Scott Aaronson speaks for the computer scientists, partly in response to the same Times piece that I blogged about recently.
Tuna Salad
This is a couple of days old, but I only got around to reading the story last night. The New York Times has an occasional sports magazine supplement, and this week, they published a nice article on Bill Parcells: Bill Parcells is the only coach in N.F.L. history to take four different teams to the… Continue reading Tuna Salad
Fear the Turtle?
College basketball season is almost upon us (practices have started, but there won’t be real games for another couple of weeks), which means that college basketball previews are thick on the ground. Over at the world-wde leader in sports marketing, they have a column about the Maryland guard situation this season: In 2004-05, point guard… Continue reading Fear the Turtle?
Good News from Outer Space
NASA has scheduled a mission to service the Hubble. This should keep the space telescope flying and producing great science until 2013 or so. Obviously, there are a lot of caveats in there– the mission isn’t scheduled until 2008, so the Hubble needs to last that long, and there can’t be major delays or disasters… Continue reading Good News from Outer Space
Clifford Johnson Tribute Post 2
I didn’t take any pictures, but Monday night, I went to a Balinese gamelan concert on campus, put on by a group of twenty-odd students from a couple of Asian music classes, aided by some visiting musicians from Bali. There were also dance performances by three students, and one visiting Balinese dancer (who is actually… Continue reading Clifford Johnson Tribute Post 2
Vote ScienceBlogs!
Well, vote for a ScienceBlog, anyway. Shelley is a finalist for a student blogger scholarship. Weirdly, the outcome appears to be determined by a popular vote, which seems like it’s just asking for Internet Drama. But if you’re interested in student blogging, go read the nominees, and vote for one.
Two Fermions Walk Into a Bar…
So, in the previous post about symmetry and the difference between bosons and fermions, I threw in a bunch of teasing comments about how the requirement that quantum particles be indistinguishable has surprising and interesting consequences. Of course, I never quite explained what all that was about. Which, I suppose, means I’m obliged to pull… Continue reading Two Fermions Walk Into a Bar…
You Gotta Believe
A couple of weeks ago, when I bought the new Hold Steady album, I also picked up Sam’s Town by the Killers. I bought it in spite of some pretty harsh reviews, but in the end, I think that The Onion’s AV Club got it right: The Killers have created a batch of easily digestible… Continue reading You Gotta Believe
Jack Chick Was Right About Halloween
At least, that’s the obvious conclusion to draw from today’s Medium Large…
If It Has “Science” in the Name, It’s Not
The Times this morning has an article on the future of computer science: Computer science is not only a comparatively young field, but also one that has had to prove it is really science. Skeptics in academia would often say that after Alan Turing described the concept of the “universal machine” in the late 1930’s… Continue reading If It Has “Science” in the Name, It’s Not