Bradley Steffens’ Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist

Posted on March 27, 2008 by skullsinthestars

A few weeks ago I did a post on the camera obscura and noted that the earliest researcher to really understand its properties was the middle-eastern scientist Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040), who in spite of his impressive achievements is rarely discussed by the physics community (including myself in that group).  The post caught the attention of Bradley Steffens, who has recently written a short book on the scientist, and now that I’ve read it, I thought I’d recommend it!

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Posted in General science | 7 Comments

Wednesday catblogging: Intrepid Eleanor!

Posted on March 26, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I just had to post about Eleanor, my semi-adopted stray cat.  When I arrived back late last night from my trip, she was waiting at the front door for me, wanting to be let in.  Of course, I let her in, and she took up her usual spot on my guest bed, purring madly.

The next morning, I went in to find her, and called out her name.  Usually she comes right away, but this time I heard a muffled ‘meow’, but no cat!  I peeked under the bed several times, but couldn’t spot her amongst the clutter.  I circled the bed several times, scratching my head, until I noticed the bulge underneath the comforter.  I lifted up the end carefully, and found…

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Posted in Animals | Tagged | 2 Comments

PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins: a lesson in ‘framing’

Posted on March 25, 2008 by skullsinthestars

The blogs are all abuzz with a recent kerfuffle amongst PZ Myers of Pharyngula and Matt Nisbet of Framing Science. For those who haven’t been following it, a brief summary follows: PZ was ‘expelled’ from the soon-to-be-released creationist claptrap Expelled. The irony of someone being barred from a movie that pretends that creationists suffer such treatment was lost on no one, and the story has been significant news over the past few days, appearing in The New York Times and even appearing briefly on the news bar at the IMDB! A further irony is the fact that Richard Dawkins, even more prominent atheist and biologist, went right in to see the show.

Matt Nisbet started the kerfuffle (it’s a word – look it up – I have no idea how I knew it) by suggesting that Myers and Dawkins are very poor spokespeople in the battle between creationists and scientists, presumably because they’re unappealing atheists, and that they should be quiet. To quote,

If Dawkins and PZ really care about countering the message of The Expelled camp, they need to play the role of Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro and so many other political operatives who through misstatements and polarizing rhetoric have ended up being liabilities to the causes and campaigns that they support. Lay low and let others do the talking.

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A shout-out to some excellent horror publishers

Posted on March 25, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Before I started writing this blog, I hadn’t actively hunted down new (and old) horror for some time. Older works were very hard to find and new books were often… lacking, to put it politely. I’ll have a rant about the latter point in a few days but as far as for former: there are some excellent publishers out there printing things that have been lost or unpublished for decades, and in some cases the works were clearly a labor of love. Below the fold, I give a brief ‘shout-out’ to three publishers whose efforts have made recent years a sort of ‘golden age’ for researching and studying pulp fantasy and horror:

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Posted in Fantasy fiction, Horror | 10 Comments

Bloggin’ at the Airport…

Posted on March 25, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Ugh. I’m waiting in an Ohio airport for a flight home. I just finished giving a talk on my research, which seemed to go over well – lots of questions and lots of compliments afterwards. This will be a less-than-24-hour stay; hopefully, I’ll be blogging more interesting stuff come tomorrow.

In the meantime, below the fold is a grainy, cell phone picture I took of a hawk. I was heading into the building for the next session when I noticed a lady photographing the bird. It was resting on a low-hanging branch, no more than ten feet from us. I think that’s the closest I’ve been to a wild hawk in my life. Lovely bird:

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Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

David Morrell’s Creepers

Posted on March 24, 2008 by skullsinthestars

David Morrell is a name which is almost synonymous with ‘thriller’.  His first novel, First Blood, spawned the character of John Rambo and gave Sylvester Stallone something to do on and off for twenty-five years.  Morrell also has written books that straddle the thin line between thriller and horror, and I recently read one of them, the 2005 novel Creepers.

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Posted in Horror | Leave a comment

Concert report: Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm

Posted on March 23, 2008 by skullsinthestars

The girlfriend and I spent the weekend in Atlanta to catch Jonathan Coulton in concert.  The internet sensation responsible for Code Monkey and Re: Your Brains put on an excellent show, and even though the auditorium wasn’t filled, the audience was wild and enthusiastic.  My favorite part was Coulton using the audience to provide a ‘zombie chorus’ for Re: Your Brains, and I joined in as best (or, more accurately, worst) I could.

One of the most pleasant surprises of the show was the opening act: Paul and Storm.  This comedic musical duo warmed up the crowd with a collection of silly and very funny short tunes.  They also seemed completely undaunted that most of the audience had never heard of them before!  (Hopefully that will change.)

Coulton joined Paul and Storm for a song, and P & S joined Coulton for quite a few.

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Posted in Entertainment | 1 Comment

A better economy in 2009?

Posted on March 21, 2008 by skullsinthestars

This made me laugh: CNN’s headline right now is “Americans confident in 2009 turnaround”, at least as far as the economy is concerned. The first thing that came to mind for me: what’s the one thing that absolutely must change in 2009? This is what I came up with…

P.S. The Girlfriend and I are going to be going to a concert this weekend, so I probably will be posting light, if at all…

Posted in Silliness | Leave a comment

Relativity: Measuring the speed of light

Posted on March 21, 2008 by skullsinthestars

When I was an undergraduate, one of my professors told the following funny (and probably apocryphal) anecdote (recalled from memory):

A court case was being tried in New Mexico. A group of pornographers were charged with smuggling pornography from Mexico by projecting it across the border to a camera. The defense argued that nothing physical was transported, and in the end the argument boiled down to this: if light moved at a finite speed, the films were being transported; if it moved at infinite speed, the defense was correct. A physicist was brought in to discuss the speed of light but, after a number of figures were presented, the judge interrupted. “When I put my hands over my eyes, the light stops coming immediately, and when I move my hands, it reappears instantly. The speed of light is infinite – the defendants are not guilty!”

The reason I suspect this story is apocryphal is that science has accepted that the speed of light is finite – albeit very large – for centuries. The value, usually denoted c, is approximately c = 3\times 10^8 meters/second, or 186,282 miles/second. In fact, as we will see in later posts, light is the fastest thing in the universe. The topics we address in this post: a brief history of measuring the speed of light, and how these measurements led inexorably to Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

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Posted in Optics, Physics, Relativity | 20 Comments

Happy birthday to Patrick McGoohan!

Posted on March 19, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Through watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I’ve learned that today is Patrick McGoohan’s birthday!  If you don’t know McGoohan, you should: he was the star and one of the driving forces behind The Prisoner television series, arguably the best and most challenging television series in history.  The Prisoner is a series about a retired secret agent (“Number 6”) struggling to maintain his identity after being abducted to a mysterious prison for spies called “The Village.”  Before The Prisoner, McGoohan played agent John Drake in the Bond-esque spy thriller Danger Man aka Secret Agent Man (I can play and sing a pretty darn good Secret Agent Man theme).  He has also appeared in countless other movies, notably (to me, at least) as the warden in Escape From Alcatraz, sinister art dealer Roger Devereau in the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy Silver Streak, and King Edward I in Braveheart.

Happy birthday to Patrick McGoohan!  Be seeing you!

Posted in Entertainment | 2 Comments