http://cosmicvariance.com Random samplings from a universe of ideas Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:46:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Happy Independence Day! Democracy Leonard Cohen It's coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It's coming from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/04/democracy/ The task was to predict how the popular vote in the 2008 Presidential Election would break down, expressed as Obama's fraction of the total votes that will go to Obama+McCain, and also to give a standard deviation. The winner will be the prediction whose Gaussian distribution function has the ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/03/prediction-contest-update/ President Bush signed into law Monday a bill that will provide $62.5M for high energy physics. At Fermilab this morning director Pier Oddone announced the end of plans for involuntary layoffs of some 140 employees at the lab. Any remaining funds, according to the language of the bill, ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/02/reprieve-for-fermilab-whither-iter/ This morning has me packing and preparing for a trip to England, to take part in the annual editorial board meeting of the New Journal of Physics and then to spend a few days visiting my family. A additional bonus is that a good friend of mine, a historian, will ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/02/a-historical-science/ You can learn a lot by reading scientific papers. For example, I've known for a while now that the Hubble parameter tells you how fast the universe is expanding -- it's the (conveniently normalized) first derivative of the scale factor, for you calculus-philes out there. The deceleration parameter ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/01/waiter-theres-a-derivative-in-my-cereal/ Over at Edge, they've posted a provocative article by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine: "The End of Theory -- Will the Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete?" We are certainly entering an age where experiments create giant datasets, often so unwieldy that we literally can't keep it ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/07/01/what-good-is-a-theory/ The Geostationary Banana Over Texas, that's what! Longtime readers will recall that we love the GBOT here at Cosmic Variance. What is not to love? Just the existence of the very concept holds out promise for a brighter future. Truly, it's projects like this that define ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/30/whats-yellow-hovers-and-is-in-the-midst-of-a-funding-crisis/ I've been glancing over with some enjoyment and much nostalgia a multi-part Science Course that The Guardian ran back in late April and early May. Created in association with Science Museum and split into seven parts, this is an attempt to provide, extremely briefly, a snapshot of human scientific knowledge. The ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/29/the-guardian-science-course/ Q: What do the following Army service decorations have in common? Army Distinguished Service Medal Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters Army Staff Identification Badge Meritorious Service Medal with six oak leaf clusters Army Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters Army Achievement Medal with one oak leaf cluster A: They have all ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/26/war-crimes/ It's fascinating to read the GLAST blog, written by Steve Ritz and featuring the exploits of everyone's favorite new gamma-ray observatory. Not that it's perfectly transparent -- it's full of breathless exclamations along the lines of "Very early this morning the LAT and GBM flight computers were powered on ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/26/is-the-lhc-too-busy-to-blog/ The struggle to definitively prove or disprove the existence of atheists has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Some have proposed the cosmological argument -- "many cosmologists seem to be atheists" -- while others have fallen back on the argument from design -- "without atheists, who would believers have to argue ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/25/do-atheists-exist/ Entertainment Weekly, clearly nostalgic for the orgy of millenarian list-making, has come up with a list of the 100 Greatest Books of the Last 25 Years. (They have the 100 Greatest Movies, too.) Here are the top 20: 1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006) 2. Harry Potter and ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/24/the-books-of-our-time/ George Carlin passed away Sunday afternoon. There's a place for respectful, good-faith argumentation between people who respectfully disagree -- but some good old-fashioned mockery is occasionally called for, as well. He told it like he saw it, that's for sure. http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/23/george-carlin-1937-2008/ Science, that is. No, this is not what I have in mind. Rather, this provocative statement -- the discoveries of science should be disturbing, they shouldn't simply provide gentle reassurance about our place in the universe -- is the conclusion reached by my latest Bloggingheads dialogue, with David ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/22/if-its-not-disturbing-youre-not-doing-it-right/ We've written on a number of occasions here (and elsewhere) about the importance of good, reliable science journalism. Now, writing in his Bad Science column in The Guardian, Ben Goldacre points to an extremely concrete reason, with important ramifications for society, to encourage quality science writing. There are all kinds of ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/21/another-argument-for-quality-science-journalism/ The Volokh Conspiracy is ruminating over why so many academics are hostile to some religions rather than others. Todd Zywicki cites data: According to a study by the Institute of Jewish and Community Research, 53% of professors have an unfavorable view of Evangelical Christians but only 3% have an unfavorable ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/20/academics-and-religions/ Modesty forbids me, but honesty compels me: my 15-month-old predictions for the 2008 Presidential elections have thus far been so spot-on, it's spooky. I know that many of you have clamored for us to drop the science stuff from our blog entirely, and just talk about politics and/or ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/19/presidential-prediction-contest/ September 29, 2007 was the happiest day of my life. But now my happiness is being undermined. Not by my lovely wife, but by all of these Californians who, starting today, are getting legally gay-married. How can we maintain our marital bliss when all around us other people are ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/17/vows/ When it comes to art (considered broadly, so as to include literature and various kinds of performance, not to mention a good bottle of wine) I am a radical subjectivist. If you like it, great; if you don't, that's your prerogative. There is no such thing as being ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/16/hidden-structures/ Here at Cosmic Variance we’ve been having a bit of an internal review of our comments policy and have decided to implement a few new guidelines. These are intended to improve the quality of the discussion, minimize any insulting or inappropriate behavior, and generally make the comments section a more ... http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/06/15/commenting-on-cosmic-variance/