I can’t sleep. This happens a few times a week. I go to bed tired and early, with the best of intentions. Two hours later my wife is sound asleep (she’s sound asleep 7 minutes after lights-out) and I’m staring at the infinite void of the ceiling. Every part of […]
It’s been a while since I last put pen to paper and placed some thoughts in this blog. As is typical with most things at the bottom of the list, this gets shelved when I have more important things to do. These past few weeks have been full of such […]
The National Center for Science Education (“www.ncseweb.org”:http://www.ncseweb.org) is doing a nice job of tracking the case in Dover, PA, brought by parents against a schoolboard hell-bent on watering down the science curriculum. This week, the defense presents its case. Here, the defense is the school board, which tried to inject […]
Mmmm. Gigabit ethernet. GURGUGURGLE. I’m bored. With Jodi out of town and being throughly mentally lashed form this past week at SLAC, I needed a project to take my mind off spin and quarks and 38 decay modes of the B meson. I needed gigabit ethernet. With a lecture on […]
One of the deep truths of nature is that the universe, as it exists to our senses at human scales, does not behave the same at all other scales. For instance, when you and I describe the motion of a baseball through the air, we only have to enumerate the […]
“Symmetry Magazine”:http://www.symmetrymagazine.org, a publication spearheaded by Fermilab and SLAC, appears monthly and has articles that touch on particle physics at a level appropriate for all people. “Slashdot is carrying a link to this month’s article on an art exhibit by Jan-Henrik Anderson”:http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/10/12/1913203.shtml?tid=126&tid=14. It’s nice to see Symmetry Magazine getting some […]
WOW! I’m speechless. NOVA has outdone itself. My father e-mailed me excitedly earlier tonight to heap praise on “Einstein’s Big Idea”. It was really a remarkable combination of drama, history, and science. I’ve always liked “Galileo’s Battle for the Heavens” for that reason, but this takes the damn cake. What […]
In 1905, 100 years ago, Einstein experienced what we now call his “miracle year”, during which he published three seminal works in physics that opened the door to quantum mechanics and relativity. NOVA, the excellent PBS science program, celebrates this achievement with their program “Einstein’s Big Idea”:http://www.pbs.org/hplink/redir/wgbh/nova/einstein/, airing tonight on […]
The “National Center for Science Education”:http://www.ncseweb.org has excellent “ongoing coverage, including transcripts and podcasts, of the trial in PA brought by parents against the Dover School District”:http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/, which is trying to force non-science into the science classroom. I’m spending my evening working while listening to their podcasts.
Whew. This was a long pair of weeks. Between the marathon travel (and the actualy marathon for Jodi), the return to CA, two days of non-stop meetings (and work?), then travel to and from DC for my friend’s wedding, Jodi and I are EXHAUSTED. In addition to exhausted, we are […]
We’re in Washington D.C., primarily for the wedding of a friend of mine from college. Secondarily, Jodi and I are using this opportunity to hit the Hill and talk to some of our elected representatives. We decided to try for appointments with three offices: Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, Congressman David Obey, […]
This weekend was the date of Jodi’s marathon run in Milwaukee. We left early on Friday morning, bleary eyed and eager to get to our destination. After a wonderful party with friends and family on Saturday night, we awoke at 6:15 on Sunday morning to get ready. Jodi left the […]