Miscellanea
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Bad Editing
The Astrophysical Journal has recently shifted publishers from the University of Chicago Press to the Institute of Physics. There seems to have been very little fuss in the process, but I was amused to notice this Erratum for the article “A Search for Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies on Arcminute Scales With Bolocam”: As a result…
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Ada Lovelace Day — Henrietta Leavitt
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Today is Ada Lovelace Day, “an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.” I — along with more than a thousand other people — have pledged to write about a female role model in technology. Ada Lovelace was Byron’s daughter and worked with computer pioneer Charles Babbage on his “Computing…
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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.…