Today, the linux world has a new member. A student with whom I work received a linux laptop today, a great little machine from System 76 [1]. In celebration of the open-source goodness of linux, I list a few of my favorite applications and plugins for linux and open-source software. […]
Monthly Archives: July 2007
17 posts
At one of the first Republican Presidential candidate debates, three of the contenders raised their hands when asked if they do not believe in evolution. These were Tom Tancredo, a Congressman from Colorado, Senator Sam Brownback, and former Governor Mike Huckabee. Since then, they’ve been clarifying their position [1]. This […]
The mad rush to the summer conferences is almost over, and while I am still trying to wrap up the research projects I’ve been working on for many months, I am thinking ahead to other projects that I’d like to start in the autumn. The BaBar experiment offers many opportunities […]
I finally had a chance this week to listen to the Senate testimony of Dr. James Holsinger, the President’s choice for Surgeon General. It’s taken me a few days to digest and form some impressions. I’ll try to communicate them here. My most global observation is that Holsinger stands for […]
As Jodi and I discussed on our podcast this Sunday [1], deadlines and time pressures make people nuts. In physics, this is the kooky season, as the big conferences – EPS (European Physical Society), SUSY07, and Lepton-Photon ’07 approach. Over the next 1.5 months, thousands of physicists from across the […]
It wasn’t on C-SPAN, but I found it from capitolhearings.com on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee website: http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2007_07_12/2007_07_12.html More to follow, I assume…
If anyone can find Dr. Holsinger’s testimony in front of the Senate, I’d appreciate you dropping me a note (post a comment). I can’t find it on C-SPAN, but maybe it’s just not uploaded yet…?
With Surgeon General Carmona’s departure from the Bush administration, it’s time for the President to do what he does best: appoint qualified people for high-ranking positions in our Executive Branch. I’d say that the President has done a heckuva job so far. The current position that is open is the […]
This is going to make me sound like the total nerd that I am, but here we go: I grew up with a deep-seated admiration for Dr. C. Everett Koop. Who is that? He was the only member of the U.S. government that I knew, besides the president, when I […]
In all fields of research which operate at both the frontier of understanding and the interface with politics, there are vocal skeptics. Human-induced global climate change is surely the most current of these. While U.S. public opinion about the ability of humans on climate has shifted in support of the […]
Tomorrow night, NOVA will air the next in its series of science news magazines, “ScienceNOW”. The topics will be: the importance of sleep, and the Large Hadron Collider. I’d encourage everybody to watch this, especially those in physics and most especially those working on or near the LHC. Why? Well, […]
Tonight on “Tech Nation”, Dr. Moira Gunn spoke with the Chairman and CEO of Invitrogen, Greg Lucier [1]. Mr. Lucier spent his time speaking out about the importance of public funding of science. Despite his position in a private company, he advocated that more public money needs to be spent […]