Miscellanea
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Holiday Spirit
I’ve been asked by Katherine Blundell, a colleague in the Oxford Astronomy department, to spread this information about a chance to get a piece of astronomical history, and help a child in need. Please be generous! There is a one-off opportunity to buy vintage prints of the original photographic plates of the Palomar All-Sky Survey.…
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Travel Karma
I’ve just spent a quick 36 hours in Italy, taking the role of External Examiner for a PhD defense at SISSA in Italy. I was very happy indeed to “confer the degree of Doctor Philosophiae” on a very worthy young scientist. But getting to and from Trieste was less pleasant. It started promisingly. En route,…
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Blog life
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Welcome to anyone one led here from Physics World’s Blog life column. This is a blog — so comments are encouraged (or you could click on the advertisements)!
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“How did you know I was a new yorker?”
I spent the weekend in Oxford celebrating a friend’s landmark birthday, running around the town’s lovely Port Meadow and talking about the topology of the Universe. I planned to take the Oxford Tube bus service back to London. “excuse me, did you know we weren’t stopping when we all got on the bus? Why didn’t…
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Congratulations and be prosperous
新年快樂 Happy New Year of the Rat to all of the visitors landing here from Google, searching for “Gung hei fat choi“!
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Magazine article title of the year
“Ezra Pound — From Fascist to Fabulous” –Fine Books & Collections magazine
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Update
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Too busy for much blogging for the next few weeks. In the meantime: First, my grad students: Goodbye to one just finishing, hello to my new one, congratulations to the one who just transferred to official PhD-student status, and, finally, to the one staying on as a postdoc! I’m excited that I’m able to still…
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Yom Kippur
Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Jews are meant to fast (among other prohibitions), and spend the day in Temple, communally asking forgiveness for our sins. I’m a secular, atheist Jew. So why do I feel guilty for all of my meals yesterday? It’s not Pascal’s Wager; it’s not a lurking agnosticism.…
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Reasonable Demands for the Caped Crusader
Most of us male academics acknowledge that it’s hard being a female in the male-dominated world of physics, with our own academic sort of testosterone and structural prejudices. Imagine what it’s like as a superhero: [Via Bedazzled, which also points to a campy Batgirl trailer (not to mention an unrelated weird clip of Astrud Gilberto…
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Holy Cow
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I would like to think that the passing of one Scooter — Phil Rizzuto, Yankees Shortstop and broadcaster — was of greater cultural significance than the pardonning of the other one (since they didn’t manage to indict the likely mastermind behind the plot before he could resign. Probably not.
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