This is the Bush Administration’s war on science, I mean. There’s lots we don’t hear about, I’m sure, but there has been a new discussion ignited by an article in Nature yesterday. I found this article on Associated Press by Randolph E. Schmidt. Seems that there was a report being prepared at NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospherica Administration) about hurricanes:
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This may well be the best news I’ll ever give on this blog- if you love cats (like I do), and if you are allergic to them (like many are). It seems that the first commercially available hypoallergenic cat is now being shipped (or whatever you do to get new pets to customers). I learned from the journal Nature that […] Click to continue reading this post
Saturday afternoon, I spent a pleasant couple of hours in Burbank. You can step off the street into the Sidewalk Studio Theatre, and there you are… in one of the tiniest of theatre spaces just behind the door to the street. Who knew? The occasion was the reading of the … Click to continue reading this post
Well, before disappearing into a long session of thinking about some funny behaviour my strings are up to (more later) I’d like to do a quick report on the departmental colloquium that I went to just now. We had Gary Zank, the Director of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the UC system (he’s based out of UCR) give us a talk entitled: “Particle Acceleration in Cosmic Plasmas”, and it was quite fascinating (and very well presented).
It is all about the physics of cosmic rays […] Click to continue reading this post
Did you catch Clinton on the Daily Show last week? It was nice. Good humoured. Nice to hear him chat about his initiatives, and nice to hear him still with enough footwork to avoid the “will Hilary run?” questions artfully.
But did you catch him on the weekend, interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday? I did not, since I’ve largely given up on TV news and related programs. The signal to noise ratio is just terrible. But this was good! The news is running all around the web. Apparently he was full of fire in response to questions about the hunt for Bin Laden and others on his watch. Here’s part of a transcript […] Click to continue reading this post
These tiny tomatoes are a beautiful yellow. I’m actually more captivated by their shape, though. They remind me of the large yellow/orange butternut squashes an order of magnitude or more larger. I’m going to harvest these guys soon, but it is a bit sad, because they look so lovely on … Click to continue reading this post
Chile de Arbol: I love these little trees’ splash of colour. And of course, the products are very tasty! -cvj
On Friday and Saturday of next week (September 29th and 30th), the next Southern California Strings Seminar will be happening! It’s a regional meeting for people doing research in string theory and related topics, and as I’ve said before, I’d especially like to see more young people come out and … Click to continue reading this post
In more news from the battle to get action on Global Warming, from Reuters a short while ago: Billionaire Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson on Thursday committed an estimated $3 billion over the next 10 years, or all of the profits from his airline and rail businesses, to combating global … Click to continue reading this post
So I think maybe I died and went to cvj heaven. Let me explain. I mentioned to you a while ago the freshman seminar entitled “The Art and Science of Seeing and the Seeing and Science of Art”, for which there was an enrollment snafu. Well, […] Click to continue reading this post
When the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kevin Nobloch, spoke to an audience at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies earlier this year (July) on the subject of Global Warming, he very much emphasized the initiative of individual states as a means by which progress can be made while the Federal Government spins its tires, and does all that it does to suppress supporting scientific information. He did a very good job of talking about the spectrum of effects that global warming has on individual states, and the spectrum of activities that individual states can […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, I snapped this shot of this awfully cool woman while I waited at the lights…. … and then as I cycled by on my own “funny-looking bike”, I waved to her and yelled “nice wheels!” (since “nice bike!” would be inappropriate, and “nice trike!” sounds like she’s a 5 … Click to continue reading this post
There’s a lovely new book (or it sounds that way) out on Darwin. It’s a biography by David Quammen, called “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution”. There was a very nice radio piece on it on NPR’s Morning Edition, on the segment by Robert Krulwich, with an interview with the author. I recommend it, as it is a very pleasant conversation that does not dumb everything down, for a change. From the […] Click to continue reading this post
Well… yikes! Remember my article on the New Yorker piece on the Fields Medal, the Poincare Conjecture, and the mathematicians Perelman and Yau? Remember that I said:
I cannot comment upon whether the hero of the story (Grigory Perelman) is as heroic as painted, or whether the villian of the piece (Shing-Tung Yau) is really as villainous. The anecdotes that are used to do the painting may well be able to be supplemented by other anecdotes that tell another story, as is sometimes the case. I simply don’t know.
Well, it seems that Yau is quite sure that it is not going to stop there. There was a letter sent to the New Yorker and the authors of the article (apparently) on his behalf by legal counsel. It is discussed and can be found on a web page under Yau’s name. The page is in the form of a press release, and I quote: […] Click to continue reading this post
Today, the National Academies released their long awaited report on the potential of women scientists and engineers in academia. The title is “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering”, and it can be obtained here. This is a hugely important topic, and they seem to have done quite an extensive amount of work on this. Here are some quotes from the press release, and then I’ll make some comments of my own at the end:
“Women are capable of contributing more to the nation’s science and engineering research enterprise, but bias and outmoded practices governing academic success impede their progress almost every step of the way,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. “Fundamental changes in the culture and opportunities at America’s research universities are urgently needed. The United States should enhance its talent pool by making the most of its entire population.”
Much the same can be said (and has been said in, e.g., my earlier blog posts on CV) about the largely untapped talent pool of minorities in general, of course. Quoting further [ … ] Click to continue reading this post
