Yesterday was a pretty good day. Jodi, a friend, and I hiked from Portola Road up through the Windy Hill open space preserve to Skyline Drive at the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The view from the top was stellar, not only because of the expanse of the Bay […]
I’ve been quiet again lately – take that as a sign that there has been a lot of physics to do. However, I’m compelled to jot a few things down after the barrage of messages coming out of Washington today. One of the first things that we teach each other […]
Well, we finally did it. After making some intro/outro music on Apple’s GarageBand, sitting down at the kitchen table, and talking into a microphone, Jodi and I have finally made our first podcast. You can get it from: http://twobodyproblem.cooleysekula.net/ You can subscribe (using Amarok, iTunes, or a similar program), get […]
Well, it finally happened . . . again! Dell has officially begun shipping several desktop and laptop options with linux pre-installed. Yay! Today, the terrorists have officially lost a battle. <a href=”http://www.ubuntulinux.org/”>Ubuntu Linux</a> is the installation of choice. Based on the huge Debian Linux community, with strong customer support and […]
As promised, here are photos from our time during the Hunt for Dark Matter: http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/HuntForDarkMatter/ Here’s another photo from the hunt for dark matter: This photo is the result of more gravitational lensing on colliding galaxy clusters. The blue halo represents the amount of lensing due to non-luminous (dark) matter. […]
I’ve been pretty nuts in the past two months. With the load of work spiking very suddenly in April in May, combined with working late and long hours, I felt pretty overwhelmed. This happens from time to time; it’s never pretty, and it takes its toll. However, I knew that […]
Last week, I had the great pleasure of attending “The Hunt for Dark Matter”, a symposium at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Dark matter hunters, and even a skeptic or two, converged from across the world at Fermilab to discuss the current state-of-the-art in detection, the hopes for future experiments, and […]
Tonight on “Humankind”, David Freudberg inteviewed Helen Thomas, the feisty and sharp White House reporter. At one point, expressing her frustration with the state of willingness of the American People, said that she wished that less math was being taught in school, in favor of more civics and history. This […]
It’s summer conference season again. For a lot of us on BaBar, that means a lot of sacrifice. The data keeps coming, and lots of results come with it. A consequence of the “distracting” events in Europe is that fewer people seem to be feeling more of the load than […]
The Republican Presidential Candidates debated a few nights ago. They all invoked the name of Reagan, referring to the “Reagan Principle” or to his vision of government. In a time when the issue of climate change is so critical, I would warn these candidates to remember that it was Reagan […]
Jodi and I went to see “Spiderman 3” tonight. What really struck me about the movie is the level to which physics sneaks into the film. Quite apart from the fact that Spiderman largely respects the laws of gravity (he uses falling and redirection of momentum to move about, and […]
A scientist is a pie (no, wait – this is going someplace). Like a pie, a scientist’s job is to be eaten. Different people want different sized slices. Some people want you to spend your time on a research project. Other people want you to spend your time on service […]