A few weeks back, I was talking to my parents on the phone, and my mother asked “What do you want for Christmas?” “Tenure,” I said. Because, well, that’s what’s been on my mind.
Month: December 2006
Bose, Fermi, Hanbury Brown, and Twiss
Via Doug Natelson, a very nice paper from the arxiv on Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiments with atoms. The Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment (that’s two guys, one with a double unhyphenated last name) is a classic experiment from the field of quantum optics, which can be interpreted as showing the bosonic nature of photons.… Continue reading Bose, Fermi, Hanbury Brown, and Twiss
Doyle and Macdonald, Land of Mist and Snow [Library of Babel]
That’s Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, authors of the Mageworlds series of space opera novels, and a host of other books– they’re shorted on their first names, because I don’t really want to test the character limit for titles in Movable Type. Land of Mist and Snow has been in progress for some time–… Continue reading Doyle and Macdonald, Land of Mist and Snow [Library of Babel]
A Modest Proposal
Over at Inside Higher Ed, Edward Palm gets all Swiftian: The Department of Defense finds itself desperately short of troops with which to sustain what promises to be a long and increasingly unpopular, inconclusive war in Iraq. The Department of Education finds itself suddenly alarmed by the relatively low percentage of Americans pursuing postsecondary education… Continue reading A Modest Proposal
Know Your Science Labs
We recently acquired some lab space that was previously occupied by a biologist, and will be offering part of it to whoever we hire for our job opening. The space will probably need some extensive remodeling, both because it hasn’t been touched in years, but also because it was set up for biology work. Thinking… Continue reading Know Your Science Labs
John Scalzi, The Android’s Dream [Library of Babel]
The latest step in John “BaconCat” Scalzi’s project of world domination (or, at least, domination of the SF corner of the literary world), The Android’s Dream is set in an entirely different world than his Old Man’s War and sequels. It’s still very much a Scalzi book, though, insofar as the third published book by… Continue reading John Scalzi, The Android’s Dream [Library of Babel]
You Can’t Cook a Cow: The Problem with Raw Data
Bill Hooker is a regular advocate of “open science,” and is currently supporting a new subversive proposal: to make all raw data freely available on some sort of Creative Commons type license. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea on the face of it, but I have to say, I’m a little dubious about it… Continue reading You Can’t Cook a Cow: The Problem with Raw Data
Oooh! Shiny Thing!
I don’t usually read blog carnivals much, and it’s probably a good thing. Scott’s cryptic version of the History Carnival led me to spend a really ridiculous amount of time reading blog posts about cavalry tactics in the English Civil War (that’s the first of several). And, really, I have no need to know this…… Continue reading Oooh! Shiny Thing!
Dog of the Year
What with Time naming everybody the “Person of the Year,” Emmy is angling to snag Top Dog honors by uploading video of herself shredding a chew toy to YouTube: It’s hard to blog when you don’t have opposable thumbs.
News Updates
A couple of quick updates on things posted earlier this week: 1) A New York Times story on the Stardust findings. 2) A somewhat better press release on the single top quark production experiment (from the Fermilab press office, rather than the press office of one of the member institutions.