It has been extremely rainy in the New England area for several days, thanks in large part to a series of tropical storms that worked their way north along the eastern coast. Today, a category 1 hurricane is parked off the coast, darkening our skies and giving us some drizzle […]
For those interested in knowing how that money McCain complained about was spent, you can find the study online [1]. McCain, in the past and in last night’s debate, used this research as an example of pork-barrel spending without actually saying what the study was for. According to the online […]
I finally had a chance to watch “The Next Big Bang” tonight. I actually enjoyed it a lot. Apart from the beautiful shots of the LHC experiments and seeing faces I recognize, I thought the sampling of physics topics was great. I especially noticed the focus on dark matter, then […]
Very briefly, what stood out for me was the dedication with which Obama brought back to the fore the need to strengthen the U.S. science and technology effort. Incredible that he mentioned it, two to three times, at moments when the issues was foreign policy. Regarding McCain, what really jumped […]
I’ll jot thoughts here, with timestamps (EDT) as the debate unfolds. [9:04] where do the candidates stand on the current economic recovery plan Obama: – oversight of the financial rescue spending – taxpayers must get money from bailout back when market improves – no CEO golden parachutes – solve the […]
In my last post, I started by complaining about the way in which information is not cited in news articles. As I got caught up in the actual reference for the Times article on the new Splenda study, I completely stopped caring about my original complaint. Instead, I found some […]
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. […]