Chad Orzel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, NY. He blogs about physics, life in academia, ephemeral pop culture, and anything else that catches his fancy.
Locus magazine has come out with its "Recommended Reading" list of science fiction and fantasy published in 2008. There are, as always, some annoying quirks-- several of the books making the list have been published only in the UK or by small presses, so I've never even seen them-- but it's a…
The Arxiv blog highlights a post on John Scalzi's favorite science question: the Fermi Paradox:
We have little to guide us on the question of the existence intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. But the physicist Enrico Fermi came up with the most obvious question: if the universe is teeming…
Feministe » A Story in Pictures
See if you can spot the difference.
(tags: politics news gender pictures law history)
Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog.
""The earth will quake and the sea will boil and the moon will be as blood and every knee shall bow before the coming of the…
Via Janet, the LA Times gets snooty about titles:
"Ordinarily when someone goes by doctor and they are a PhD, not an MD, I find it a little bit obnoxious," Sullivan said. "But it makes me smile because it's a reminder that she's her own person. She wasn't there as an appendage; she was there as a…
There's a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton's new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he's reviewed in the Times, and he's featured in this week's Bloggingheads Science Saturday:
While it's kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a…
In Friday's installment of his ongoing examination of Left Behind: The Movie, Fred Clark points out some gaps in the movie-Antichrist's plan, where it departs from the loopy prophetic cosmology of the Left Behind books. He then notes how they could've done better:
If Team Nicolae had really done…
Misha Lemeshko's blog: The greatest math problem ever
"This is a problem, which can be easily solved by children before entering elementary school. If you want to give it a try, please forget everything you have ever studied."
(tags: blogs math silly)
The terrifying prospect of an America…
Theorem:
The set of students who can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or working homework problems is always smaller than the set of students who think they can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or doing homework problems.
Years of intense study…
SteelyKid is running a bit big for her age-- she'll be six months next weekend, but she's outgrown all her six-month size clothes-- but she's still tiny. At least, I think so, and Kate has the pictures to show why.
(I look awfully smug in that picture, mostly because it's only in the last week or…
I'm getting twinges in my neck indicating that I've been spending too much time looking at the computer, and I've got some computer-heavy work coming up in the next couple of weeks, so expect reduced blogging in the next few days. I couldn't let this essay in the New Yorker (via Matt Yglesias) pass…
This week's lab (well, half of it-- the class is so big that I have to run two experiments in parallel) is somewhat controversial, so I thought I would throw this out to my wise and worldly readers to see what you all think.
The problem is this: we have two different set-ups for doing a…
I'm not sure what the BBVA Foundation is, but they've awarded a Basic Science prize to Ignacio Cirac and Peter Zoller:
The Basic Sciences award in this inaugural edition of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards has been shared by physicists Peter Zoller (Austria, 1952) and Ignacio Cirac…
US LHC Blog » Can We âPointâ the LHC, Too?
"[C]ould we put up some kind of page where people could vote on what kind of physics we would study over the course of some particular week? Maybe a choice between searching for Supersymmetry, or a high-mass Higgs boson, or a low-mass Higgs boson? "
(…
Today was a pretty rotten day in a lot of little ways that aren't worth going into. A smiling, happy baby does a lot to make up for that, though:
This week's picture was actually taken last night by Kate. The height differential between us accounts for the fact that neither SteelyKid nor Appa are…
I was thinking of trying to post something really erudite about science today, but a series of minor catastrophes has completely derailed that plan. Now, I'm just hoping to get through my afternoon lab without punching anybody.
So, in place of the science stuff, here's a pop music topic. While on…
As noted in the previous post, I'm supposed to be moderating a panel at Boskone the weekend after next, with the title:
Global Warming: Facts and Myths, (and all that jazz)
This is not my usual line, but then, I don't have to provide expert commentary, I just need to steer the discussion. Still,…
Boskone, the Boston-area SF convention that Kate and I go to every year, is the weekend after next. Once again, I'll be doing a few panels and one talk. For those who might be attending, or who care about this for some reason, here's my preliminary schedule:
Saturday10am Physics: What We Don'…
Astronomers get a sizzling weather report from a distant planet
"The researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to obtain infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500…
Physics World's news aggregator had a story yesterday with the headline Chilly solution to neutrino mass problem, and the one-sentence teaser
Ultracold atoms could be used to measure the mass of the neutrino.
This creates a wonderful image of somehow turning a magneto-optical trap or a Bose-…
Over at Dot Physics, Rhett is pondering grading curves:
Should you grade on a curve or not? If you are student, the answer is clear: go by whatever the instructor does. Otherwise, you have a choice. I don't like to tell other instructors or faculty what to do because I respect their freedom. For my…
The American Physical Society has sent out another of its email alerts encouraging people to write to Congress in support of more funding for science. Actually, they're urging people to send two messages: a thank-you to Speaker Pelosi for the generous science funding in the House stimulus bill, and…
Mike the Mad Biologist : To Restore Science to Its Rightful Place, We Need to Redefine Elitism
"Our Benevolent Seed Overlords ask "What is science's rightful place?" which refers to a line from Obama's inaugural address where he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place."
Since…
I realize it's been several years now since the World Wildlife Federation won their lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation, forcing Vince McMahon to re-brand his whole preposterous enterprise. Still, when I see a press release with the headline:
WWF seeks innovative solutions to bycatch…
Several other people in the department have started using WebAssign to handle homework assignments in the introductory class, because it provides a way to assign and grade daily homework without forcing the faculty member to do a ton of grading (the college has a policy against student graders).…
Via Kathryn Cramer (on Facebook, of all places), an article from the Daily Mail about how kids these days don't get around much:
When George Thomas was eight he walked everywhere.
It was 1926 and his parents were unable to afford the fare for a tram, let alone the cost of a bike and he regularly…
We Need a Civilian GI Bill :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"Unlike the original bill, which rewarded service, this new bill would be a rescue measure.
As in the past, a primary goal would be to decrease pressure on what today is a shrinking job market and…
In what will surely come as a surprise to the people who say mean things about the award, the John Newbery Medal for children's literature was awarded to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
Mr. Gaiman, 48, won for "The Graveyard Book," a story about a boy who is raised in a cemetery by ghosts after…
Much of LiveJournal has been sunk in a sea of suck for the last couple of weeks, but there's a really interesting discussion of science education over at "Faraday's Cage is where you put Schroedinger's Cat." The first post has to do with the idea of "gatekeeping":
In my class today, a very brief…
FemaleScienceProfessor posted a few days ago about "intense" editing of scholarly writing, and the different reactions students have to the experience:
Although an individual student's response to being intensely edited can vary with time and mood, there tend to be typical responses from each…
Gold saved! RSC Italian Job competition is won | RSC Blog
After all that waiting, you can finally know what Charlie Croker was thinking in the most famous cliffhanger in film history.
(tags: science physics silly movies)
Analysis of a head of a beer over time | Dot Physics
Making physics…
