Back from ScienceOnline ’09!

Posted on January 19, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Well, I’m back!  I haven’t been posting much since heading off to the conference, in spite of my best intentions.  Conference activities, both official and not, were entirely too distracting to get much done.

The sessions were quite enjoyable and informative, and very different from events at a ‘real’ science conference.  Audience participation is encouraged and, in fact, essential to the success of the sessions. I co-moderated a session with Brian of Laelaps and scicurious on the web and history of science, which I’ll mention in more detail in a coming post.

For me, though, the charm of any conference is meeting up with old friends and making new ones, and participating in interesting and productive discussions.  I got a chance to see again those folks I met last year at the Scienceblogs millionth comment party in NC, namely Coturnix, scicurious, Dave and Greta Munger, Kevin Zelnio, and Sciencewoman. (Greta suggested a really neat idea for a course assignment that I’ll have to try sometime.)

I also got to meet a number of people who I’ve interacted with only online, such as Blake Stacey, Brian Switek (and Mrs. Laelaps), and Greg Laden.  (I got Blake to sign my copy of his recently released novel, but I forgot to ask him to sign it to “eBay”.)

Finally, I met  a number of folks whose work I was previously unaware of, but which I will now be following: PalMD, Tom Levenson, Björn Brembs (and Diana), Katherine Haxton, Janet Stemwedel and Henry Gee.  PalMD pointed me to a really nice post he wrote on early resistance to innoculation, which was, contrary to today’s resistance, based on reason.

I’m surely forgetting people in the rush of posting, but it was great seeing everyone at the meeting, and I hope to see you again there next year!  I’ll be updating my blogroll with a lot of new additions later in the week.

I’ll say a few more things about the meeting over the next few days, namely on the session I co-moderated and on the Duke Lemur Center that a few of us visited.  In the meantime, though, before I forget: thanks to sci and Janet for the drinks!

Posted in Personal | 7 Comments

The Giant’s Shoulders #7 is up!

Posted on January 16, 2009 by skullsinthestars

The seventh edition of The Giant’s Shoulders is up at The Questionable Authority, with entries ranging from 1789 to 1971!  Many thanks to Mike for putting it together!

The next edition is scheduled for release on February 16th, at Greg Laden’s Blog.

Posted in General science, Science news | Leave a comment

Off to ScienceOnline ’09!

Posted on January 15, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I head out this afternoon to go to ScienceOnline ’09, the third annual science blogging conference held in NC:

I’ll be part of a panel discussing “The Web and the History of Science“, with excellent science bloggers scicurious and Laelaps.

If you’re going, I look forward to seeing you there!  If you’re not going, I’ll hopefully be posting thoughts on the meeting as it progresses — provided the internet at the hotel isn’t completely brought down by the furious amount of blogging going on!

Posted in Personal | 5 Comments

A double loss for cinema: Montalban and McGoohan

Posted on January 15, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Via Pharyngula, we learn that the last two days resulted in the loss of two of entertainment’s coolest actors: Patrick McGoohan died on Tuesday, while Ricardo Montalban died on Wednesday.

It is strangely appropriate for their deaths to more or less coincide, because McGoohan and Montalban were both well-known for the larger than life characters they played.  Patrick McGoohan became a cult celebrity for his role as Number Six in the classic television series The Prisoner (not to mention his major role in developing the series as a whole), while Montalban achieved fame/infamy for his role as Captain Kirk’s nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, in both the original Star Trek episode Space Seed as well as the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

It is worth mentioning that both actors had extensive careers which went beyond the iconic roles mentioned above (McGoohan would have been particularly irked to be seen solely as Number Six).  A few roles that struck me: McGoohan played another secret agent in the British spy series Danger Man, and had major roles in Ice Station Zebra, Escape From Alcatraz, Braveheart, and Silver Streak.  Montalban was the star of the unusual television series Fantasy Island, and did a wonderful job as the villain in the comedy The Naked Gun.

If the passing of any actor makes me think a bit more about my own mortality, it is the passing of these two.  Both played larger than life characters who, it seemed, would go on forever.  It’s hard to imagine that Number Six and Mister Roarke aren’t immortal!

