Call for Nominations: Astronomy Results of the Year

It’s more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling “Year’s Best” lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I’ll throw this open… Continue reading Call for Nominations: Astronomy Results of the Year

Call for Nominations: Physics Results of the Year

It’s more or less traditional for magazines and tv shows to do some sort of year-end wrap-up. As this blog is now hosted by a magazine, I suppose I ought to follow suit. Of course, compiling “Year’s Best” lists is a highly subjective business, requiring a lot of information gathering, so I’ll throw this open… Continue reading Call for Nominations: Physics Results of the Year

For Reference Purposes

The Female Science Professor has a post talking about types of reference letters. Much of what she says is fairly specific to letters relating to prizes or promotions, but some of her comments are perfectly applicable to the junior faculty job search letters I’ve been reading by the bucketload lately. Particularly worth noting are her… Continue reading For Reference Purposes

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Categorized as Academia

Relativity and Mathematica?

Next term, I’m teaching our sophomore-level “Modern Physics” class again. “Modern Physics,” in ecuation terms, really means “Early 20th Century Physics”– it’s a couple of weeks of Special Relativity, followed by several weeks of basic Quantum Mechanics, with a mad 2-3 week sprint at the end where I try to cover as much material as… Continue reading Relativity and Mathematica?

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Categorized as Physics

BCS Madness

So, the participants are set for the Mythical “National Championship” of college football. It’s Florida vs. Ohio State, thanks to USC’s loss to UCLA, and we’re going to be treated to about three weeks’ worth of whining about how Michigan got jobbed. I pretty much agree with Charles Kuffner on this one, though. I dislike… Continue reading BCS Madness

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Categorized as Football

Product Placement

Another idle thought inspired by the Bond movie (I may or may not post comments about the movie as a whole, but you can check out Kate’s spoiler-laden comments. I liked it a little more than she did, but I’m more familiar with the genre, and willing to cut them more slack…): From what I… Continue reading Product Placement

Politicization of Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a statement on scientific integrity denouncing the various abuses of the scientific process perpetrated by the Bush Administration. If you’re a scientist, and you’re concerned about the politicization of the science used for policy-making, you might want to sign on to the statement by going to their site. This… Continue reading Politicization of Scientists

Experiment in Live-bogging

I have a tablet PC that I am borrowing from work to see if I like the way it works. As a test of it’s usefulness, I’m going to attempt to live-blog at least part of the Giants same. So, let’s see how this works… The Giants score on their first posses, on, after Dallas… Continue reading Experiment in Live-bogging

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