Angry Physics

• You can't be selfless. No matter what, it's always because you want to.
  
• You can't behave unnaturally. You are part of nature.
  
• You can't be busy. Ok, this is a bit more debatable than the others, but I basically always have stuff to do. If I take a break, I'm busy relaxing.
  

Other:

• Funny quote from Scott Aaronson:
  

  
  I'm telling you, if a giant asteroid were going to hit the earth in a week, the first question academics would ask would be how to beat out competing proposals for the "50ドル-million Deflection of Space-Based Objects" initiative at NSF.
  

  
  
• You know you travel too much when you forget which light switches match with which lights in your own home.
  
• Saw this in the NYTimes feed by George Johnson on Meta Physicists (I mention it only because I didn't see any of the usual 6' 5" suspects mention it).
  

• Cluster computing during an Earthquake? That's what Sun was testing with an interesting video about the results (notice that the test results are shown on Windows platforms, not a Sun operating system).
  
• Nice to hear some sane thoughts on a difference between Macs and Windows boxes...even if it concerns the rather mundane details of each of them deals with rendering fonts.
  
• There's been lots of talk lately about people pissing off judges. Not just the sheriff defying the judge in Paris Hilton's case, but also in the Scooter Libby case. I think this footnote he stuck in is brilliant, and, unless you've been reading Talking Points Memo as I've recommended, you've probably heard nothing of it.
  
• FSP gets asked "Didn't the senior co-authors read this thing?" concerning one of her submissions. I've asked the same question a number of times, but not about simple editing. No, I've challenged a couple of the ostensible leaders of a small field concerning overly general applications of simple theorems. I'm still left wondering if they're really as stupid as both their original manuscript and their responses indicate. I suppose they're just used to bullying referees or something. I'm comforted by two facts: (i) their papers didn't get accepted and (ii) they don't know who I am, but I know who they are.
  
• The Cavs are so outclassed. As the strange dude on ESPN says (paraphrasing) "The Cavs are a good team in the JV league that is the Eastern Conference." I like LeBron, but he needs help on defense and offense. It may be sacrilege to some, but MJ needed help as well.
  
• Federer lost and I'm happy. I don't really have anything against him, but I figure his rivalry with Nadal is best preserved if Nadal maintains his reign at the French Open. And oh yeah, though I hate to root against records being broken, I love Sampras so if Federer never wins it, it'll be tougher to say Federer is better than Sampras. And if anyone dares mention Agassi in the comments...
  

• You know those alumni magazines? I really don't understand the custom of including a spouse's alma mater. The chances that any readers went to that school are nearly nil, so presumably it's just some sort of pedigree sort of like saying "Joe Schmoe married Susan Aragon of the Cheshire Aragons." It bugs me. I wonder if I could sneak this by the editors:
  

  
  John Smith '84 is happy to announce his engagement to Susie Doe (York Middle School '06). The wedding is scheduled for Susie's 17 birthday in Kentucky.
  

  
  
• I'm looking to buy one of those universal power adapters for the airplane and am looking at iGo's Juice70. I'm no electrical engineer, but my notebook's power adapter is a 90 watt unit. In addition to the power adapter, I'm thinking I'd invest in a little plug adapter so that I can just bring this setup overseas without bringing the US power supply that came with the notebook. Is the 70 watt adapter going to be sufficient? For those non-physicists, you might be surprised at the general ignorance of any practical electrical knowledge among career physicists (not all, but some). For those engineers out there, the surprise is probably instead that I would even realize the adapters differ in different countries!
  
• Slashdot refers us to an interview with Guth and Turok about the Big Bang (Censor's note: "Big Bang Theory").
  
• I still haven't commented much on Rob's tenure woes. Once again, I don't have anything too deep to say, but I did want to comment on one issue that Rob raises. That is, the job market is very much non-liquid. That is, once you get a tenure-track job, it's not that you've broken through and can move around to a school which provides a good fit. This may seem obvious, but this makes for a fair amount of frustration. Of course, for those in their fifth postdoc not able to get a tenure-track position, there's probably not much sympathy.
  
• FSP talks about what it takes to succeed as a science professor:
  

  
  So, even if you're not brilliant: if you are smart, can get things done, and can think of new things to do, you've got most of what it takes to be a science professor.
  