Posted in Entertainment | 7 Comments

Faraday’s unified theory of… electricity? (1833)

Posted on January 13, 2009 by skullsinthestars

This is the second in a series of posts describing the researches of the super-experimentalist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) into electricity and magnetism.  In the first post of the series, I discussed his first paper on his electrical research, in which he demonstrated the effect now known as Faraday induction, in which a changing magnetic field can induce electrical currents.

Faraday was, in essence, one of the earliest physicists to actively seek a ‘unified theory‘ of nature, in which all forces of nature are expressed as different manifestations of a single fundamental force.  His discovery of induction was a necessary step in the unification of electricity and magnetism, and later work would demonstrate the link between light waves and magnetism (which we’ll come back to in a later post).

The research described in Faraday’s third paper, however, involves unification of a more elementary kind.  In this article, Faraday endeavors to eliminate all doubt concerning the idea that different sources of electricity are manifestations of the same fundamental force!

Continue reading →

Posted in History of science, Physics | 7 Comments

3 days until The Giant’s Shoulders #7!

Posted on January 12, 2009 by skullsinthestars

One more reminder: there are 3 days left until the deadline for the 7th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, to be held at The Questionable Authority.  Entries can be submitted through blogcarnival.com or directly to the host blog, as usual!  Let’s see a good crop of classic science blogging for the new year!

Posted in Science news | Leave a comment

World air traffic over 24 hours…

Posted on January 12, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I’ve been very busy with work, among other things (Fallout 3) over the past week or so, and haven’t had much time or energy to put together a coherent blog post.  In the meantime, I stumbled across this nifty video showing dynamically the flow of air traffic around the world  over a single day.  This certainly gives you a better feeling about why things get screwed up so easily when you travel by plane, doesn’t it?

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner

Posted on January 9, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Recently I started investigating the works of author Thomas M. Disch, a well-known horror author and generally remarkable fellow who committed suicide in 2008.  His book The M.D.: A Horror Story was one of the books I read in my younger days, and it has always stayed with me.

I was delighted and surprised to find that one of Disch’s early works was a novel about the classic television show The Prisoner!   Thomas M. Disch’s The Prisoner (1969) serves as a non-canonical sequel to the original series:

dischprisoner

The book is in a sense an ideal situation: if anyone could, or should, have recreated and extended the original series, it is Disch.

Continue reading →

Posted in Mystery/thriller, Weird fiction | 3 Comments

More travel…

Posted on January 5, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I’m heading out of town again today, for a work-related meeting.  I’m not enthusiastic, especially after the catastrophe which was my return trip from the holidays.

With that in mind, I see that Tom Tomorrow has relinked to one of his animations which is especially relevant:

It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

Posted in Personal, Silliness | Leave a comment

A little rant about that 2012 nonsense…

Posted on January 4, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Up until this week, I hadn’t been in a bookstore for a while.  I’m trying to save money, I have a backlogue of interesting books to read (and blog about), and I was expecting to get a number of books as Christmas gifts (which I did: thanks, all!).  I did get a Barnes & Noble gift card, though, and stopped to pick up a few things the other day.

I was appalled to see no less than three books prominently displayed at the front of the store discussing the year 2012. Why was I appalled, you ask?  Because the date has achieved special significance amongst new age types as a date which represents the end of the world. This belief originally comes, apparently, from the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, used by the ancient Maya.  2012 (in Mayan, anyway) represents the end of the ‘fourth age’ of creation in which men were created.

It shouldn’t take much effort to realize how absurd it is to believe in prophecy, let alone prophecy made by a civilization that couldn’t foresee its own collapse.  Nevertheless, the idea has gotten a lot of traction and will even be the focus of a disaster movie due out this year, ‘directed’ by Roland Emmerich.

There’s plenty to find annoying about spreading apocalypse propaganda, the worst of which is that such fear-mongering kills.

For my particular rant, however, I’d like to pick apart the blurbs on the back cover of one particular 2012 book, which illustrates the sloppy thinking and misleading statements made in apocalypse fantasies.

Continue reading →

Posted in ... the Hell? | 20 Comments