It’s great to be back in the Midwest. It’s almost a rare pleasure to be here anymore, now that I’m not a student in Wisconsin. I’m back at Fermilab once more for a meeting of the Braidwood neutrino experiment collaboration. We’ve got two days of packed sessions, discussing everything from […]
“There is a strong Washington Post editorial that takes a fairly critical look at the recent behavior of Kansas in reviewing the educational, scientific validity of the Theory of Evolution”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/07/AR2005050700943.html. I am fairly fond of this framing of the hypothesis of “intelligent design”: Intelligent design is not your parents’ creationism. […]
Crazy. And there’s not enough time in the day to suffer crazy. Why are things crazy? Well, I’m in the honorable position of giving three presentations in the next three weeks (not one a week, or I’d be less stressed). This Thursday night I head to Fermilab to attend a […]
Well, it appears to be the end of not only day 3 of the Kansas state board of education hearings, but also of the arguments by those who adhere to the hypothesis of intelligent design and the religious doctrine of Biblical creationism. I “just noticed the Kansas City Star article […]
I just saw an “article about an astrologer in Russia who is proceeding to sue NASA because she believes that a future planned comet mission will disrupt the natural order of the universe”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/russiausnasaspace. Says the woman’s lawyer, “My client believes that the NASA project infringes upon her spiritual and life […]
It’s day 3 of the hearings in Kansas, held by the state board of education to determine whether science standards should be lowered to weaken the position of the theory of evolution in the classroom. The “Washington Post has an article from the AP reporting that the witnesses are betraying […]
As far as I can tell, the Kansas state Board of Education hearings on revising science standard is not televised or webcast, so I am resolved to using Google news oy Yahoo! news to learn what little is in the press. The rash of suicide bombings is blotting out coverage […]
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 […]