  
  My experience suggests most (if not all) prospective physicists think themselves brilliant for some amount of time. That perception suffers increasing attacks as you progress out of high school. But I pretty much agree with her...it takes all kinds in physics, somewhat like a basketball team. It always helps to have a superstar but you also need the workhorses and the role players. Not necessarily brilliant physicists, but people who can get a job done.
  

• Lots of physics bloggers talking about Toyota's Prius lately...I just wanted to point out that the Prius is also notable for having lots of safety features: VSC (optional), tire pressure monitoring, etc. The latter I consider a safety feature not just because it might help avoid a dangerous blowout. But also if it helps you avoid being stuck on the road somewhere changing a tire, that helps with safety. I tried to convince my sister that getting her child a big SUV isn't necessarily the best path to safety for a variety of reasons, but reliability being one (to no avail of course..she bought a Volvo and was rewarded with the breaks going out a year later!).
  
• Speaking of cars, it seems that very often I find late-model cars with one brake light out in the rear. And it's always a domestic or European car. I'm sure there's some amount of my bias there, but it's hard to imagine that accounts for it all.
  
• If this works out as a way of producing hydrogen fuel it sure would be good news...the sad thing is that when I saw that it was from Purdue, I became dubious.
  
• A cute pic of a geeky car
  

Bonus: Slashdot is hosting a question about which careers math & science majors should pursue.

• NSF requires us to book our international flights on American carriers which often means a code-shared flight. So I do so, spending more taxpayer-funded grant money than I should, and what does it get me? Well, I can't book the seats until I show up at the airport. So I'm spending 50% more than I should to get service worse than if I booked directly. Let's us all pray that I get a good seat...if she's not too busy choosing sides in sporting events.
• I never liked Mathematica. I "grew-up" with Maple and just figured my DNA didn't go that way. Sure, Mathematica is just about the most unforgiving (and arguably least natural) syntax out there, I'm sure to folks in Illinois it makes some sense. But then there's their (site) licensing. Every year, Wolfram makes sure to remind you that productivity doesn't matter one lick when you need a quick answer and it won't run because the password is expired. Sure, we have paid for the license, but they make us enter these silly passwords. And no, no warnings that we might want to make sure to get our passwords soon or else we'll encounter this situation. It's so avoidable, but hey, their new and improved version has the periodic table included...oh boy!
  
• The topic de jour is tenure and the attainment thereof. I figure I'll post some thoughts eventually once they crystallize, but in the mean time, it gets me thinking about school administrators. Afterall, tenure decisions usually get input from one's dean and is ultimately made by some cabal of Vice President and Board. Anyway, I was going to say that they are one's enemy, not just in getting tenure but in your very survival. But really, as scientists, I suppose that's too lofty a role because ignorance is the enemy of research and teaching. No, administration (with all due respect to Dean Dad) is some lower evil force through which you must battle. The incessant sand whipping around you as you battle in the desert; the yucky mud as you travel through a swamp. You can't battle the administration, you slog through it. If you're good, really good, you use its energy against itself ala Tai Chi. But it takes time for such mastery.
  

Seems strange that Nasa would announce a press conference five days early but this might be interesting. Dark matter in a ring...not condensed into a sphere? Is it really the dark matter or is it just a small contribution (such a bunch of MACHO brown dwarfs which don't add up to the expected twenty something percent of the universe's dark matter?

I know everyone loves to read about politics on a physics blog. Well, either that or good travel stories. I have at the moment, what Colbert calls upon to begin his show, a big dose of "rage" (or ``rage" for all you LaTeX fans) at the moment.

If you don't read Talking Points Memo every once in a while, you're really missing out. Sure there's Daily Kos, Atrios, etc, but those are more like coaches constantly yelling and screaming on the sidelines. Josh (Micah...do I really need to add his middle name?) Marshall provides more a nuanced motivation. Kind of like the opening scenes of the generic revenge, action thriller in which the bad person/company kills the close relative of the protagonist. For Josh, it's less about liberals versus conservatives, and more about the everyman (everyperson) versus the hypocritical powers that be. The latest entries concern Bush's corruption of the DOJ details of which I have a hard time finding in newspapers.

As for the NBA playoffs, I was finally able to sit down and watch the last half hour of game six of the Rockets-Jazz series. Wow...it was like a time-warp back to the Stockton/Malone versus Clyde/Olajuwon, except both teams suck in comparison to the rest of the West (which says a lot about the East). Lots of flopping and picks by Utah, and a complete inability to close out the other team on the part of the Rockets.

