Angry Physics

I read a lot of politics and so when I see a link to the arXiv on a political blog, I had to do a double take. After all, I read a lot of physics as well. It feels a little strange, to tell you the truth. Anyway, glad to see the arXiv serve the broader community (neh, a broader impact :). Anyway, the political blog is at the TalkingPointsMemo (highly recommended reading) and if you don't want to click through, the arXiv paper is this one.

I'm aware that students can cheat with smartwatches, but wasn't aware of watches designed for cheating. Instructors may want to click through to the Amazon page to see what these look like.

And it's not just students being dishonest. I've had an archenemy in my department for a few years now and it's not pleasant. However, I could always step back and tell myself that he wasn't trying to hurt my career or enrich himself. He simply had a very different vision for what the department should be. Indeed, I think he had lost sight of what an academic should be.

But in a recent episode, I'm reminded of where the title for this blog comes from. The issue involved a personnel recommendation and, as usual, he was assigned to draft it (the committee would then have to approve it). He ignored what was discussed in committee (as per his usual), but he also saw fit to, at the very least, be very misleading. I would call it lying. This latter deception was surprising, but in the course of various emails trying to sway the committee members our way (him against me), he sends out an email similarly lying about the emails themselves.

I somehow find it surprising to find faculty act without basic integrity. And of course the fact that the paragraph in question is ultimately inconsequential just makes me even sadder about the whole situation. True to form though (the guy knows how to battle), when in the end he lost, he sends out an email praising the rewording as being better than his as if he hadn't just lost but instead succeeded in making the letter better!

The academic establishment in their ivory tower is trying to shove some
more of their pseudoscience down the throat of the public yet again.
For thirty years, a cabal of Caltech and MIT scientists have bilked the
US taxpayer of a billion tax dollars via yet another unnecessary governmental
agency, the National Science Foundation (where in the
Constitution does it say that the government should support basic science
research? If it's so valuable, the free market would support it). In order
to keep their jobs and their plush summer salaries flowing, these ``scientists''
are trying to convince the public that they've finally measured something.
But they've gone too far, claiming a huge signal that perfectly matches what
the numerical results predicted (if they were a bit smarter, they would have
made it a bit more different!). And the system they claim to see would have
been orbiting for hundreds of millions of years, and the second they turn
on LIGO they just happen to see these black holes merge? What a coincidence!

None other than the great scientist Albert Einstein showed that gravitational
waves don't exist! Yes, I know his paper showing this was rejected, but do you
know which publication this was? Physical Review! The very same publication
that is pushing LIGO's latest by publishing their ``detection'' as a Letter.
We need to investigate who's funding this journal. I wouldn't be surprised
to find a Soros or Bill Gates funneling cash their way.

The astute reader will notice the similarities between this gravitational
conspiracy and the whole global warming hoax. They're following the same
basic plan...put a slick looking graph (e.g. the hockey stick) out there,
argue a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and ask for more money. Let's all rise up
and call on our Congress to investigate and subpoena their emails. As mad
as you are reading about this, just think of all those poor, duped individuals
calling for a Nobel prize (of all things) for revealing a fundamental property
of nature and developing the technology for further discoveries. Hardly!
We need to put these people in jail for scientific fraud.

Update (03/02/16): As per Doug's comment, let me say explicitly this post was written in complete jest. I thought maybe it might produce some reactions one way or another, and so I monitored it for a while. When I saw no reaction for a week or so, I got busy and forgot about it.

A discussion of the complaints and motivations of those leaving academia in Slate. Not terribly convincing...when getting grant funding becomes too difficult, I dream of doing many other things, such as starting a hedge fund, finding a use for a swarm of tiny bots, studying energy storage methods (batteries, flywheels, etc), picking up a unicycle again and proficient enough to juggle on it, maybe trying to charge for photographic services on a very limited basis, and many other things that are not coming to me as of yet.

Funny video...spouses of physicists might enjoy.

A neat movie of zooming into a fractal. I must have zoned-out for a good five minutes while watching it.

