A flurry of press releases hit EurekAlert yesterday (one, two, three), indicating the release of a bunch of data from NASA’s Stardust mission. This is the probe that was sent out to fly through the tail of a comet, and catch tiny dust particles in an aerogel matrix, and return them to Earth for analysis.… Continue reading Displacing Artie Shaw
Science on the Tree 4
Tonight’s Science on the Tree ornament is a little more obscure:
I Told You So
We’ve been having intermittent DSL problems here at Chateau Steelypips, which has led to much cursing of Verizon. The fact that their tech support department screwed up the first two service appointments, and repeatedly dropped calls after half an hour spent navigating their miserable phone tree and hold system didn’t help any. The repair guy… Continue reading I Told You So
Baghdad Update: Bad Cops, Good Cops
Here’s the latest of the intermittent updates (I actually skipped one, but I’ll come back to it on a slow day one of these days) from my friend Paul, who’s working as a journalist in Baghdad (and, thankfully, just about done with his tour there). This is one of the most opinionated of the occasional… Continue reading Baghdad Update: Bad Cops, Good Cops
Single Top Quark, Seeking Antiquark. No Freaks.
The physics story of the moment is probably the detection of single top quarks at Fermilab. Top quarks, like most other exotic particles, are usually produced in particle-antiparticle pairs, with some fraction of the kinetic energy of two colliding particles being converted into the mass of the quark-antiquark pair (see this old post). There’s a… Continue reading Single Top Quark, Seeking Antiquark. No Freaks.
The Bizarre Economics of Tuition
The Times had an article the other day about the warped economics of higher education: So early in 2000 the board [of Trustees of Ursinus College] voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see… Continue reading The Bizarre Economics of Tuition
Science on the Tree 3
A long day today, so we’ll go with an obvious one:
The Budget Mess
The Democrats have decided to punt on the budget, which the outgoing Republican Congress left unfinished in a childish fit of pique. Instead of completing the usual budget process, the incoming Congress plans to pass a “continuing resolution,” to fund 2007 operations of Federal agencies at the same level as 2006. See, people, this is… Continue reading The Budget Mess
Classic Edition: Space Trilogy, Volume 4
Here’s the day’s final repost of an old blog post about space policy. This is yet another post from 2004, with the usual caveats about linkrot and dated numbers and the like. This one is more or less a direct response to comments made in response to the previous post attempting to argue that using… Continue reading Classic Edition: Space Trilogy, Volume 4
Classic Edition: The Moon is a Harsh Wossname
Yet another in today’s series of reposts of articles about space policy. This is another old blog post from 2004, back when the Moon-and-Mars plan was first announced. As with the previous posts, any numbers or links in the post may be badly out of date, and there are some good comments at the original… Continue reading Classic Edition: The Moon is a Harsh Wossname