I am concerned by this recurring “story about 100M dollars going missing in the Iraq reconstruction effort”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050505/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_money;_ylt=At9K0nB3DggPB8jukqks16ZG2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl. The AP news story on http://news.yahoo.com leads with “U.S. government mismanagement of assets in Iraq, from the lack of proper documentation on nearly $100 million in cash to millions of dollars worth of […]
Tomorrow, the State of Kansas start four days of hearings about the role of evolution, and how it should be approached, in the state’s science education standards. Already, the “venom has been injected by both sides in this debate”:http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/11563607.htm. What I think all scientists need to remember is that theories […]
Last Friday’s “Talk of the Nation, Science Friday”:http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2005/Apr/hour1_042905.html focused, in part, on the upcoming “debate” in Kansas on the theory of evolution and the beliefs of creationism and intelligent design. Many distinguished scientific socieities have refused to participate in this debate, arguing rightly that they do not get involved in […]
**YAWN**. This was a loooooooooong week. When I was a graduate student it was “no big deal” [1] to have four 8-hour shifts, plus normal meetings and work. Although I was expecting to sleep-in today, I was a little amazed that I slept until 1 pm. I can’t say I’ve […]
Ah, shifts. I love them. It’s the stuff that brings you as close to the experiment as a casual particle experimentalist gets these days. If I were a systems expert, I have my hands deep in the warm guts of the detector every day. But I am not, and so […]
I decided that, despite my claims in a recent post, I might have an optical instrument in the house with more power than those binoculars. I charged up the Sony handicam and set it up on its tripod. A quick look at Kstars gave the rough coordinates of Jupiter in […]
It’s a cool, grey, overcast day here in Redwood City. It’s not raining – at least, it’s not supposed to rain. However, the sky is the color of dusty milk and there is a gentle breeze that makes shorts and a tee-shirt a little uncomfortable. That’s why I was so […]
It was in the early 1600s that Galileo gazed at the heavens with his telescope and first saw the mountain and scars on the moon, the moons of jupiter, and many other wonders. Tonight, here on the West Coast, it’s a nearly cloudless night. I decided to step outside into […]
My wife has gone off for two weeks to Wisconsin and Minnesota. Her trip is one of mixed business and personal events. First, she went to her home in the northwoods for a wedding shower. Then she’s off to Minnesota for a stint at the Soudan Mine, where her experiment […]
Peer review is the basis of good science publication standards. Papers are sent to journals and the journal collects a group of experts in the field so that the material can be reviewed. A positive review of the work lends itself toward obtaining publication; a negative review, depeding on the […]
The catholic church has “just selected its new Pope”:http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/20050420/ap_on_re_eu/pope&sid=84439559. Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, will soon begin his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church. In that role, he will affect the lives of a billion people on this planet. While not all catholics share the same views […]
Just before heading to bed tonight, I was goofing about on Google (doing that hubris-filled “search for your own name” thing) and found a link that brought me back to my youth. My dad used to run a bulletin board system (BBS) from our home. In their golden era, the […]