Close-packed volleyball helps: After a long day of a two and a half hour long administrative meeting followed by then locking myself away in my office from lunchtime to picnic time to calculate away (with frustratingly mixed results… sigh…), it was fun to play with the other physicists, their partners, … Click to continue reading this post
So it was all quiet in the Aspen Center for Physics offices. Why? Tuesday family picnic outside…! Was it quiet out there? No! There were science experiments with the food of course! How did they get the diet cokes to erupt like that? The instigator of this was Phenomenologist Josh … Click to continue reading this post
You know, I’ve been calculating all day (and oooohhhh, what a calculation. I shall try to tell you about it sometime) and so when I did the previous post about that comic strip, and pointed to the site, I did not actually look through the site for more examples. Luckily, … Click to continue reading this post
From this comic strip: Spotted at Pharyngula. -cvj
People are excited about ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. You can just grow the basic sources needed as grain, for example. Can this solve all of our problems? Careful now: Do you know how much grain it takes to make the ethanol needed to fill up the 25 gallon … Click to continue reading this post
Here is my report on how the challenge was met. Well, we started shortly after 5:00pm. About 14 people were present, which was fun since everybody rotated in periorically, to give everyone a touch of the ball. This was welcome rest for the people who rotated out as well. Remember … Click to continue reading this post
A commenter, Edward Hessler, asked for a bit of explanation about what the difference is between a phenomenologist and a more “formal” theorist, since I recently mentioned some of us overlapping during workshops at the Aspen Center for Physics. I offered this (see below) as a starter explanation. (Feel free … Click to continue reading this post
What is this? It’s whale song, obviously! Not so obvious? Ok, let’s take a step back. You’ve heard whale song, no doubt. Either in the context of movies, a cheesy movement a decade ago of adding clips of them to pop and rock songs, wildlife documentaries, and so forth. It’s … Click to continue reading this post
Place yer bets, folks! Here at Aspen, there’s a one week overlap between the workshop with mostly string theorists: “String Theory, Gauge Theory & Particle Physics” The workshop will focus on insights into particle physics and gauge theory dynamics from string theory. The proposed activities will concentrate on aspects of … Click to continue reading this post
There’s a post over on Arun’s Musings where he starts: If you look at Cosmic Variance or CVJ’s new blog, Asymptotia, you wouldn’t know that a couple of wars are on. In contrast, there is SusanG’s lament about a loss of innocence on dailykos.com. and continues: Which world do we … Click to continue reading this post
(Since I took the image from their site, and since they are making available lovely examples of the traditional puppets, I’ll make sure you can link to the punch and judy company I found.) There is a style of coverage of issues which the media in the UK uses a … Click to continue reading this post
Missing from the picture: $7.50 worth of long, colourful strands of flavoured pasta. I forgot them at the market stall at which I purchased them because I got into one of several conversations about the bike. Blast! I shall have to see if they remember me next week and believe … Click to continue reading this post
It’s late here at the Physics Center, and there is a hugely violent thunder and lightning storm outside. Good time to work. While wandering the corridors in thought….. spotted this and photographed it for your viewing pleasure: I did not pose this or anything. It was just standing there just … Click to continue reading this post
Just like last year, I can reveal to you several pictures of scientists of the now and of the future: That’s Marie E. Nielson (left), in grade 8, talking about her mathematics project on experiments with perfect numbers. More here. The California State Science fair took place again this year … Click to continue reading this post
For those of you who have been wondering, here are a few notes on various projects in the garden. You might recall (if you read my writings over on CV about a year ago on the subject) that I built a circulation system for the garden which drips water periodically … Click to continue reading this post
