Links Dump

I'm here to depress you a little. First off, we have the upcoming anniversary of Katrina, about which Jane Dark has a tough tale to tell:The abandonment of a great city to time and tide is indeed both symptom and mark of empire on its downhill slide; it bears noting as well that pathetic, delusional and desperate regimes are equally an indicator of this decline. I'm interested in what she has to say, but Ozymandias references are sooo AP English. She also disses on Stardust here, but I'm not touching that with a ten-foot Worldcon program. Second, we have gender issues in physics again…
Some things I've noticed lately: Anton Zeilinger (Vienna) has a blog. It's in German, but that shouldn't be a problem, right? I found that out at Michael Nielsen's place, where he's started blogging again after a little hiatus. In an effort to improve on my bibdesk+bibtex+folder-full-of-local-pdfs system, I've been playing around citeulike, Papers, and Nielsen's Academic Reader. Papers is crippled for physicists by its sole reliance on PubMed for metadata, but shows a lot of potential. I'm also definitely curious to see where Academic Reader goes as it grows; as it's being developed…
Via Inside Higher Ed, a story about a unique attempt to address student problems at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai: One of India's top engineering schools has restricted Internet access in its hostels, saying addiction to surfing, gaming and blogging was affecting students' performance, making them reclusive and even suicidal. Authorities at the elite Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai said students had stopped socializing and many were late for morning classes or slept through them. Accordingly, the Internet access will be completely cut off from 11pm-12:30 am…
It's officially March, which means my basketball obsession kicks into high gear. As if you hadn't noticed from the last week or so of posts... Anyway, it's clear from the lack of comments that my basketball obsession is not that widely shared, so here are some links to amuse the rest of you while I go hoops-wacky: The March Physics World is out, featuring a very nice article on commerical quantum cryptography, and a blog profile of Tommaso Dorigo. Speaking of quantum stuff, Scott Aaronson explains Shor's algorithm, with not a single state vector to be seen. If you've been saying to yourself…
Various and sundry items that don't quite rate a post of their own. I was astonished to learn on Pardon the Interruption that today is Gene Hackman's birthday. Not so much that it's his birthday, as that it's his 77th birthday. He doesn't seem like he should be that old. Then again, he's looked about sixty for the last twenty years, so I guess that's about right... Elsewhere, the Little Professor dabbles in Live-Action Role-Playing. I need to get me one of those grimoires.... And, via Eurekalert a book I'm sure we'll hear more about: In God: The Failed Hypothesis, physicist Victor Stenger…
I make a habit of checking my Technorati search results regularly, partly because I'm just vain enough to care that other people are linking to me (my rank is holding steady in the 8,000's, but it hasn't updated in a while), but mostly because it's a good way to find new blogs, and there are a few new science-type blogs linking to me. The most developed to this point has to be metadatta, written by an undergraduate student at UPenn. He's working on a series of nice posts about liquid crystals Part I, Part II, Part III) and it generally looks pretty interesting. There's also Remaining Eye, at…
Tobias Buckell is experimenting with a new concept to keep himself on pace as he writes his next novel. He's publicly stated a goal of 6,000 words per week, and pledges to donate a nickel for every word he's short of that, to a charity chosen by his readers (a different one each week). How's he doing so far? He's out almost $200 in the first two weeks. But it's early yet... If you're so inclined, head on over there and vote for who should get the money. You might also consider buying a copy or two of Crystal Rain, which really is excellent. And it looks like he might need the money...
I haven't done a straight-up links dump in a while, but it's that kind of weekend, so here's some stuff: What Would Brian Boitano Do?: Iain Jackson at Grim Amusements, who ought to get more press than he does, watches South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, and finds contemporary political relevance: We've pretty much actually turned into the version of the US shown in "South Park", or a reasonably facsimile thereof. (Perhaps an unreasonable facsimile thereof would be a better way to put it.) OK, we're not randomly imprisoning Canadians and exeduting them because they've made all our children…
I would post some sort of wrap-up about the Lisa Randall chat yesterday, but Discover is broken. They don't have a link to a transcript on the site-- in fact, they haven't updated the front page to reflect the fact that the chat was yesterday, and is now over. There was a link that would sort of give you access to a transcript, but it's broken now, or at least doesn't work in either Opera or Firefox on my home computer. It's pretty much of a piece with the chat itself, actually-- I thought it was pretty sharp of them to email physics bloggers with invitations to the chat, but the chat itself…
How 'bout those Giants? They keep it interesting right to the end, that's for sure... Some links to worthwhile things elsewhere, because I don't have the time or energy for more: The guys at the World's Fair are launching a new site that they hope will be a sort of BoingBoing for the science education/ popularization set. It's called the Filter, and they've got some nifty items. Take a look. Rob and Sean on the ever-popular topic of diversity in science. Dennis Overby on the Big Bang. Physics video games (thanks, Tim).
Well, OK, it's really another of those stories about a cut-up judge, who, in this case, issued an order compelling Defendant's counsel to accept the Plaintiff's counsel's lunch invitation: There are a number of fine restaurants within easy driving distance of both counsel's offices, e.g., Christopher's, Vincent's, Morton's, Donovan's, Bistro 24 at the Ritz-Carlton, The Arizona Biltmore Grill, Sam's Café (Biltmore location), Alexi's, Sophie's and, if either counsel has a membership, the Phoenix Country Club and the University Club. Counsel may select their own venue or, if unable to agree,…
I'm not sure if this is really new, or just new to me, but via a mailing list, I learned that the National Archives of the UK has made the Domesday Book available on-line. What is the Domesday Book, you ask? At Christmas 1085 William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey to discover the resources and taxable values of all the boroughs and manors in England. He wanted to discover who owned what, how much it was worth, and how much was owed to him as King. It was a massive enterprise, and the record of that survey, Domesday Book, was a remarkable achievement. If you know what you're…
The final exam for my class is today (9-11 am), so I'm a little preoccupied. After giving the test, I have to grade it, but then, I get a whole week of "vacation." The scare quotes are because of the multitude of things that need doing-- I have to prep two classes for next term, start assembling material for my tenure review, and do a bunch of work in the lab. It's not going to be restful. As a result, you get lazy blogging today. Here are some links that have caught my eye: First, on the science front, Dennis Overbye takes on quantum mysticism. I haven't seen What the #$!%* Do We Know?, but…
I usually try to save this sort of thing for the weekend, but we're coming down to the end of the term, and today is an especially hectic day. Thus, a list of links that struck me as worth passing on: First, Paul Kwiat on counterfactual computation at Cosmic Variance. I will get back to this, eventually, but for now, you can read about it from the horse's mouth, as it were. Sticking with physics bloggers for a minute, we have Gordon Watts on the right way to be crazy. Kooks, take note. Elsewhere on ScienceBlogs, RPM has some thoughts on what makes a good conference. I mostly agree with the…
I may do some fiddling with the blog template over the weekend, but I'm unlikely to post anything substantive until Monday. Here are a handful of links that caught my eye in recent days to fill the gap:Via a mailing list: A weirdly cool hand-written web clock. Also via that mailing list, a group of archeologists working in Egypt have a photo-blog of their dig. The guys at BioCurious do us all a favor by reading the responses at the Edge Question Center, and indexing the interesting answers. In academia, Timothy Burke is teaching a class I'd like to take. Elsehwere in academia, Dave Bacon is…