One last thing regarding Imus. I had said that it was his job. Well, Don must be reading this blog because, sure enough, it looks like he's going to sue CBS for breach of contract. It turns out his contract had a clause for just this eventuality:

Company (CBS Radio) acknowledges that Artist's (Imus') services to be rendered hereunder are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial and personal character and that programs of the same general type and nature containing these components are desired by Company and are consistent with Company rules and policies.

• People keep asking me what I think of the whole Imus "incident." Well, I took no offense when he said what he said...I doubt that many of those actually listening at the time would be offended. Sure, they're horribly offensive words. But that's his job! I don't so much blame him...I wouldn't make my living that way...but people listen. It's the public airwaves he's using, but the FCC didn't fire him. When will Rush be fired? And what about Ann Coulter? And there probably are some liberals out there who say some horrible stuff as well though I can't seem to think of any. In short, big deal...well, perhaps the big deal is just that so many people want to listen to such garbage.
  
• If you can't describe what you do for a living in one sentence, I probably can't stand your job. If that one sentence reduces to something like "a {vice-president-type} of {buzzword} for {big company}," that's even worse.
  
• It's great that A-Rod is kicking butt just before (hopefully) going to another team. The Yankees suck...if they win, well they should with that payroll, and if they lose, then they really suck. Plus, what kind of people with no connection to NYC cheer for them?
  
• And the Heat are out of the playoffs to the lowly Bulls. I like Wade, but he's got lots of chances left in him. The classless hulk with whom he plays should retire. And why does CNN's Sports default web page show a box with today's regular season baseball schedule so that you have to click to find out what playooff basketball games are tonight?
  
• "Hilary or Obama?" is an oft heard question. I don't really care, but I'm sick of hearing that Obama is too young and inexperienced. Sure, the media mentions this all the time, but people actually believe it? Being cloistered in the Senate for a couple decades with lots of experience getting elected is going to make one a better President? Hardly. Having read some history books, valuing integrity, and knowing which advisors to trust and when makes a good President.
  
• Blogger has recently become a real pain...with any browser other than IE it doesn't let me login.
  

• Why do hotels provide bags for the ice bucket which never actually fit? Remember when we braved the bucket with no bag?
  
• Not bad for one year of work:
  

  
  James Simons, a 69-year-old publicity shy former math professor, uses complex computer-driven mathematical models to make bets on stocks, bonds and commodities, among other things.
  
  His earnings last year were 1ドル.7 billion.
  

  
  
• Watch out for very large foreign transaction fees on your credit card when going overseas.
  
• I'm still utterly amazed at the corruption of this Administration. Whom to blame? The individuals who act without integrity in their position? Or the people who continue to support them? I always wonder at a system where a misanthrope like myself is at the mercy of a general populace. I don't feel a strong need to convince people of my way of thinking, but it's just hard to believe how anyone could tolerate this level of pervasive corruption.
  
• No physics yet, so let me just comment that there's at least one string theorist not helping the cause. I've seen this person give better talks, but the latest was way too technical and uninteresting. I was ready to hear about the landscape as per the abstract, but that was only discussed in the last few minutes.
  

Awhile back Chad pissed off all those enamored folks of string theory (well at least some vocal ones). It was a silly joke, but he's really tossing some chum in the waters with this latest posting. Mind you, I'm not offended, I think it's hilarious and look forward to the comments. I especially liked this tweaking:

the entire history of human culture has been nothing more than a steady progression ... to the twin pinnacles of George Bush and string theory.

After all, all the Bush lovers I run into really can't get enough string theory. All the letters to the editor I see decrying how one in three aborted fetuses would have eventually cured some dreadful disease include a postscript describing their favor Calabi-Yao manifold!

What he leaves me wondering is, to which politician do experimentalists bow down? Al Sharpton, a true man of the people? No fence sitting folks!

Let A be the set of people who read this blog and B be the set of people who read Gizmodo, assuming that I am the only member of the intersection of these sets, let me refer the remainder to this relativity watch mentioned there. Act now, and you too can own an Einstein action figure.

