My father asked me today, right before I took a jog, “Did you see that program called ‘The Next Big Bang’? Was it any good? I didn’t see it.” What program? I did some digging on the net, and found out that on Sept. 9 The History Channel aired (just […]
Monthly Archives: September 2008
29 posts
Every experiment has setbacks. The BaBar/PEP-II B-factory, in its quest to collect the largest sample of B mesons on the planet, was stymied along the way by pernicious vacuum leaks which limited the amount of current we could put into the collider. This, in turn, limited the rate at which […]
One of the side effects of going to an historic university like Cornell is to learn a little of the local history. My host for the day, who also arranged dinner at a local, popular restaurant called Moosewood, educated me a little on the local history of Ithaca and Cornell. […]
After the eventful start to my trip in San Francisco, the rest of it was pretty smooth and uneventful. Upon arriving in Rochester, my gate was right next to the terminal exit and my bag arrived nearly immediately from the claim area. My rental car pickup was smooth, and I […]
Today begins a nearly one-month odyssey. I leave my home in California, laptop in hand, and head east to start a seminar tour. I’m currently on an AirTran flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, where I’ll transfer to a flight to Rochester, NY. I’ll be grabbing a rental car in […]
A friend of mine today informed me that McCain’s answers to the 14 ScienceDebate2008 science policy questions were in [1]. When another friend informed me of the availability of Obama’s answers many weeks ago [2], I gave my personal reactions to some key issues that are of importance to me. […]
Microblogging, the act of writing just a few words about an observation or a thought, is becoming more popular. In and of itself, I’m not that thrilled about it. In a way, it’s just another cheap, short form of communication. However, most of the reason why I’ve avoided it is […]
This morning, over my second cup of coffee, I found a weird little news item in my “science” feed on Yahoo! News. The article reported that the Ohio Buckeye tree might migrate north, into Michigan, as the average temperature in Ohio climbs [1]. This is terrible news. The Michigan BUCKEYES? […]
When I was on vacation back in August, I spent 10 days with my parents. Over the course of this vacation, I discovered that my parents had been keeping extensive fuel economy records for their two vehicles. The data on one of them, a Dodge Stratus, went all the way […]
In lieu of the fact that the LHC is about to conduct its first round-the-ring test of the beams, I went to the CERN website to see if I could keep an eye on accelerator conditions in real time [1]. On the front page of the site, I was pleased […]
To be complete, I also analyzed the “Wills/Bys” in the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches, to teach out the content of their words on the issues important to them. I find the substance quotient, SQ = 1/2 * (N_wills + N_bys)/N_issues to be: McCain: 0.45 Obama: 0.82 I had to […]
There’s been a lot of crap flying in the Presidential campaign this year. Fact checking was important in the ’04 election, and the lack of it led to the term “Swift-boating”. I started browsing fact-checking websites [1] to see what I could find from people with more resources than I […]