January 2006
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Four things
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Today’s internet meme has been passed to me by Gia, so, yep, more bloggy rubbish for you, and more about me than you wanted to know. Four jobs I’ve had: University Lecturer and Astrophysicist Bookstore clerk Book, comic and music reviewer for New City News Atmospheric chemistry researcher at GISS, whose director has an excellent…
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What enlightenment?
While I was out last night planning the overthrow of religion with my fellow amoral atheists, the BBC was broadcasting a documentary in which it presented a poll showing that nearly 40% of Britons thought Intelligent Design or Creationism is the best explanation of life on earth. So it appears that Britain, too, is being…
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Science Salaries
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Jupiter research has collated the salaries of scientists in the US. The median salary for “experienced astronomers” is $87K, and for “experienced physicists” it’s the whopping $106k. It would have been nice to see the differences between academic scientists and those working in industry within different fields (although I can’t imagine that there are too…
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Management, Money, Media
Wednesday was a busy day of politicking and schmoozing (as opposed to research and teaching, which is what I actually get paid to do). I spent the morning at a meeting reviewing the current status of developments for the Planck Surveyor satellite here in the UK (Planck will measure the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave…
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One Million Dollars
Remember the news a few weeks ago about “The Million Dollar Homepage” — brainchild of Alex Tew, a student in Nottingham? He sold tiny ads at $1 per pixel and filled a million pixels, and therefore his wallet. The bandwagon-jumping has started: The Homepage4Science has hundreds of thousands of pixels available for “Science Products and…
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Traffic
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In a response to the question “what are your fave science/tech bloggers,” this blog is listed, with the comment “astrophysics and bloggy rubbish.” I’m lumped in with my colleagues over at Cosmic Variance, among others, as having “too much politics at the level typical of blogs (i.e., shrill idiocy) or mindless propogation of the same…
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Science this week
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Start of a new term this past week, too busy to post much! So, a quick summary: A new collection of Science Blogs, sponsored by the revamped Science-as-lifestyle magazine Seed has gone live. In addition to PZ Myers’ wonderful and oft-cited evolution blog, Pharyngula, the site hosts blogs by cognitive scientists, physicists and science writers…
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Sublime to ridiculous
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Even the NY Times has picked up on George Galloway’s antics in the Celebrity Big Brother house (ironically presented on the same TV Channel as such highbrow fare as Richard Dawkins’ panegyric to atheism). Galloway, formerly Labour’s Glaswegian MP, now a London MP for (his own party) Respect, has always been one for extremes: lauding…
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“Freak chances of evolution in an indifferent cosmos”
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In a criticism of Richard Dawkins’ upcoming series, The Root of All Evil, attacking religion, Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting tries to find space leftover for, well, god: “It’s also right for religion to concede ground to science to explain natural processes; but at the same time, science has to concede that despite its huge advances…
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23 Short Films About the Leap Second
Today I was interviewed by Felicity Hickson, a student at London’s Royal College of Art, who is making a film about the leap-second that gave us all an extra second on New Year’s Eve. There have been 23 leap-seconds since 1972, and she’s searching for 23 scientists who will each use their own extra 23…
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