We’ve had an outbreak of mathematician jokes in comments, so it seems only fair to offer up a thread for the mockery of physics. Sadly, there really aren’t many good physicist jokes. My personal favorite: A physicist, a chemist, and a biologist get together for a few drinks, and get to talking about life, the […]
In Which I Sell Ads for the Man
I probably ought to say something about the New York Times piece on ScienceBlogs yesterday, except, well, there’s not much to say. It’s about two paragraphs in a media column, focussed entirely on the fact that they’re going to try to sell ads on these sites (presumably, the big Seed ad on the right will […]
Where Have All the Experimentalists Gone?
Over at Gene Expression, Razib spins an interesting question off my call for blog posts: why are there so many biology bloggers? As I said in comments over there, I think there are two main reasons why you find more bio-bloggers than physics bloggers. The first is that there are simply more biologists than physicists– […]
What It Takes
In the ongoing string theory comment thread (which, by the way, I’m really happy to see), “Who” steps off first to ask an interesting question: One way to give operational meaning to a theory being predictive in the sense of being empirically testable is to ask What future experimental result would cause you to reject […]
Pop Culture Interlude
I’m giving an exam this morning, and I’ve got some oral lab report presentations to listen to this afternoon, plus I need to put together some Mathematica activities for Friday. This doesn’t leave great deal of time for detailed science blogging, so here are some pop song lyrics, courtesy of the four-and-five-star playlist on iTunes. […]
Call For Blog Posts
Newton’s Principia has won the prestigious Cosmic Variance Greatest Paper contest, with Dirac’s theory of the electron coming in second. I’m still accepting nominations for the greatest physics experiment ever (probably until the weekend, when I’ll have time to do something with the list…). Thinking about this, it occurs to me that this might be […]
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Theorems
There was a postdoc in my research group in grad school who had a sister in college. She called him once to ask for help with a math assignment dealing with series expansions. He checked a book to refresh his memory, and then told her how to generate the various series needed for her homework […]
Get Out the Vote
Today is the last day to vote in Cosmic Variance’s Greatest Physics Paper contest. If you haven’t voted yet, go over there and pick a paper. Locally, I’m still collecting nominees for the Greatest Physics Experiment. A quick scan through the comments gives the current list as: The Michelson-Morley experiment disproving the aether. Rutherford’s discovery […]
Physicist in Landscape
There’s a slightly snarky Review of Leonard Susskind’s book on string theory (The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design) in the New York Times this week. Predictably, Peter Woit is all over it. The central issue of the book, and the review, and Woit’s whole blog is what’s referred to as […]
I Got Your Other Side Right Here
I’ll have something more serious to say on this subject tomorrow (I want to sleep on it, and take another look at the post in the morning), but I have one quick comment on the New York Times review of Leonard Susskind’s The Cosmic Landscape: Susskind’s insider perspective also lends an air of smugness to […]