I’ve moved on to the second of three academic writing projects I wanted to work on this summer (yes, I know I’m rapidly running out of summer…), which is a sort of review article on which I will be the only author. This creates an awkward situation in the introductory material, because it just feels […]
Category: Silliness
Quantum Politics
In the “ideas I wish I’d thought of first” file, the Canberra Times has an op-ed comparing politicians to quantum objects, because they seem to hold contradictory positions at the same time, and are impossible to pin down. It garbles the physics a little, and is very specific to Australia, though, so let’s see if […]
Quantitative Analysis of Bullshit in Physics Abstracts
Via Bee, we have the BlaBlaMeter, a website that purports to “unmask without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text.” Like Bee, I couldn’t resist throwing it some scientific text, but rather than pulling stuff off the arxiv, I went with the abstracts of the papers I published as a grad student, which I […]
Negotiations Break Down Again; Administration Warns of Possible Depression
(A white house, Niskayuna, NY) Negotiations stalled for the 125th consecutive minute, dashing early hopes that a compromise might be reached in the tense talks that have gripped this otherwise quiet suburban neighborhood. As the crisis enters its third hour, both sides reiterated their long-standing positions. “It’s 8:45pm, MythBusters is over, it’s time to go […]
Quantitative Comparisons Between Disciplines
As many a thoughtless person has observed when learning what I do for a living, physics is really hard. But you may have wondered just how much harder is physics than other subjects? Well, now, we have a quantitative answer: This is a shelf of books at the Burlington, MA Barnes and Noble, clearly showing […]
Poll: Incredibly Important Cultural Question
Prompted by this and this, among other things, one of the critical questions of the modern age: Harry Potter is a: Magic is a classical phenomenon, no matter what you may have heard, so you can choose one and only one option.
The Bat Diet: Live Longer Through General Relativity
A scientific theory hasn’t really arrived until the cynical and unscrupulous find a way to use it to extract money from the credulous and gullible. This has posed a significant obstacle for general relativity, dealing as it does with gravity, which requires really gigantic masses to produce measurable effects. That makes it a little difficult […]
Calendrical Innovation
Union operates on a trimester calendar, with three ten-week terms (September-November, January-March, April-June), rather than the two 14-15 week semesters used by most other colleges and universities. This has some advantages in terms of flexibility– even science and engineering students get to take terms abroad, which is harder to swing in a semester system– and […]
When Aliens Attack
As I have admitted previously, I have a fondness for tv shows about UFO’s, the loonier the better. So, when I learned that there was a show called When Aliens Attack airing last night on the National Geographic channel, I was all over that. I’m happy to report that it did not disappoint– it brought […]
The Physics of Finding Osama bin Laden (As Mis-Reported on NPR)
Over in Scientopia, Janet notes an interesting mis-statement from NPR, where Dina Temple-Raston said of the now-dead terrorist: [O]ne intelligence officials told us that nothing with an electron actually passed close to him, which in a way is one of the ways they actually caught him. As Janet notes, this would be quite a feat, […]