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A Champion of Change
Earlier this month I got an invitation to the White House. It was rather cryptic, asking me to attend an Event, today, followed by a reception in the Indian Treaty Room Regrettably, I had to decline, I...
View ArticleWeak Justifications
I am at a meeting at an undisclosed location, and concurrently the weak lensing folk are having a workshop on future surveys, so I am slumming at their sessions in my copious spare time. This morning...
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Cyber Wars: liveblog
Ok, straight from cosmology to cybersecurity: the Aspen Institute is running an “Aspen Security Forum” with several days of events. Tonight General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA is doing a forum...
View ArticleEU Science Slam
This is a public service announcement: the EU is running a FameLab like Science Slam EURAXESS Researcher in Motion Science Slam, sponsored by the European Commission. “If you are a researcher currently...
View ArticleIntroduction to Astrobiology
Last year EANA, the European Astrobiology Network Association put up a series of 18 introductory astrobiology video lectures constituting the AstroBiology Course Lectures: Introduction to Astrobiology...
View ArticleCargo Cult Administration
Many physical scientists learned of the curious phenomena of the Cargo Cult from Feynman’s commencement address at Caltech, as reproduced in his book, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!”. In the...
View ArticleThe Lights Are Going Out…
When it is darkest, men see the stars. This afternoon I needed to check something urgently, and as is my habit in this day and age, I jumped to a website where I knew the information was available. A...
View ArticleBolden Responds
“Text of Bolden Response to Wolf Letter Re Chinese Participation in Kepler Conference” – from spacepolicyonline.com >From: Bolden, Charles (HQ-AA000) >Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:20 PM...
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Augmented Reality Layar at AAS
An interesting new twist for the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society will be the “Augmented Reality” poster – an instantiation of the very rapidly growing augmented reality features...
View ArticleSo, You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 0: redux
What should a high school student do to get on a track to become an astrophysicist? Reworked from a rework from an oldie. Something prompted me to think it is time to lightly update and republish this...
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So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school, redux
So, now you’re at university, and you’re thinking about heading for grad school … A seasonal revisit of some old rumblings* *NB: this discussion should not be construed to be anything but hypothetical...
View ArticleSo, you want to be an astrophysicist? Part 1 redux.
You are at university. Do you like stars, and stuff? We revisit old ruminations on career paths ’cause it is topical… Another rehashed blast from the past. Should you do astronomy as an undergrad? (the...
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The Curl of Space
Imagine you were a very clever ant, living on a large log, floating in a big lake… BICEP2 at twilight …a very large, deep, cold lake. Being a not incurious, clever ant, you contemplate the lake in its...
View ArticleRocks falling from the sky
In the great tradition of tracking Amazing Norwegian Meteorite Stories, we bring you: Meteorite almost hits Norwegian skydiver h/t Stjörnufræðivefurinn Short Norwegian version…
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Hubble Plateaus
In times past we have lovingly tracked the proposal frenzy as the near annual Hubble Space Telescope proposal deadline approaches. As was noted by Julianne several years ago, and confirmed over the...
View ArticleBackreactions
A frightening fraction of my open tabs are some of Bee’s posts at Backreaction – so to save my browsers, I dump them here for further future perusal: Are irreproducible scientific results okay and just...
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Why Fortran Lives
Julia is a nifty new language being developed at MIT I stole this plot from github, it shows Julia’s current performance on some standard benchmarks compared to a number of favourite tools like Python,...
View ArticleThe Eeyores of Academia
“The wonderful thing about Tiggers Is Tiggers are wonderful things…” Tigger was my favourite on the Hundred Acre Campus. “…bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy Fun, fun, fun, fun, FUN!” Recently I was at a...
View ArticleNASA Astrophysics Senior Review 2014
Senior Review is out: summary – Swift #1, then NuStar. K2 gets partial funding. Spitzer is terminated. Panel recommends not cutting off the bottom but balancing fields. NASA Response to the 2014 Senior...
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