Science
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Followups
Hunter Thompson: Rich Cohen’s Gonzo Nights recounts Thompson’s sad end, subsumed in the persona he created through drinking, drugs — and his words. For Women in Sciences, Slow Progress in Academia: Women applying for a postdoctoral fellowship had to be 2.5 times as productive to receive the same competence score as the average male applicant….…
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Einstein in the Midlands
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Just back from a few days at the University of Warwick (which is actually in Coventry, a city with a such a bad rep that they didn’t want to name the University after it), at the IOP‘s Physics 2005: a Century After Einstein (a bit more information on what I discussed here). An unexpected highlight…
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Science (and food) the world over
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I’m in the midst of four weeks which I’ll have spent mostly on the road, and as a working trip, it’s a good opportunity to discuss some of the science I’m doing, for a change. I spent last week at Lancaster University, at Origins 2005: The Origin of the Primordial Density Perturbation. Despite its location…
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Quote-Unquote (me)
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It must have been a slow news day, because I’m quoted in The Guardian: Scientists create ‘black holes’ on Earth, by Alok Jha. (Also, if you’re at Imperial‘s Blackett Lab today, you can see an excerpt on the plasma screen by the lifts.) The story is about a paper by Horatiu Nastase of Brown University,…
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Quote of the day
From the Times Higher Education Supplement: Brian Eno “said that art schools should model themselves on the physics department at Imperial College London. This would see art school academics lead projects with students as apprentices or co-workers.” Yes, that Brian Eno: “Mr Eno, 57, has produced five U2 albums and co-written three David Bowie albums.…
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Blinded by science?
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In honor of National Science Week, the UK Governmental Office of Science and Technology has commisioned this MORI poll from which we learn that the great British public approves of science and scientists. Never having really looked at an official poll before, I was amazed to find that the official publication (PDF) runs to 186…
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Einstein
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The New York Times had an article this week on the future of Physics, curiously posing the issue as The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome (by Dennis Overbye). Most striking was that every single one of the eight or so physicists interviewed for the article was an over-fifty male from the USA, Canada, or the UK,…
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Kyoto, day 1
Today, the Kyoto protocol on Climate Change comes into effect. It’s a start, albeit a meager one. As George Monbiot points out in the Guardian No one believes that this treaty alone – which commits 30 developed nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 4.8% – will solve the problem. It expires in 2012…
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Landscope
Jem Finer, aforementioned ringer, former Pogue, and artist-in-residence at the Oxford Astrophysics group, has created Landscope on the shores of Lough Neagh, near Belfast. Landscope is a radio telescope, a camera obscura, (neither of these are metaphors), and it is also the story of the residents of Lough Neagh: science, history, a work of art.…
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Art, Science and Poetry
The inscription on this beautiful thousand-year old plate in the Louvre reads, “The taste of science is bitter at first, but in the end sweeter than honey.” My apologies for the bad translation — I don’t read Arabic so I had to translate from the French: “La science, son goût est amer au début, mais…
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