Eclipse webcast live 10:30 - 11:30 UT 8/1/2008
On August 1, 2008, a total solar eclipse will occur as the new moon moves directly between the sun and the earth. The moon’s umbral shadow will fall on parts of Canada, Greenland, the Arctic Ocean, Russia, Mongolia, and China. The Exploratorium’s eclipse expedition team (our fifth!) will [...]
Finishing last in the Tour-de-France isn’t easy.
Mr. Vansevenant, who after Stage 18 sits in 150th place, some 3 hours and 45 minutes behind Mr. Sastre, is indeed the worst-placed rider in the Tour de France. But, in turn, he has outlasted those who abandoned the Tour through illness, injury or simple exhaustion; those who [...]
Top Nine Songs About Self Love
Jackson Browne’s Rosie isn’t on the list? WTF? Pictures of Lily by The Who? Longview by Green Day? Sheesh.
via Kottke
Dealing with Uncertainty at Backreaction, in the context of “science is never 100% certain” and how this plays out with public perception.
There are times when this seems to be a no-win scenario: if you fail to address the uncertainty and have to make any changes to your conclusions, you lose credibility, but if you [...]
Our command picnic was Wednesday, and our volleyball team whipped the young whippersnapper summer interns to win the crown (something like 15-5 and 15-5, with traditional scoring). We had three of four people from the research group and one of the guys from the instrument shop to replace our missing player, and picked up [...]
“Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.”
“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he. Is he.”
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Everyday Electromagnetism
This time, though, Eddies in the penny. And he enforces Lenz’s law.
You can see a similar effect if you drop a magnet down a copper pipe, because the eddy currents [...]
Several weeks back, I was lamenting bad advertising music. There seem to be lots of companies who have the ad-music decisions being made by a 45-55 year-old who chooses a favorite tune from their youth but didn’t have great taste in music, (or a 20-something staffer who can Google on what was high on [...]
“Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha - THRUST!”
Jennifer whips out her $1.25 quarter-staff pen and writes tit for tat, an excellent twist to the physical theories as women
Electrodynamics is your first real boyfriend, and all your friends swear he’s quite the catch: well-educated, ambitious, clean-cut, amusing, great chemistry, plus you love his [...]
Some good followup to the whole why-are-math-and-science-such-small-portions-on-the-plate-of-intellectualism and all of the tangents (too math-y? juxtaposed topics, perhaps?)
Fear and loathing in the academy and Assorted hypotheses on the science-humanities divide at Adventures in Ethics and Science. A lot to chew on (or gum, if you are so inclined)
The best reason to learn something [...]
4 amazing modern sculptures from around the world at ZME science
Whilst scurrying through the intertubes, I ran across a post entitled Should We Ban Physics? at Overcoming Bias.
At the recent Global Catastrophic Risks conference, someone proposed a policy prescription which, I argued, amounted to a ban on all physics experiments involving the production of novel physical situations - as opposed to measuring existing phenomena. [...]
New University Education Model Needed by Carl Wieman
As knowledge and population grew, the apprentice model expanded into the university with an increasing number of students for each expert, in order to pass along information more efficiently. The lecture format predominant today began long ago, before the invention of the printing press, as an efficient way [...]
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