It’s spring here in suburbia, which means my neighbors were all out this weekend hastening the doom of the planet by running their gas-powered lawn mowers. Not me– I was, um, paying our neighbors’ teenage son to mow our lawn. With a gas-powered lawn mower. OK, I’m not exactly staking out the Moral High Ground,… Continue reading History of Lawns?
Month: May 2007
The Trouble With KeyNote
I was buried in work last week in part because of the annual Steinmetz Symposium, in which we cancel a day of classes and have students report on their undergraduate research projects. Both of my students were giving talks, and there was all sorts of running around involved in the preparation. One of my students… Continue reading The Trouble With KeyNote
Questions for Wesley Clark?
Former general and presidential candidate Wesley Clark is going to be speaking on campus tomorrow night. I don’t expect there to be a lot of question time at this, but I’m fairly good at getting a chance to ask questions at these things, so if anyone has a suggestion of a really good question to… Continue reading Questions for Wesley Clark?
Thrilling Tales of Astrophysics
Over in LiveJournal Land, James Nicoll is pining for the good old days: I’m going through one of my “I would kill for some new SF” phases, SF in this case being defined in a narrow and idiosyncratic way. In particular, I want the modern version of those old SF stories where SF writers, having… Continue reading Thrilling Tales of Astrophysics
Bicycling Report
In the two weeks since the previous report, I managed only two round-trips to campus, for a total of 9.6 miles. Either the weather was lousy, or I had things I needed to do that precluded riding the bike. I got a good ride in today, though: Total Distance: 16.6 miles Maximum Speed: 30.1 mph… Continue reading Bicycling Report
The Essence of Academic Research
It’s common in math and computer science for people to prove important theorems sort of in passing, on the way to some other result. At least, it looks that way to an outsider– Fermat’s Theorem and the Poincare Conjecture are the high-profile examples that come to mind. In that spirit, Scott Aaronson helpfully distills all… Continue reading The Essence of Academic Research
Geek Safari
Yesterday’s New York Times features an article about SF conventions, in the travel section, of all places. Officially, the 25th annual staging of MidSouthCon, a three-day-long celebration of science fiction, role-playing games, fantasy artwork, medieval weaponry and just about every leisure pursuit that prefers to envision the cosmos as it might have once been or… Continue reading Geek Safari
He’s an Overachiever, Baby!
Having gotten a fair number of visits via the search string “Jim Boeheim’s Wife” (and once or twice “Jim Boeheim’s Hot Wife,” presumably by people who are looking for something more salacious than me griping about how inappropriate it is for Dick Vitale to talk about her attractiveness all the goddamn time), I would be… Continue reading He’s an Overachiever, Baby!
Queen Emmy the Clever
At lunch Friday, I was talking to a few colleagues about how smart our pets can be. I haven’t done gratuitous dog-blogging in a while, and it’s been a long week, so here are some of the more impressive of our Emmy’s intellectual achievements:
Free Ragamuffins
Having disagreed (somewhat) with Tobias Buckell in the previous post, let me follow that up with something positive: He’s got a new book, Ragamuffin coming out soon, and he’s putting excerpts up on the official Ragamuffin page. You can get RTF files of the first two chapters, and he’s promised a chapter a week leading… Continue reading Free Ragamuffins