Month: April 2006

Story Is a Force of Nature

There’s a nice profile of Randy Olson, the biologist-turned filmmaker behind A Flock of Dodos, which takes a hard look at both sides of the creationism wars: The biologist, Randy Olson, accepts that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on… Continue reading Story Is a Force of Nature

Inspiration at Last

Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog, and an excellente planne for a worke of grete literarye merit, including: The dog-maysteres Tale: the dog-mayster (talle, curtel of greene), his dogge, and his companiounes do fynde an olde wool-quaye that semeth to be havnted by a foule spectre – one of them has those fancie new eye-lenses, the… Continue reading Inspiration at Last

Our Broken Health Care System, Aleph-Nought in a Series

One of the standard conservatarian responses to anyone suggesting government-funded universal health care is to start talking about how universal health care will inevitably lead to faceless, heartless bureaucrats denying or delaying treatment for stupid reasons. My response to these stories is “Who’s supplying your health insurance? And how do I get on that plan?”… Continue reading Our Broken Health Care System, Aleph-Nought in a Series

What Students Want

Inside Higher Ed takes a look today at a new survey about how students choose colleges. They make an effort to make the results sound surprising, but it’s really about what I’d expect: A survey of 600 students who scored over 1100 on the SAT, half of whom scored at least 1300, found that campus… Continue reading What Students Want

It’s a Mystery

“Mint Flavorings” is quite prominent on the list (provided by my gastroenterologist) of foods that heartburn sufferers should avoid (along with pretty much anything else you might want to eat…). If you go to the store to buy some over-the-counter heartburn remedy– Maalox, Mylanta, whatever– what’s the one flavor that’s most common? Mint. Somebody explain… Continue reading It’s a Mystery

Published
Categorized as Personal

I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means

Over at Bookslut, the Specfic Floozy takes another look at the subgenre (or possibly sub-subgenre) of “steampunk,” which she defines thusly: For the uninitiated, steampunk, a term that is prominently tossed around in the late ’80s. is one of the many subgenres of cyberpunk (others — some more tongue in cheek than others — are… Continue reading I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means

Published
Categorized as Books

Spinal Tap Fortells the Future

The New York Times Book Review section this week features a big two-page ad for the Penguin Classics/ NBA cross-promotion. This involves a handful (well, four– a shop-teacher handful) of NBA/ WNBA stars promoting books in the Penguin line, the best of the lot being Dwyane Wade talking about Pride and Prejudice. You can get… Continue reading Spinal Tap Fortells the Future

Lecture Notes Dump

Since the previous batch of lecture notes were surprisingly popular, here’s the next couple of classes worth: Lecture 5: Stellar Interferometry, coherence, intensity correlation functions, Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment. Lecture 6: Non-classical light, photon anti-bunching, single-photon interference. Sadly, this exhausts the notes I had written in advance (what with one thing and another, I… Continue reading Lecture Notes Dump