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More cosmology prizes
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The Balzan prize, worth 1,000,000 Swiss Francs, was just awarded to Andrew Lange and Paolo de Bernardis for their work as the original Principal Investigators of Boomerang, which, in 2000, produced the first high-resolution maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background and allowed a definitive measurement of the curvature of the Universe, in the sense of…
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Job Satisfaction
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Tom Lutz, “The Summer Next Time” – New York Times: On paper, the academic life looks great. As many as 15 weeks off in the summer, four in the winter, one in the spring, and then, usually, only three days a week on campus the rest of the time. Anybody who tells you this wasn’t…
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Xgau
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As predicted a few months ago, American rock ‘n’ roll critic Robert Christgau has been fired from the rapidly-decaying Village Voice. The Voice was the first of the “Alternative Newsweeklies”, with a strong lefty political stance mixed with arts coverage from the Beats to the hippies and the punks. Nowadays, the Voice is owned by…
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Quick update
Sorry I’ve been silent… here’s a quick update: I’m in Pasadena, California, working at JPL and Caltech on various tasks related to the Planck Surveyor Cosmic Microwave Background satellite, to be launched in a couple of years (which means “soon” in this game). I’m sure you’re waiting breathlessly to hear my commentary on such crucial…
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The Size of Planets, the Age of the Universe, the Ignorance of the Masses
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[This post is a bit long and diffuse… I may hack it up into bite-sized pieces later…] Just because my job has ‘astro’ in the title, doesn’t mean I know enough to comment on whether or not Pluto is a planet. And there’s plenty of other science-in-the-news… The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has decided that…
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Foo
So apparently this weekend Google, Nature, and O’Reilly Media are hosting a ‘Science Foo Camp‘ at Google’s Silicon Valley HQ. O’Reilly has held a few tech-oriented Foo Camps over the last few years, and apparently the list of invitees has always provoked some debate — if you’re not invited, you’re either not important enough, or…
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Sinuous Titanium & Big Iron
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I’m recently back from my vacation in Bilbao. Aside from the usual “getting away from it all”, the first highlight was the amazing pintxos–Basque tapas like squid-and-ink croquettes and piles of jamon iberico. With a full tummy, I could handle Frank Gehry’s spectacular Guggenheim Bilbao, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Sheathed…
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Vacation, all I ever wanted
OK, I’m off on vacation (holiday, as they call it in the UK). Lots of time to think, very little in front of a computer. Back in a week or so. In the meantime, congratulations to Janna and the other awardees, from the fqxi, who seem to have transcended their somewhat dubious funding source, and…
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Big brother, watching me (or vice versa?)
When I left for Trieste last week, I decided to leave some vital data with the UK government: the pattern of my irises. Now, when I enter the country, my eyes are scanned by a science-fiction-ish kiosk and I get through faster than those other less fortunate foreigners. But I’m the one with the data…
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Non-Gaussianity in Cosmology (on the Adriatic)
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I’m spending the week at the Workshop on Nongaussianity in Cosmology at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, just outside of Trieste, Italy. Just so you know I’m working hard, here’s the view from my room at the Adriatico Guest House that the ICTP runs: (More pictures here.) When I’ve got more time,…