I tend to make a game of minimizing fees with currency conversions, and so I tend to have lots of cash leftover in various world currencies. I feel a bit like a spy when preparing for another foreign trip going to my secret stash of money. Too bad that I only have a single passport and, horrors upon horrors, it's in my real name! In any case, the amounts are not significant (to me at least) but it does expose me a bit to valuation risk. Right I've lost quite a bit on my Euros (not counting my conversion-fee savings).

I've always been fascinated by music. I have a strong affinity for listening (with little ability in performing), but why? I've read some that evolution explains it, but never convincingly so. And why do I like some songs right away (e.g. ``Rude'') and others only upon many listenings or never at all. And the one-hit wonders...why don't they ever have another hit? What's the relationship of hits to songs I like? I mean that I generally like the hits, but I like some music that many have never heard of.

More than you ever wanted to know about the gunk that builds up in your eyes when you sleep.

I'm almost to the point of giving up on Japanese and Thai restaurants in North America. It seems that folks think "hey, why open yet another Chinese restaurant when I can open a Thai or Japanese restaurant and charge twice as much."

I saw a strap hanging from the back of a box truck while driving down the highway. It was frayed on the end. And so, as a scientist/physicist, I was curious about how it might have gotten that way. In particular, I figured it got frayed from being dragged along the road surface. However, the strap was clearly too short to reach the ground (by at least a couple feet). Do I, guided by "naturalness", invoke something along the lines of the Anthropic Principle and say the strap just happens to be the length it is...long enough for me to see it swinging, but not long enough for me to understand why its length is what it is?


Visualizing thunder...there's a movie but somewhere I had seen a pretty picture as well. Apparently, the thunder originates from the part of the lightning near the ground.

Pretty neat story of a device arising from NASA research saving lives in Nepal.

An interesting article in the NYT about two MIT-trained physicists central to the negotiations between the US and Iran.

• Despite the assertions of this piece in the Atlantic, it's not that hard to setup and run a mail server. I used to do so before my campus IT was finally successful in getting me not to. And I'm not much of an outlier.
  
• Interesting study of icicles in the NYT:
  
  
  They do not yet understand the physics of the ripple formations. But they have uncovered some strange facts. The spacing of the ripples doesn't seem to vary with different levels of impurities. "The ripples have a universal wavelength of exactly one centimeter, no matter what you do," Dr. Morris said. "That's the real mystery"
  
  
  
• I'm truly pissed with my colleagues on some committee related to dreaded outcomes assessment. Their ability to waste so much time on such trivial matters is not so surprising, but their lack of appreciation for science (even among some ostensible scientists) is astonishing and disappointing. And I suppose much of my anger is that I let myself invest a little time and allowed them to ensure it would be in vain.
  

If you pay US taxes, you might be interested in this piece from Salon about getting rid of their military academies (West Point, Naval, Air Force, and Coast Guard Academies). I had sort of drunk the Kool-Aid that these were worthwhile and produce good officers, and so it was, at the least, a very different perspective. And it's written by a full professor at one of these academies.

My last post mentioned Scott Aaronson's feelings on sexism and feminism, and now I find myself trying to find women to invite to a workshop I'm organizing. Partly it's sad how hard it is to come up with anyone, and partly I worry because sometimes I find myself thinking about whether some given candidate is attractive. Am I sexist for thinking about such a thing or am I a feminist because I admit to having such thoughts but try not to let them affect any decisions?

I've been absent quite a long time. I'd apologize if I felt like I owed you all anything :).

In case you've missed it, you might spend some time reading what Scott Aaronson has been saying about women and feminism. It's gotten a lot of attention. I'd start with his comment and then follow it with his follow-up post. Whatever you think of all that, if you have the stomach for a nice helping of bile, you might read this afterward (a comment points out the link and Scott has seen it).

I don't think I was as socially handicapped as Scott (at least when it came to finding mates), but his experiences certainly ring true. At first I wasn't sure how brave he was being, but then I recalled once asking a financial question in an online forum. I was very surprised both at the nastiness of the responses and at how much the nastiness affected me. I don't think I have terribly thin skin, but it took some time to just let the comments go.

