Sep 26 2005
The annual SLAC User’s Organization (SLUO) meeting is today. One of the talks was about the synchrotron light source science going on here at the laboratory. Included in that was rresearxh done to better understand the complex process of blood clotting. This is a topic embraced by Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates as “too complex [...]
Sep 25 2005
Last week was a real killer. After I spent a tough but rewarding Monday at UCSF, it seemed I didn’t get a single minute to myself. Now that the professors in my group are back at MIT, I’m trying to make sure that the students are making progress and that in general our group is [...]
Sep 20 2005
Today I had the *immense* pleasure of a day away from SLAC. Wait a second. That sounded all wrong. You see, the pleasure was not in the separation from my laboratory; the pleasure was the company I kept while away, and the work I got to do. I got into my Honda Civic this morning [...]
Sep 19 2005
If Katrina was any indication, then we can make some predictions about tropical storm Rita. This storm, headed to the Florida Keys, is aimed straight at the heart of the warm Guld of Mexico. Katrina, a storm which ravaged Florida before entering the Gulf, soaked energy from the waters west of Florida and built strength [...]
Sep 16 2005
Every year, scientists from all over the United States make personal visits to their elected representatives in Washington D.C. This ability to have an individual interaction to achieve collective action is a wonderous feature of our democratic society. When I first experienced this in 2003, I shared the optimisim of my colleagues when I realized [...]
Sep 15 2005
Katrina is projected by some to cost the United States $200 billion. That’s basically the pricetag, as it stands now, of the war in Iraq. The irony here has not been overlooked, and the contradictions in a war to prevent terrorism being matched by a disaster we saw coming have not been missed. But there [...]
Sep 13 2005
My dad is a high school chem teacher in CT, and has always been a huge influence on me as a scientist and educator. I was browsing his class notes from the first week of school, and ran across the “old standard” I love to see: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
I wonder how many science teachers at [...]
Sep 13 2005
I had the pleasure of a long visit by one of my oldest, dearest friends. Eric arrived here from Hartford last Thursday afternoon, and it was pretty much nonstop fun until this morning, when he flew back. Eric has several weeks’ worth of vacation accrued over the past year, and decided to spend a little [...]
Sep 06 2005
My colleague “Caolionn O’Connell has written a PSA for physics”:http://qd.typepad.com/13/2005/09/public_service_.html. I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about that Prairie Home Companion skit about how being an English major teaches you the life skills you need to succeed. Then again, success in physics really does prepare you to solve just about any problem…
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Sep 06 2005
This morning, I faxed to my elected officials letters discussing the importance of the method by which Congress reviews publicly funded science. This letter-writing campaign was kicked off by the singling out in June of three climate scientists by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries [Sekula83] [Sekula84] [Sekula92].
One [...]
Chirp, a microblog Going Up Alleys The Perils of the Ice Queen
