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Mike Pearson, mutecypher.
Category Archives: physics
The Curve of Heaven
From Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale “A bridge,” he proclaimed, “is a very special thing. Haven’t you seen how delicate they are in relation to their size? They soar like birds; they extend and embody our finest efforts; and they utilize … Continue reading
Posted in Musings, physics
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Albert Michelson, billiards player and Nobel Prize winner
Norman Maclean, of A River Runs Through It fame, has a recollection of the physicist Albert Michelson here. Maclean was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago when Michelson was near the end of his career. Low key and thoughtful, … Continue reading
Posted in physics
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Physicists: As Bulletproof in This Economy as Government Employees
Peter Woit, of Not Even Wrong blog and book fame, (if you think YOU hate String Theory…) has a post today about the job market for particle theory physicists. As expected, the number of tenure track positions are down. He … Continue reading
Datanauts, Man Your Analyses!
Or why I love the internet. Iowahawk has a very good walk-through of regression analysis as applied to climate data – with a detailed how-to for using real NOAA data and creating/replicating some of the temperature graphs in various research … Continue reading
We’re Too Busy Telling You The Sky is Burning To Check Actual Data Integrity
In early November of this year, NASA/GISS released a statement that this October had been the warmest October on record. From Jerry Pournelle’s website, a link to an article in the UK Telegraph describing how this claim was based on … Continue reading
Only Watch This If You Are Comfortable With Your Nerdhood
The Bohr-Einstein debates on the underpinnings of QM – as enacted by dog puppets. Paul Ehrenfest is a hedgehog and Dirac (my favorite mathematical physicist) is an elephant. Silly and well done. I give it 4 stars. “It would be … Continue reading
Climate Update
Scientific American has a response to the leaked CRU emails and whatever doubt they may cast upon AGW. I have to confess that I stopped reading SciAm in the early ’00’s when they changed to a new editor who seemed … Continue reading
BS^4
There’s an old saying among scientists that “you have bullsh**, bullsh** squared, then cosmology.” Now we know what bullsh** to the fourth power is: Theories about why the Large Hadron Collider is having some startup issues. Both of the authors … Continue reading
Wiki for Academic Blogs
Via Terrence Tao, here is a wiki to a substantial number of academic blogs organized by subject, and by University. No entries for Caltech! I’ve examined the astronomy, math, and the physics entries – there are lot of blogs I … Continue reading
The Sun Rises, and Also Rises, and Rises Again
Here is an intriguing photo at Astronomy Picture of the Day that purports to be a “true” optical illusion of 3 concurrent images of the sun rising over Gdansk Bay in Poland. I don’t know enough to determine if this … Continue reading
