I upgraded to the latest version of Opera a little while ago, and since the upgrade, it has developed a really charming bug: every so often, it just decides not to have anything further to do with certain web sites. It happens most frequently with ScienceBlogs, because I usually have several SB tabs open, but… Continue reading Bugs Aren’t Features
Ontological Epidemiology
I was up far too late last night watching football, and our DSL was down during the crucial hours between work and Monday Night Football, so I couldn’t pre-write any blog posts. Which means you get sleep-deprived idle thoughts as blog posts this morning. I blame Verizon. So here’s a question about medicine, or rather… Continue reading Ontological Epidemiology
Look Over There!
How ’bout those Giants? They keep it interesting right to the end, that’s for sure… Some links to worthwhile things elsewhere, because I don’t have the time or energy for more: The guys at the World’s Fair are launching a new site that they hope will be a sort of BoingBoing for the science education/… Continue reading Look Over There!
Big East Basketball Preview
Some time back, I offered the right to pick a post topic to anyone who managed to name one of the Physics Nobel laureates for 2006. Tom Renbarger won, and picked his topic: OK, with Midnight Madness on the horizon, I’ve decided to request a sort of season preview of two (trying to press my… Continue reading Big East Basketball Preview
Baghdad Update: Just a Phase
Here’s another email from my friend Paul, who’s working as a journalist covering Iraq’s descent into civil war. In this message, he describes the hard life of a photographer in Iraq, and reports a downright Rumsefeldian analogy: “We had our militia phase, maybe the rest of the Iraq will get over its own.” It’s a… Continue reading Baghdad Update: Just a Phase
…To Wound the Autumnal, um, Bike Path
A little fall foliage from Saturday’s bike ride: The bike path runs along the old Erie Canal tow path, and in a few places, they have restored/ preserved bits of the old canal. This is one of those– you can see some of the stone wall on the left, and the wooden decking on the… Continue reading …To Wound the Autumnal, um, Bike Path
Letter to the Past
Inspired by a thread at Fark, John Lynch asks an interesting question: If you could go back in time and tell your 12-year old self one thing, what would it be? Janet has some thoughts as well. Leaving aside obvious stuff like “Buy Microsoft stock,” what I would say to my twelve-year-old self is this:… Continue reading Letter to the Past
Dawkins and Theology
This week’s New York Times Book Review features a review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion that judges the book fairly harshly: The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins’s treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The “ontological argument” says that God must exist by his very nature, since he… Continue reading Dawkins and Theology
Three Feet High and Rising
We had some heavy rain on Friday, so when I went for a bike ride on Saturday, the Mohawk was pretty high. It was particularly impressive at Lock 8: A closer view is below the fold:
I Am a Unique Flower
The “How many people have your name?” thing has come across my RSS feed a dozen or so times already, most recently via the very common John Lynch. I was finally bored enough to put my name in, and here’s what I get: There are 0 people in the U.S. named Chad Orzel. While both… Continue reading I Am a Unique Flower