{"id":1508,"date":"2007-06-18T08:56:16","date_gmt":"2007-06-18T08:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/06\/18\/nattering-nabobs-of-negativity\/"},"modified":"2007-06-18T08:56:16","modified_gmt":"2007-06-18T08:56:16","slug":"nattering-nabobs-of-negativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/06\/18\/nattering-nabobs-of-negativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Nattering Nabobs of Negativity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of people are down on physics or physicists these days:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cosma Shalizi is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cscs.umich.edu\/~crshalizi\/weblog\/2007\/06\/15\/#491\">down on power-law fits<\/a>, or, more precisely, annoyed at people who misuse power-law distributions. He&#8217;s written a <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0706.1062\">paper<\/a> about how to use them correctly, and provides a handy list of take-home points on his blog.<\/li>\n<li>Travis Hime is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arcanegazebo.net\/2007\/06\/careers_locations_and_settling.html\">down on the academic job market<\/a>, and cities that aren&#8217;t San Francisco. I think he&#8217;s a little too harsh on academia, but then it&#8217;s well established that I&#8217;m an optimist with a rosy outlook on these matters. I can&#8217;t help with the Bay Area thing.<\/li>\n<li>Dave Bacon has <a href=\"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1557\">gotten so down about quantum computing<\/a> that he&#8217;s gotten himself a headache. The post actually works as a pretty good pessimistic assessment of the current state of experimental research into quantum computing&#8211; we&#8217;ve got a long way to go before people start bitching about the completely useless help files that come with Quantum Excel. It&#8217;s also worth a look to see the comments in which various science luminaries try to cheer Dave up.<\/li>\n<li>Tara Smith is <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/aetiology\/2007\/06\/question_for_the_academic_type.php\">down on science journalism<\/a>, and Jennifer Ouellette <a href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2007\/06\/just_dont_quote.html\">offers a defense of science writers<\/a>, in which she&#8217;s down on scientists who refuse to talk to the media, and then complain about press coverage.<\/li>\n<li>Sean Carroll is <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicvariance.com\/2007\/06\/15\/procedure\/\">down on elementary school science education<\/a>, and really, who can blame him?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s just no end of negative waves on the Internet these days&#8230; Cheer up, will you? My students <a href=\"http:\/\/www.union.edu\/N\/DS\/edition_display.php?e=1444&#038;p=2\">graduated<\/a> (the picture on the index page shows my thesis student), and summer is here at last. Granted, that means a new crop of summer research students, but still, yay, summer.<\/p>\n<p>Want something else? Here, have a look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/lolastronomy.blogspot.com\/\">LOLAstronomy page<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lots of people are down on physics or physicists these days: Cosma Shalizi is down on power-law fits, or, more precisely, annoyed at people who misuse power-law distributions. He&#8217;s written a paper about how to use them correctly, and provides a handy list of take-home points on his blog. Travis Hime is down on the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/06\/18\/nattering-nabobs-of-negativity\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Nattering Nabobs of Negativity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}