Citations are the best way to let readers go back through the chain of references that were source material for statements in your work. While I generally have a lot of respect for journalists, I find the practice of making statements without citing the reference both frustrating and undermining. It […]
Yesterday, I had the great pleasure and privelege of presenting BaBar’s recent work on the bottomonium system to an audience at the MIT Lab for Nuclear Science Colloquium. This was my first colloquium, and I’m told it went quite well. I got some great questions afterward, which I intend to […]
My next stop in the seminar tour is my previous workplace, MIT. I left yesterday evening for Boston, arriving around sunset. Traffic getting into the city was basically what I remembered, at least between I-84 and I-90 up by Worchester. I’ll be giving the Lab for Nuclear Science Colloquium today, […]
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 […]
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 […]