There's a blog I read authored by a prof at MIT if I recall correctly. Somewhat eclectic, I got turned on to it by the guy's photography reviews. Well, he's got a very opinionated review of his new Infiniti, but what I particularly liked was his Bose bashing (my bolding):

Lexus went to Mark Levinson, makers of 100,000ドル home stereos that sound fantastic, for their premium sound system. Infiniti went to Bose, makers of a 300ドル table radio with a one-note bass. How does the fancy Bose stereo sound? Not too bad, but it still has that one-note bass. Instead of a big expensive subwoofer, the Bose system in the Infiniti M has a cheap mid-bass bump. Almost any kind of bass content will excite this mid-bass resonance. The theory behind this design, which has worked great for selling table radios, is that people who don't know anything about sound will be fooled into thinking that they are hearing deep bass.

I had a student sneak out during an in-class, group exercise to which she attached her name. I'm sure she thinks she's so smart that I didn't notice. The truth, however, is that I don't enjoy her presence in class and was happy to see her go. As to her grade, what do I care? Good riddance.

That's not to say I'll let any cheating pass without action. If the cheating hurts someone else's grade or hurts the morale of the class, I step in. If it's discrete and serves only to cheat the culprit (a bit cliche, but nevertheless true), I remain lazy.

Is that bad? I don't see how, but I still find myself wondering each time. I suppose if a student who would otherwise fail ends up passing because of cheating, that wouldn't be good. But that's never been the case in my experience. My experience is that people cheat to avoid work, not to boost their grade (perhaps at higher-stress schools, things are quite different?). I gave a take home physics test once, and many people clearly cheated off each other. I say "clearly" because a large group would have the same very wrong answer. If they cared much about their grade, they would have cheated using someone who actually knew the answer. No, they didn't search out such a person, but instead took the lazy path of copying from a classmate.

If so, then you might wonder what would happen if you tried to publish a paper with a glaring grammatical mistake in its title! Sure, we all make mistakes, but what are the chances a title would make it past all the authors, any referees, and, of course, the editors!

Just to be clear, "off" is a preposition as in "off a brane." It takes an object. The word "of" is also a preposition. The combination "off of a tense brane" is....not English?...an abomination?

Two preemptive arguments. (1) Yes, I make grammatical mistakes. I would guess that I have made none in any of my published titles (and probably all my unpublished ones as well). (2) There will be those who say "Oh, it's common usage just like 'for free' is technically wrong but is now accepted." To this I say that 'for free' is, at the least, a single instance of a mistake. To accept double prepositions as a rule, however, is a different matter entirely. Are we going to accept things like "I got on in the bus"?

And to be clear, I'm not just faulting the authors here. But, do you notice that one of the authors is from Oxford!

• Via Slashdot, an article on Google's involvement with huge data sets from the academic world (e.g. Hubble data).
  
  
• Clifford links to a very interesting read about a maladjusted physics ex-grad student who got mixed up with vandalizing one night and is suffering. I can see the justice system messing up cases such as these, but I would have hoped such would be corrected quickly.
  
  
• Speaking of the justice system, I'm still in a good mood from the Libby verdict and was happy to have a good read from one of the jury members at The Huffington Post...probably not a must read for most out there, but certainly one filled with some interesting tidbits both about the case and the behind scenes of an important trial.
  

• Where do high energy gamma rays crashing into the Earth come from? These guys say they come from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
  
  
• A somewhat silly article about how Hollywood handles the laws of physics.
  
  
• What to do about a shortage of science and math teachers? The answer to all problems apparently is money. Speaking of which, there are places in this country where I would make more as a high school science teacher than I do now (well, base salary that is).
  
  On a completely unrelated note, I'm in a good mood because of the Libby verdict yesterday. Nice to see the system work occasionally. I really hope history gets it right and that this period is rightly remembered as pure adulteration of what our country stands for.
  

One of the authors of "Freakonomics" suggests getting rid of tenure, at least for economics profs. These discussions pop up every so often, but I don't recall some of the more interesting points mentioned here. Basically, that schools could rid themselves of tenure, increase faculty salaries, and thereby kill two birds with one stone by attracting the best and dispensing with the worst.

I've seen some of the worst abusers of tenure, but I also see that it actually protects some appropriately. Part of the problem is that Universities are somewhat dysfunctional with power spread in a strange way among the faculty, administrators, the boards, and perhaps the state legislature, if public. The spread doesn't serve to check any one faction, but instead to politicize the whole process. [Insert Uncle Al's damnation of the whole higher ed system here]

And as to the issue of tenure in grades K-12, I really have no clue why it's there or how it got there. Boggles the mind, it does.