This piece in The Economist doesn't sound correct to me. It describes a study of the citations achieved by physicists who move from one institution to another to evaluate whether more prestigious institutions inherently produce better research. I have no idea how the researchers may have controlled for the reasons and timing behind a move nor am I convinced that citations are a good pathway to an evaluation of the quality of research.

In any case however, I strongly suspect that success breeds success, regardless of institution.

This article doesn't quite match what I do all day, but it still might be of interest.

Scene: airline lounge; The view out the bountiful windows showing the setting sun as planes move silently around the tarmac.
Inside: 90% men mull about in ties and jackets; a few use the cell-phone self-importantly; The occasional family barges in. Alcohol is self-serve as are little bits of sandwiches.

I don't like jackets and I hate ties. I like to consider myself a graduate student even though those days are long gone. I'm still a sucker for free food and I prefer not to be on the phone. These folks here dress better than I, but perhaps none have as expensive a laptop nor as much time with family as I. They surely make more money than I. A very good wife, healthy if not always happy kids, and I research what has fascinated me since I was a little boy. At times, I very happy, even proud, of what I have (what I have earned).

But many physicists make more money than I, get invited to more workshops, produce more interesting research and they have families as well. I see a good talk and I want to be doing that research...to be the first to understand some cool new feature. I want people to assault me at the coffee breaks asking this or that about my research.

I don't think any of this is unhealthy, but it takes some work stabilizing these competing influences. Putting a check on any jealousy, figuring out which is more important, getting an important paper out before someone else, or seeing my child in some micro-achievement at a crowded, loud, and boring even at school...Being happy and content but yet with the drive it takes to find and answer interesting questions. They'll be calling my flight soon...anxious to return home, if only to hold my family for a few days until the next meeting.

I really like the ``Talking Points Memo" blog...though it's moved way beyond blog to a full-fledged news/analysis outlet. And so I'm happy to link to a discussion of academics and to what extent they do or should influence the real world. The discussion was kicked-off by a Kristoff column in the NYT and isn't really about the sciences. Nevertheless, folks here might find it interesting in terms of established people looking back on the paths they chose and their chosen paths (not always the same). I'm not providing much in the way of links, but things shouldn't be too hard to find.

As for Svik's request for more anger, I'll keep it in mind. The anger is surely there, but it can be hard to disguise the players appropriately.

The NYT covers the first tie in an Alpine Olympic event. The times are reported to the hundredths place, but the times are actually recorded with two more digits that were not identical for the two contestants. The tone of the article is almost like it's some conspiracy to cover up the last two digits...taking it on faith that a device which is ostensibly accurate to the ten-thousandths of a second will yield a measurement with that same accuracy despite all that is involved. It would have been nice to have a more informed discussion of why measurement uncertainty isn't so simple...perhaps elsewhere such a discussion occurs. I need to remind my students of this example.

Max Tegmark has an opinion piece in the Huffington Post arguing that the universe is not just described by mathematics, but is in fact purely mathematical. As such, it exists within some huge ensemble of other universes.

I find it rather light...in other words, not terribly convincing but giving us so little in the way of actual argument that there's little to say. I do wonder what it would take for one to construct some new, mathematical universe...can one just have a set of numbers? Do you need an operator?

Apparently, he's got a book to sell, but this piece doesn't prod me to look at it.

When I pointed out a strange acknowledgments section previously, I hadn't been aware that apparently such strangeness is common, according to an article in Slate.

Photos of large physics experiments.

Singh is coming out with a book on the math in "Simpsons." Did Homer find a counter-example to Fermat's Last Theorem? Does 3987 raised to the twelth power added to 4365 raised to the twelth power = 4472 raised to the twelth?

Bonus: I forgot to include a link to this interesting article in the NYT a few days ago about a tenured professor who got fired and arrested after Georgia Tech apparently got offended by his high-flying ways.

• In this interesting interview with George Clooney there's mention that his dog is named "Einstein."
  
• Laurie Anderson says farewell to Lou Reed in Rolling Stone and mentions regretting that she "never studied physics."
  
• A variety of business folk apparently studied physics in undergrad. Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk of Tesla (among other ventures), and a third...but I can't place him. Maybe a reader can trigger my memory?