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Vint Cerf
Went to see a talk at Imperial’s Department of Computing* by Vint Cerf, currently Google‘s “Chief internet evangelist.” But Cerf’s roots are deep in tech: at Stanford in the seventies he co-invented the TCP/IP protocol which controls how information moves around the internet. I discovered that this was mostly a Google recruiting talk for Imperial’s…
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NASA Science Decimated
The Bush administration has cut $3 billion from NASA’s science budget over the next five years, “postponing” (until who knows when) important science in favor of getting back to the moon (in more than twice the time it took to develop the program in the 60s) and then to Mars. This comes on the heels…
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Wine, blogs, the media and me
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Readers may remember the ongoing saga of my bottle of Stormhoek Wine: they gave bottles away to any UK blogger who asked for one, hoping that we would say something — anything — about their wine. I, unfortunately, lost my bottle, but they patiently sent me another. And another, after I kvetched about the lack…
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Gonzo Lama
Today is the anniversary of the death of Hunter Thompson. In commemoration, his wife is offering this picture, along with the quote, “At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards” — Dr Hunter S. Thompson (although, as pointed out in the comments, it’s not Hunter, but Hemmingway). Without his usual guns, pills…
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“I’m the guy who pulled the trigger”
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Dick Cheney, noted hunter, marksman and friend of the National Rifle Association, admitted today that it was his fault that he shot his friend, not that of the guy who received a face full of birdshot. Thanks, Mr. Vice President, for clearing that up. Update: The victim, Harry Whittington, has since come out of the…
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Dark Matter: Warm or Cold?
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This morning I woke to find that most of the UK media outlets (like the Guardian and the BBC) were carrying a story that astronomers, in particular a team lead by Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, had unlocked some of the secrets of Dark Matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up, we think,…
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You already know what I think
There’s no need to comment on: NASA says — and forces all of its public statements to say — that The Big Bang is just a “theory”. (But there’s no lack of opinion out there, at Cosmic Variance, Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, Balloon Juice, Stranger Fruit, Gary Farber, and Mark Kleiman…) The closure of the London…
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Four things
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Today’s internet meme has been passed to me by Gia, so, yep, more bloggy rubbish for you, and more about me than you wanted to know. Four jobs I’ve had: University Lecturer and Astrophysicist Bookstore clerk Book, comic and music reviewer for New City News Atmospheric chemistry researcher at GISS, whose director has an excellent…
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What enlightenment?
While I was out last night planning the overthrow of religion with my fellow amoral atheists, the BBC was broadcasting a documentary in which it presented a poll showing that nearly 40% of Britons thought Intelligent Design or Creationism is the best explanation of life on earth. So it appears that Britain, too, is being…
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Science Salaries
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Jupiter research has collated the salaries of scientists in the US. The median salary for “experienced astronomers” is $87K, and for “experienced physicists” it’s the whopping $106k. It would have been nice to see the differences between academic scientists and those working in industry within different fields (although I can’t imagine that there are too…
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