Anyway, I've worked hard for my tenure and I don't think I'll be given the option anytime soon of either keeping my tenure or getting more money per year. But as Dr. Seuss asks at the end of "What would you do?"

• These discussions on the blogosphere of inherent ability versus work ethic (oh, to have both!) such as at nanoscale views and CV, bring to mind my advice for college choice. As an undergraduate, there's not going to be lots of differences among good schools, state flagships included (Berkeley, UMich, UTexas, UVA, UNC, etc). *However*, that is to say there won't be much difference in terms of the quality of instruction, equipment, etc. The biggest difference will be among your fellow students. That's one reason many of these schools have honors programs. The better your peers, the more the instructor can expect of you, and that's important. Not only that, the environment you immerse yourselves is largely made up of your peers. I interview for my alma mater and they want to know whether the applicant would contribute to that environment. And one shouldn't just concern yourself with quality. If you're lucky enough to have the choice between Stanford and Harvard, there's no concern for which has better students. The issue then is the *type* of student the school attracts. I'm not that fond of those who go to Stanford. Yes it's a horrible generalization, but I've found people that go to Stanford are competitive, driven, and true believers in metrics (test scores, etc). Those that go to Harvard are more of a mix, usually a bit strange, not well rounded, but of course extremely talented in some way. So come all 'ye Googlers looking for school advice!
  
  
• I'm starting to have some faith that this "voting site" for arXiv.org will be worth something.
  
  
• Chad made me chuckle today with this quote about baseball (a sport which ranks with golf for watching, but which is otherwise fun to play):
  

  
  Back in the day, stat-wanking was mostly confined to baseball, which is so ridiculously boring that calculus seems like a fun way to spice things up.
  

  
  
  
• Oceanographers have it easy. They always get to put cool pictures of them in exotic locales into their talks. But I had never heard of this ship that literally flips itself vertical in the middle of the ocean. Gizmodo has a nice YouTube video for you.
  
  
• I just got a hold of the movie "Shut Up & Sing" about how those Dixie Chicks were so vulgar as to criticize our prez during a time of war. I really look forward to watching it.
  
  
• The problem with digital cameras is the same as a fundamental problem in quantum mechanics. Don't believe me? Try and take a spontaneous picture of a young kid these days. Once they see the camera, they rush over *behind* camera to see the LCD viewfinder! You're lucky to get one picture.
  

I saw this posting over at CV soon after it got posted and went back to read more of the comments. A very worthwhile read. To be sure, I wasn't sure how common such thoughts are. So many of us growup being the smartest kid around...that is until college. How we face up to being just one of many smart kids makes for interesting discussion.

It was so long ago, yet I think I'm still dealing with it now (I know, I know, it sounds pathetic). Just the other day I posted how I can get in a bad mood reading good work from "competitors." Am I among the top in my field? Or not? Should I content myself to be just one of many physicists contributing just a small piece to this global endeavor, try to make some ground-breaking discoverer at the risk of coming up empty-handed, or perhaps leave the field?

I am insecure about these things, going so far as to make somewhat ridiculous rationalization such as "Oh, that person is a postdoc so the pressure is on and s/he doesn't have to teach or attend faculty meetings." But, at least I'm not one of those jerks who tries to out talk others as if they know it all. I've been lucky to have good examples in grad school of famous & high powered theory people who, nevertheless, were down to Earth and could admit when they weren't getting something.

I'm not sure how much this Wired article on the disparity between young genius and late bloomers applies to the world of physics. I might know better if I could slog my way through the whole article. But I will take this opportunity to mention that I get in awful moods sometimes when I see a good paper out by a "competitor." I sometimes do feel like an "also ran"...I wonder what movie actors feel like. You make a movie, and then you wait to get another offer or script (unless you're real hot). Do you immediately have doubts? I used to get in a great mood when I started writing up a paper, only to feel bad once it was accepted (well a couple days later). And I'm not a real competitive person. I wonder if I could fully accept my rung on the totem, whether that would mean I'd get really lazy...is this competitive streak necessary to the self-discipline needed in academic research? Is there anything similar in industrial/commercial physics, or is it just "my salary is bigger than yours?" kind of rivalry?