Dec 28 2007
Bob Park is normally funny to read every Friday, either because you agree with him rabidly or because you don’t agree with him but you find his grouchiness lovable . This week, he’s just plain on target. Here are his opening paragraphs, verbatim:
1. HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS: SANK IN “THE GATHERING STORM.”
Science-policy reps were patting [...]
Dec 24 2007
I thought that this past summer was nuts, but now I realize it was just the packet of sunflower seeds to this winter’s vacuum-packed can of fancy cashews. With the omnibus bill a living threat to the U.S. science program, the consequences have started to land on the table. Remember – the goal of science [...]
Dec 21 2007
This morning I had a short chat with a student at SLAC. During the chat, it was mentioned that certain Presidential candidates didn’t event vote on the omnibus bill. This got me thinking about who did and who did not vote for it, and about who voted for and agaist. So, I hit the Library [...]
Dec 20 2007
One day ago, the unthinkable happened: Congress abandoned all signs of reason and passed an omnibus spending bill that gutted science in this nation. Much is clear, and much is not.
What’s clear are the facts. The Office of Science was appropriated $4.05 billion, and then asked to apply a 0.91 rescission to that number, bringing [...]
Dec 18 2007
Since the Congress was unable to complete, or get the President to sign, appropriations bills by October 1, the U.S. has been living under what is called a “continuing resolution”. That means that every now and then, the Congress votes to fund the government at last year’s levels while they try to complete the very [...]
Dec 17 2007
This Sunday, “Meet the Press” spent the whole hour with Mitt Romney. The opening question was about his statement during his speech on religion and government. He was asked about his assertion that “Freedom requires Religion, and Religion requires Freedom.” I certainly agree with the latter sentiment. As is clearly demonstrated by the founding of [...]
Dec 14 2007
This is an exciting time for the BaBar experiment. We have just completed our last shutdown between run periods, where we performed a series of maintenance tasks and small upgrades and the accelerator performed a series of engineering upgrades. This three month down-time was the last chance to make major improvements to both accelerator and [...]
Dec 05 2007
OK, maybe it’s a little much. But, I have to say that this collaboration meeting has been a real high when it comes to physics. Not only is BaBar in the first stages of Run 7, a solid 10-month run from now until next October, but there is so much rich physics at our fingertips [...]
Dec 01 2007
Today, as I was thinking more about my undergraduate experience in physics, I recalled that I had a photo of my advisor, Michael, floating around on my home computer. What made me think of it was the laugh I had when I first found the picture. In one of my strolls through the Yale physics [...]
Dec 01 2007
I thought there might be some Zope folks out there who would find the following useful. Below is the code for my DTML method, wordpress_xml, that converts COREBlog posts to Wordpress XML. If you want to export your entire blog to Wordpress, make sure to change the visible days’ worth of posts in the settings [...]
Chirp, a microblog Going Up Alleys The Perils of the Ice Queen
