Nobel Physicist and Rochester Alum to be Named Secretary of Energy

The story, from Physics Today News Picks

Steven Chu has an extensive and impressive resume, including earning his B.S. in physics at the University of Rochester in 1970.

(and he's a Missouri native)

Aside from the sweet connections I (sort of) have with him, the fact that President-elect Obama has chosen a brilliant physicist and administrator for this post is incredibly refreshing.

Obama and Science

Obama's general regard for science has become quite clear in recent weeks. You may have also seen this news item about raising the national visibility and respect for those doing basic research:

From the Washington Times

My hope is that the Obama administration reverses the apparent political trend to favor funding of development over pure research disproportionately. Andrew Revkin (added to blogroll) has been discussing this in his recent posts:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

Well this is awkward.

Emily Coswell (Smith) is was a writer for NOISE, the weekly entertainment tabloid put out by the Lansing State Journal. I've hated her writing for years, but whatever... I'm sure she has an audience.

She was recently laid off, along with three other writers for NOISE, one of whom surprised me--Christian Czerwinski, probably the only good writer they employed. He was usually pretty refreshing.

Anyway, in an attempt to sort out Emily Coswell's name change, I came across her last restaurant review for NOISE, published the same week she was laid off. In the comments section, someone posted a "critical" review of the column, on Friday, December 5th.

Obviously, this person didn't realize she had been laid off, but he or she proceeds to exclaim that Emily should be furiously fired. Oh boy. btw: why so mean to her?

Oh, and Emily has started up a new blog, where she posts items such as the facts that she was fired and that she is a talented writer. She also posted the same City Pulse article I linked to and says she told the reporter to plug her blog (they didn't). I guess I'm just nicer.

iusedtogetpaidforthis.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: The article to which she was referring had more information and had not been printed yet. It does link to her talent-filled blog. Here it is.

(click the image for larger version)

The Real Bill Ayers

The New York Times Op-Ed: The Real Bill Ayers
By Bill Ayers

Great Depression? Or.... The GREATEST Depression?

I got this loaf of freakin bread for 50 cents. FIFTY CENTS. It will last me for at least a couple weeks, as I can keep it quasi-fresh in the fridge.

It's not like it's that old... and they can't GIVE this stuff away (for more than 50 cents). I'm the smart one--gearing up for what lies ahead. Cheap ass old bread. This truly is our Greatest Depression.

I should probably share this before it turns to rock. If you want some, then come to me and form a line... a bread line, if you will.





















....too soon? (preemptive)

Hey dude from my high school gym class: Guess who else can't grow facial hair!

HuffingtonPost.com. Obama: "I Can't Grow Facial Hair."

Actually, come to think of it, it seems as though I can actually grow more facial hair than the President-elect. Below is a comparison of his mouth with mine last year when I grew all the hair I could, just for fun. Still, we are brothers in barrenness.

David Brooks: Bailout to Nowhere

David Brooks: Bailout to Nowhere

Jim Buffet is the President of Me.

Vote. I did.

So this didn't turn out well. It looks like I voted for Barrack Charma and Jim Buffet.

236.com: Eight Ways to Survive the Next Eight Days Without Losing Your Frigging Mind

From www.236.com: Eight Ways To Survive The Next Eight Days Without Losing Your Frigging Mind

Thank you to Hilary for sending this. As I told her, it's like they're inside my HEAD!

Add to this the fact that my office computer is torturously slow, and you have discovered the cause of my migraines and bruises.

Here is where I would put a subject that would be appropriate for this post, which is about something.

And here is where, as a blogger, I would put some witty comment about something somewhat relevant to this subject of these postings, followed by more witty healthcare banter about shoring up the economy while staring at jobs overseas as Canada flies in my airspace, as Canada is so wont to do.

Straw Poll

Apparently for FOX News Channel, fifteen people is a statistically significant sample size, especially if the pollster isn't looking at the results.

Oh, I figured out who was actually cheering when they denigrated community organizing at the RNC.

Presidential candidates answer questions on science policy.

Though neither major party nominee has agreed to participate in a debate devoted to issues of scientific policy, both have finally answered a series of fourteen questions posed by the organizers of the debate. Barack Obama sent his answers first, with John McCain following soon after.

Read the answers, side by side, here. Of particular interest is the "vision gap" between the two candidates when it comes to energy policy. I'll let you judge for yourself.

