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.
There's a chance that, if I make a serious push this week, I can have a first pass through the book complete before Christmas. So, of course, I'm procrastinating madly.
I understand it's traditional to post pictures in these circumstances, so here's one of my favorite shots from the Japan pictures…
2006 Was Just This Year, You Know: I lost a lot of weight, read a lot of books, taught a lot of classes, did a bit of research, and oh, yeah, I got tenure.
Dorky Poll: Favorite Tool: In the comments to the post where I noted how many more people had least favorite textbooks than favorite ones, dr…
Today's ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is in honor of the cold water dripping into our kitchen cabinet yesterday:
That's a glass icicle, with bonus dramatic shadows. If you're a homeowner, you might think that this stands for ice damming, but this is about SCIENCE!!! not property mishaps.…
Video Clip - The Nobel Prize Award Ceremony 2007
If you have 86 minutes to kill, go ahead. I watched the 1997 ceremony, which is where I learned that you don't need to speak the language to identify a boring speech.
(tags: Nobel video)
St. Lawrence University: All-Nighters Equal Lower Grades…
Chris Mooney posted a couple of things last week-- one article at ScienceProgress and one blog post-- talking about the supposed shortage of scientists in the "pipeline." Following an Urban Insitute study, he says that there's really no shortage of scientists being trained, but rather a shortage of…
A quick photo poll question: Which of these statues seen on the street in Japan is more disturbing? This chubby nude saxophonist from Himeji:
Or this small child riding a giant carp from Takayama:
Leave your answer in the comments. You can only pick one.
Last week, GrrlScientist posted a cool video showing a trick with two forks and a toothpick:
http://view.break.com/410281 - Watch more free videos
It's a nifty demonstration of some physics principles, so I thought I would explain how it works, with a couple of pictures (several of her commenters…
I've been scanting the physics content so far with the Tree of SCIENCE!!! posts, so here's one from my own branch of science:
This one is a little Santa/ elf guy with a one-man-band rig, which of course stands for the venerable science of acoustics.
There's lots of great physics material in this…
Bell Labs Is Gone. Academia Steps In. - New York Times
The pros and cons of partnerships between major corporations and research universities.
(tags: academia economics science industry)
Matter-Wave Interferometry with Phase Fluctuating Bose-Einstein Condensates
A new paper from the Ketterle…
Way to screw it up for everybody. The Jets held up their end of things, but you blew it.
(Actually, if somebody had to lose to the hapless Dolphins, it couldn't've happened to a better team. Well, OK, the Cowboys, but I really do hate the Ravens, whose defense is the absolute pinnacle of the…
I got a new stereo installed in my car on Friday, so I can plug the iPod in directly rather than using one of those stupid FM transmitter gadgets, and the installation guy said it would take a few hours. So I did a little shopping, and then went to see the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac…
On our first day in Kyoto, Kate and I went to a bunch of temples, including one that was showing a bunch of really cool paintings featuring Buddhist temple accessories come to life and chasing monsters around. They had a sort of demented whimsy to them, and you can get a little flavor of it from…
IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH
Kind of pushing the limits, even for the New York Post
(tags: music news journalism)
slacktivist: Charlie's Angels
Why does Chuck Colson hate little kids at Christmas?
(tags: religion politics US gender)
Ten Top Physics Stories for 2007 -- Physics News Update 850
The…
It's mid-December, which means it's time for the annual run of "Best Noun of 2007" stories in every major media outlet. Being kind of a mid-major media outlet, ScienceBlogs doesn't produce an official list, but there'll be a lot of discussion here about the top science stories of the year. This…
I took a much-needed Luddite Day yesterday, shutting down the computer and spending the afternoon loafing on the couch reading. I had meant to have a new stereo installed in my car and do some Christmas shopping while I waited, but we got a moderately significant snowstorm yesterday afternoon, so I…
Here's where things on the Tree of SCIENCE!!! start to get more interesting, and somewhat more obscure:
Yes, that's a small wooden Christmas tree ornament hanging on our full-size Christmas tree. What's this have to do with SCIENCE!!!? Well, obviously, it represents recursion.
recursion, as you…
Chris Blattman's Blog: How to get a PhD *and* save the world
Advice for Econ/ PoliSci types who are interested in social change and graduate school both.
(tags: economics academia politics humanities social-science)
A Month of Writers, Day Ten: Wil Wheaton
A look back at the glory days of Star…
1) I downloaded the demo version of Corel's Grafigo program, which a colleague really likes on his tablet, and earlier this week, I spent a short time playing around with it. A very short time, because there are controls on the top menu bar that simply disappear when you have the tablet in portrait…
Today's ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! might seem like a repeat, but it's not:
I know, you're saying "Dude, you already did life sciences..." True, but this glittery polar bear doesn't stand for life sciences, he stands for climate science and environemntal science.
This little guy had an…
[0712.1649] Warp Drive: A New Approach
"In this paper we demonstrate that a sufficiently advanced civilization could, in principal, manipulate the radius of the extra dimension to locally adjust the value of the cosmological constant."
(tags: physics theory science silly articles)
The…
There's another Mars article in the Times this morning, which I wouldn't bother to note in a full post save for one thing: the way they got the results.
The right front wheel of Spirit stopped turning in March 2006. Since then, the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along.…
EurekAlert had a press release yesterday regarding a new study on the training of middle-school math teachers. It's not pretty:
Middle school math teachers in the United States are not as well prepared to teach this subject compared to teachers in five other countries, something that could…
Over at Page 3.14, they're marking the launch of the German-language site scienceblogs.de (for real, this time) with a poll about language skills: they want to know what languages other than English ScienceBlogs readers speak, and what you think they should target next.
Current sentiment is running…
Today's picture from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is a two-fer:
That's a glass star and a wooden crescent moon, and together, obviously, they stand for astronomy and planetary science. Really, that's so easy and obvious that I don't need to say any more.
One of the alternately entertaining and depressing things about the culture wars in the US is the existence of a sort of parallel academic universe, in the form of vanity universities like Oral Roberts University, Bob Jones University, and Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University. These provide both a…
Malaria - Vaccine - Mosquitoes - Research - Medicine and Health - New York Times
A profile of efforts to make a vaccine for malaria.
(tags: biology medicine animals economics drugs)
Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Campus Fight Club
Dorm-room boxing, yet…
Dave Ng over at the World's Fair is at it again, asking what sort of science background Santa Claus has:
So the premise is that Santa is at least several hundred years old, and you've got to assume that somewhere along the line, he spent some time in academia and probably got a degree or two. Now,…
Faith in theory and curve-fitting, at least...
Tommaso Dorigo reports some new results, which are based on a figure that could be titled "Why I Am Not a Particle Physicist #729":
"What's the problem?," you ask, "There's a nice big peak there, looking a little like a black-body spectrum."
Ah, but…
I have a good deal more synmpathy for the plight of religious scientists than most of my fellow ScienceBlogs bloggers. For example, I'm willing to believe that people can both have sincere religious faith and be practicing scientists, without assuming that they're either brainwashed or evil.
I…
