The bizarre saga of Rusi Taleyarkhan (which I’ve mentioned before) keeps getting stranger. Previously, Purdue University had announced that it conducted an investigation of Taleyarkhan’s work and cleared him of any misconduct, without saying, well, anything much about the investigation. Now, after pressure from Congress on the question, the New York Times reports that they’re… Continue reading Bubble Fusion Gets Weirder
Month: May 2007
Many Worlds, Many Treats
I’m sitting at the computer typing, when the dog bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she’s sniffing the floor around my feet intently. “What are you doing down there?” “I’m looking for steak!” she says, wagging her tail hopefully. “I’m pretty certain that there’s no steak down there,” I say. “I’ve never… Continue reading Many Worlds, Many Treats
Not the Same Old Song
The iPod giveth, and the iPod taketh away. Back in the day, there was this technology called “audio tape,” which people used to record music. On a typical tape, you could record maybe ten or elevent pop songs, and then you had to flip it over, and record another ten or eleven songs on the… Continue reading Not the Same Old Song
Walter Mosley
Noted author Walter Mosley spoke on campus last night, and a spot opened up at the last minute for the dinner beforehand, so I got to spend an hour or so listening to him talk off-the-cuff in a small group. He’s a very charming guy, and had a lot of interesting things to say about… Continue reading Walter Mosley
Why Cesium?
The Zeitgeist for today highlights a little New York Times Q & A piece on atomic clocks, answering the question “Why is cesium used in atomic clocks?” The striking thing about this, to me, is that they don’t really answer the question. I mean, they talk about how atomic clocks work in very vague terms… Continue reading Why Cesium?
Laws of Discourse?
Two more quick observations from last night’s Wesley Clark event. Or, rather, one from the event, and one from dinner beforehand. Both strike me as fairly general principles about political discourse: 1) Your current political opinions are interesting in inverse proportion to the number of times you use the word “fascist” or variants thereof. Likewise… Continue reading Laws of Discourse?
Dorky Poll: Presidential Questions
I was expounding on my dislike of the routine questions being asked of Wesley Clark last night (see previous post) to a colleague from Math, who suggested “Which do you prefer, C or Fortran? And if you use Fortran, do you declare all your variables?” as an alternative to boring policy questions that produce nothing… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Presidential Questions
Wesley Clark vs. Rote Protesters
As previously mentioned, Wesley Clark spoke on campus last night. The speech was pretty much what you’d expect from a once and future (?) Presidential aspirant with his background: he mostly talked about military matters, stressing that George Bush bad, Americ good, puppies and apple pie, yay! OK, not so much the puppies and apple… Continue reading Wesley Clark vs. Rote Protesters
Two Cultures Divided by Scheduling
We had our annual undergraduate research symposium this past weekend, which included presentations from students doing work in all different disciplines. We have enough physics and astronomy majors these days that I spent most of the day Friday listening to them talk, but I did have a break in the morning when I saw a… Continue reading Two Cultures Divided by Scheduling
The Mystery of “Supersolid” Helium
One of the other ScienceBloggers is prone to complaining in the back-channel forums that we don’t have enough bloggers who work in some subfield of biology or another– we need more left-handed shrew ecologists, or some such. This is, of course, patently ridiculous. What we need is a physics blogger from the condensed matter world,… Continue reading The Mystery of “Supersolid” Helium