Jun 29 2007
iMania over the iPhone is about to be unleashed. As many have pointed out [1], there hasn’t been this much hype ahead of something ultimately disappointing since Windows ‘95. As people go nuts – N-V-T-S, NUTS! – over this hyped iPod/phone/web appliance hybrid, Microsoft has yet again advanced U.S. innovation with a computer the size [...]
Jun 26 2007
Since the big one, there have been few bangs as spectacular. In our frigid modern universe, two are still quite phenomenal. The first are gamma ray bursts, intense explosions that occur all the time and are largely believed to be the result of a massive rotating star experiencing a total collapse of its nuclear core [...]
Jun 25 2007
AIDS. It’s a great equalizer. Transmitted by body-fluid-to-body-fluid contact (by needle sharing, or sexual contact), the HIV virus can lay dormant for years before finally suppressing the human immune response and inducing AIDS. Typically, victims die from usually harmless diseases against which they have no defense. It is an entirely preventable disease, at least in [...]
Jun 25 2007
Today, the Supreme Court ruled on a number of cases that have piled up as its current term comes to an end. One of the issues the court ruled on today was whether funding President Bush’s “faith-based programs initiative” is a constitutional use of taxpayer money. The court didn’t rule on the case, but instead [...]
Jun 23 2007
I think every physicist should have rules they live by. Today, I am going to start to compile a list that applies to myself. Here is the first principle that I am going to live by from now on:
Never do any physics after 5 pm on Friday
Last night, I wrote a script that was supposed [...]
Jun 22 2007
It’s been quite a week for federal funding of science. There has been movement on the energy bill, which is critical to also funding fundamental science. The most news-grabbing event of the week was, of course, the second stem cell bill veto by the President in as many years. I commented on the first veto [...]
Jun 19 2007
I was recently witness to the kind of modern slight against women in physics that reminds me that while we’ve all come a long was as a field, we have a mighty long way to go to achieve mutual respect. Without going into details, or naming names, the incident can be described as follows: in [...]
Jun 18 2007
“Marketplace”, a daily show about money, the economy, and the intermingling of business and personal lives, presented a short piece on how the desire for a life of academic pursuit, and the desire for a life together with another, can come into conflict. On tonight’s program, reporter Jane Lyndholm presented a short piece on the [...]
Jun 17 2007
A friend of mine recently sent me a summary of a relevant portion of H.R. 2641, the FY2008 House Energy and Water Appropriations bill. In the more common tongue, this is the budget proposal from Congress for the Department of Energy, an agency that funds much of the U.S. basic research. Let’s go through some [...]
Jun 14 2007
I’ve been running pretty silent again lately. It’s not like interesting things have stopped happening in the world. About a third of the Republican presidential candidates still don’t believe in evolution, the basis of progress in the entire modern medical and social fabrics of our world (good luck on real health care reform with those [...]
Chirp, a microblog Going Up Alleys The Perils of the Ice Queen
