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.
Please Call Earth. We Still Haven't Found You. - New York Times
SETI: still searching after all these years.
(tags: science space astronomy)
YouTube - Life at the Olin Outpost
Clearly, they don't assign enough homework at Carleton...
(tags: academia youtube video silly physics music)
Crooked…
The kerfuffle over the Bayblab incident has produced no end of discussion here and elsewhere. Hilariously, this included a lengthy discussion of why they see ScienceBlogs as cliquish, conducted entirely in the private back-channel forum that nobody else can read. Irony: it's like gold-y and bronze-…
Technorati is working less and less well these days-- it doesn't update as often as it should, and misses links that I know are there-- but it's still good for the occasional new find. Such as Susan Beckhardt's Intrinsically Knotted, which features among other things a really nice post about…
Little Brother is Cory Doctorow's bid for a place on this year's list of banned books. It's a book that not only encourages kids to hack computers, commit vandalism, and thwart law enforcement, it gives them detailed instructions on the best ways to do those things. It even comes with two…
Stephen Huneck Gallery at Dog Mountain Vermont
" I wanted to build a chapel, one that celebrated the spiritual bond we have with our dogs, and that would be open to dogs and people. People of any faith or belief system."
(tags: dog religion art animals)
Such Madness - New York Times
Let the…
Via Orac, a religious movement I think we can all get behind:
Pastor Wants 30 Days of Sex for Couples
The pastor for Relevant Church in Ybor City is challenging the couples in his congregation to get busy in bed every night for a month.
Wirth said the supposed 50 percent divorce rate is the reason…
The Science Fiction class for which I agreed to guest lecture is an 8am class, which is earlier than I like to be up and about. Knowing this, I went to bed early on Thursday night. Of course, being a bookaholic of long standing, I needed something to read to put me to sleep. Genius that I am, I…
As mentioned previously, I was invited to discuss physics and politics at one of the local fraternities earlier this week. Oddly, given the primacy of Greek organizations on campus, this is only the fourth time I've set foot inside a fraternity or sorority house in seven years. The previous…
slacktivist: More on subsidiarity
"[W]here it exists here in America, inefficient Big Government tends to be the direct and predictable result of anti-regulation, anti-government laissez-faire and libertarian-ish ideologies"
(tags: economics politics US society)
Second Law of Thermodynamics…
I spent the bulk of yesterday afternoon doing vacuum system work, specifically working on the system to feed gas into the atomic beam source. My feelings about this can be inferred from the Facebook status message I set at the time: "Chad Orzel abhors a vacuum."
The apparatus I'm building uses…
After reading my LiveJournal friends list, I wander downstairs to talk to Kate. "I have an important question. Are we going to let FutureBaby read those agonizing kids books where the dog dies at the end?"
"I certainly hope not!" says the dog. "We don't like those books. Books where the dog dies.…
The Mentoring Gap for Women in Science :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education
"[W]omen do not perceive that they are receiving the same level of advising and mentoring as men."
(tags: academia science social-science psychology)
On being a scientist and a woman…
Yesterday's cheery hypothetical came about because I've agreed to do a guest lecture in a Science Fiction class in the English department. I'm going to be talking about Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life," whose connection to the hypothetical should be obvious to people who have read it, but is a…
EurekAlert tossed up a press release from the University of Minnesota yesterday with the provocative title: "U of Minn researchers find primary alcohol prevention programs are needed for 'tweens'" and the even more eye-popping subtitle "Study recommends that prevention programs occur as early as…
William F. Buckley is dead, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden is glad to see him go. I can't say I'm all that broken up, either.
I saw Buckley speak once, when I was in college. I remember very little about the context-- not even what year it was-- but he came to campus at the invitation of the college…
Confessions of a Community College Dean: Ask the Administrator: Suggestions for Research?
What should people be studying about community colleges?
(tags: academia social-science economics science)
Buying a Spot on the Syllabus :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher…
Say you were offered the chance to be introduced to the great love of your life, your absolute perfect soul mate. The two of you will be perfect together-- compatible personalities, the same taste in movies and books, sex so good you'll temporarily lose the power of speech-- but you'll only be…
I'm very happy with my 2007 Ford Freestyle, but there's one major design flaw that drives me nuts. It's only a problem in the winter, though, which makes me wonder what the hell the folks in Detroit are smoking.
If you look at the picture, you can just make out the antenna, on the passenger side of…
We haven't had a good navel-gazing kerfuffle around here in a while, but not to worry-- Bayblab comes to the rescue with a broadside against the current state of science blogging, as epitomized by ScienceBlogs:
If you examine the elephant in the room, ScienceBlogs, the trend is maintained: politics…
Scott McLemee writes about the shelving of books, spinning off Matt Selman's list of rules for shelving books
RULE #1: THE PRIME DIRECTIVE -- It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room…
quantum-entanglement.gif (GIF Image, 650x374 pixels)
Toothpaste for Dinner identifies the first application of large-scale quantum teleportation.
(tags: comics physics silly quantum)
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"Take Bigfoot. You only ever see him in campgrounds and…
The local fraternities and sororities hold occasional dinners/ discussions with faculty, to demonstrate that they're engaged with the intellectual life of the college. One of my students invited me to dinner at the Change in Kinetic Energy fraternity tomorrow night, and I agreed to do a discussion…
On the subject of silly things said about academia, Matt Yglesias does a quick pass over "assessment,", and in the process recommends Alan Kruger's research that claims the benefits of elite colleges are all from selection effects. He links a Newsweek article on the topic, which contains this…
For some reason, the infamous "Don't Become a Scientist" rant by Jonathan Katz has bubbled up again, with Scott Aaronson giving his take. I commented on this a while back, and the intervening year and a half hasn't really improved my opinion of the piece.
The discussion in Scott's comments is…
That "post three sentences from page 123 of the book closest to you" Internet "meme" has come around again, with Bora calling me out in hopes of getting a short preview of Bunnies Made of Cheese (or whatever the book ends up being called). Unfortunately for him, I blog from a desk heaped with books…
SMU's Deal With Bush :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education
'"What self-respecting university would accept a censored library?" said Rev. William McElvaney, a professor emeritus of preaching and worship at SMU's theology school, and one of the leading critics of…
There's been some discussion recently of ScienceBlog reader get-togethers, and the question was raised of what ScienceBlogs ought to do to facilitate this. Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that Facebook is useful for, and there is, in fact, a ScienceBlogs Facebook group. If you're a…
Over at evolgen, RPM is wondering about the disciplinary distribution of bloggers:
I have an intuition, backed up by absolutely no evidence, that my particular area of interest (evolutionary genetics) has more faculty blogging about stuff related to their research than other fields. This is most…
Thanks again to all the people who left congratulations and well-wishes on last week's ultrasound picture post. The positive thoughts are much appreciated, especially since it's been a bit of a roller-coaster here in Chateau Steelypips.
As you can guess from the fact that the ultrasound looks…
Starship Kimchi: A Bold Taste Goes Where It Has Never Gone Before - New York Times
"Three top government research institutes spent millions of dollars and several years perfecting a version of kimchi that would not turn dangerous when exposed to cosmic rays or other forms of radiation and would…
