the games, and most of them weren’t all that close. CBS demonstrated a real gift for switching to… Continue reading NCAA Tournament 2007: Chalk on Day One
First Round Update
Maryland held off a tough Davidson team to win, 82-70, in a game that I saw basically none of. By the time the BC-Texas Tech game wound down to its uninteresting conclusion, Maryland had built up a fairly secure lead, and there were only a couple of minutes of garbage time left. I gather that… Continue reading First Round Update
NCAA Tournament 2007
While I am taking the day off to watch basketball all afternoon, I will not be live-blogging the first round, the way I have the last couple of years. I realize this is a huge disappointment to about two people out there, but since typing on the laptop got me crippling muscle spasms in my… Continue reading NCAA Tournament 2007
The Life Cycle of a Microwave Photon
After a short post-March Meeting lag, Physics World is back to announcing really cool physics results, this time highlighting a paper in Nature (subscription required) by a French group who have observed the birth and death of photons in a cavity. I’m not sure how it is that the French came to dominate quantum optics,… Continue reading The Life Cycle of a Microwave Photon