Ralph Asher Alpher – Physics Today December 2007 A very nice obituary (tags: astronomy physics) Chemical & Engineering News – ACS News – Class Of 2006 Salaries And Jobs The overall situation is pretty good, but Ph.D. Salaries dropped somewhat. (tags: chemistry academia news jobs) MIT sculpts 3-D particles with light Rapid production off micron… Continue reading links for 2007-12-04
Month: December 2007
The Environmental Cost of Physics Research
I burned out some diode lasers a while back, and needed to buy replacements. Here’s one of the replacements on top of the tube containing the other, with a US quarter for scale: Here they are, with the box and packing material used to ship them to me:
What’s the Difference Between Physics and Chemistry?
An off-line question from someone at Seed: Fundamentally, what is the difference between chemistry and physics? There are a bunch of different ways to try to explain the dividing lines between disciplines. My take on this particular question is that there’s a whole hierarchy of (sub)fields, based on what level of abstraction you work at.… Continue reading What’s the Difference Between Physics and Chemistry?
Weekend Sports Round-Up
A handful of sports items of interest to me: 1) My Giants defied expectations, and pulled out a 21-16 win over the Bears on two late touchdown drives, after sucking for most of the game. Well, OK, the defense was good throughout, though they were aided by the Bears not having a quarterback better than… Continue reading Weekend Sports Round-Up
links for 2007-12-03
Hamlet – The Text Adventure “It’s so unfair! You’re in trouble again, just because you called your uncle – or rather, your new stepfather, Claudius – a usurping git.” (tags: games internet literature silly) YouTube – The Killers – Don’t Shoot Me Santa Silly spoof Christmas song video, featuring Brandon Flowers in a tragic sweater.… Continue reading links for 2007-12-03
My New Tablet PC
Important Notice: I am not interested in what Cory Doctorow has termed “helpiness” (in analogy with Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”) namely comments that have the general syntactical form of useful advice, without the content of useful advice. I don’t want to hear about how I really should’ve bought a Mac, or ought to be running Linux,… Continue reading My New Tablet PC
More Books of the Year
I don’t really want to turn this blog completely over to bitching about the poor representation of science in “Year’s Best” lists of books, but it’s that time of year when every media outlet puts out their lists of favorite books, so it’s hard not to talk about it. Today’s list is from the Washington… Continue reading More Books of the Year
links for 2007-12-02
Amazon.com: Uranium Ore: Electronics “When mixed with Tuscan whole milk I gained the power to control deceased woodland creatures. I am now in the process of raising an army of undead wombats to overthrow the government from deep within my volcanic lair. “ (tags: silly internet) FilmChat: Philip Pullman — the extended e-mail interview Phillip… Continue reading links for 2007-12-02
Neutral Bohmian Mechanics?
Another Jonah Goldberg moment– can anybody recommend a reasonably neutral discussion of Bohm’s non-local hidden variable version of quantum theory? A little Googling turns up this encyclopedia article and a tutorial dialogue on the arxiv, but I’d like to see a fairly complete treatment of it that doesn’t go to great lengths to make proponents… Continue reading Neutral Bohmian Mechanics?
Ninja Squirrel
“Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!” “Stop that! What in hell are you barking at?” I look out the window. “It’s a squirrel. Why are you barking like that at a single squirrel on the tree outside?” “It’s an evil squirrel! A threat to the home!” “No, it’s not. It’s little and furry… Continue reading Ninja Squirrel