The last few weeks have been quite something. If I’ve been brief – administrative, even – it’s only because I’ve been caught up with home life, work life, and linux life. I ran my first road race a couple of weeks ago, the SLAC annual run/walk. It’s a four mile […]
Sitting in the Kavli lounge, chatting with a friend of mine, I mentioned that I had finally gotten around to setting up a professional blog. He responded with, “What’s a professional blog?” Hmm. When I set the darn thing up, I didn’t really think about what it meant. Well, that’s […]
Well, friends, it was inevitable. I hate static situations. Very soon, I’ll be moving this blog to “WordPress”, the excellent and highly-maintained blogging platform that is open-source and free for distribution and usage. For this blog, ever since its inception, I’ve used “COREBlog”, a plugin for the Zope webserver. It […]
This past week aired the NOVA episode “Intelligent Design on Trial”, a recounting of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case from last year. If you recall, the school board had voted to require science teachers to read a one-minute statement claiming that since Evolution was “just a theory” and […]
As part of the changing of our lives, Jodi and I have come to realize that the demands of our work and the demands of our home are becoming incompatible. We simply cannot keep a clean home and get our work done; doing both leads to no leisure time, which […]
This blog has gone dead in the past month. This was for a variety of reasons. I made a great number of changes in my life this past month, in an attempt to prepare for the great number of changes likely to come in the next few years. I had […]
This has been an interesting year for the Nobel Prize. Recognizing contributions to the world in areas like chemistry, physics, biology, literature, and even peace, the prize is awarded once per year to up to two lucky individuals in a given field. This year, the prize in physics was awarded […]
Just over a week ago, “The Onion” – a weekly joke newspaper – had an article in it entitled, “Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing” [1]. Like all jokes, it contains some interesting issues which are funny because we all worry they might be true. It’s funny […]
When voters went to the polls last year, they cast a vote for change. On many issues, said voters have been disappointed. Unable to seek common ground, our elected representatives have time and time again fallen far short of the will of the People. When I cast my vote, I […]
I missed “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” last week [1]. This turns out to have been unfortunate. Two excellent stories aired that day. The first confirmed a personal belief of mine, and the second opened my eyes wider to the world of science and women. The first story was […]
It’s collaboration meeting time again. When BaBarians last met in June, it was at SLAC. I split my time between plenary presentations, parallel sessions, chairing sessions, and (of course) hurrying to get the numbers needed to my own research presentations. It’s busy, but fun. This time around, BaBar is largely […]
He founded the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, was a tireless driving force behind the great discoveries of this laboratory, and worked into his last days as an advocate against the testing and use of nuclear weapons. Today, the scientific world has lost another luminary: Pief Panofsky. We all got the […]