Let's get ready to live long and prosssperrrr

It's rainy here.

Since I think it's an idiotic distraction to focus on all the trivial shortcomings of Sarah Palin, I waited to post anything until there was a substantial piece of uncut gold for you to enjoy. I link to Wonkette because their description is, as always, hilarious.

Here Is Your Video Of Sarah Palin Not Knowing What The Bush Doctrine Is

Mom, this is why the BBQ was cold.

I went for a run yesterday on the Trolley Trail in Kansas City. I went from Brookside to the far edge of the park next to the Plaza and the JC Nichols fountain. During my run, I saw this beautiful sign. I went back today, after picking up some lunch, to shoot a picture.


I love this town. Sorry it made the BBQ cold, mom.


Said BBQ came from one of my favorite such restaurants in Kansas City: Oklahoma Joe's. Technically, this place is in Kansas, but it's so tasty and has the added charm of being located in a gas station that it makes up for being in the inferior state.


Normally I like to get the Z-Man both because it's freaking delicious and because I used to snicker at the name when I was first learning quantum mechanics. It is roast beef with melted provolone cheese and two onion rings on a kaiser bun. This time, however I opted to try something different--the Hog Heaven. This one's pulled pork with slices of sausage. I rounded out the meal with sides of fries and bbq beans. I'm feeling pretty healthy right now.

Adventures in Budget Cooking: Episode 2

So sometimes I have to eat something. Most of the time, that involves dealing with being out of the ingredients for known cohesive meals, but luckily I plan ahead for these times and stock mass quantities of staples. These staples don't look like much to the naked eye, but with my skills--and my ability to bike down to the garden for veggies--it becomes a feast.

Episode 2: Tomato and Basil and Chicken Vinaigrette a la Megan left chicken at my house.
Eaten: August 19, 2008.

There is a fantastic show on NPR called The Splendid Table. It airs Sunday afternoons in Michigan. Naturally, I am on the mailing list, and recently they sent out a recipe for a baked vinaigrette something-or-other with bread crumbs. I sat down to make this delicious meal and realized I didn't have all the ingredients I needed. This was a job for Adventures in Budget Cooking!

I gathered ...some... of the same ingredients. I had spaghetti in my pantry, along with (lucky me) a white wine vinegar that Hilary left at some point (she pretends it's accidental, but she just wants me to eat well). I mixed the vinegar with some olive oil for the vinaigrette. The previous night, Megan left some chicken at my house, and of course I had to eat it before she asked for it back. I threw on a nice cocktail of spices, which I believe included oregano, cumin, salt, and pepper. There were more, but this was a week ago. Come on people.

Then came the most important ingredients--those from the garden. I grabbed some of this nice zesty variety of basil we have growing, along with a bucketful of the literally hundreds of grape tomatoes that took over our garden this year. I keep meaning to take pictures of it to post here, but (A) I keep forgetting to take my camera with me and (B) it isn't working well, and I can only get about 3 pictures at a time and 10 per pair of batteries. The red ones in the photo are nice and sweet, and the bright orange ones are probably the best tomatoes you'll ever taste in your life. We have some tomatoes that are even smaller. We call them the pea tomatoes. Little runts. Anyway, this dish was freaking delicious, and I felt like a freaking genius afterward until I realized I stole all the ingredients from my friends and the recipe from Lynn Rossetto Kasper.

I found this really interesting paper online.

Scanning tunneling microscopy study of the CeTe3 charge density wave

or straight to pdf:
Scanning tunneling....

Adventures in Budget Cooking: Episode 1

So sometimes I have to eat something. Most of the time, that involves dealing with being out of the ingredients for known cohesive meals, but luckily I plan ahead for these times and stock mass quantities of staples. These staples don't look like much to the naked eye, but with my skills--and my ability to bike down to the garden for veggies--it becomes a feast.

Episode 1: Couscous a la Spicy Black Bean Burger
August 12, 2008.

The key to this delicious feast was the subtle tones of dill from my failing herb garden. This way, I didn't need the burden of figuring out how much dill to add--I just took a pinch off the only living dill plants.

I prepared the couscous from a large bucket of the stuff I got last winter. When you do this at home, sprinkle bits of random spice to add the illusion of flavor (I prefer curry!). Luckily, Hilary and I have enough grape tomatoes in our garden to feed a small village. I threw some of those on there for flavor and beauty. The swiss chard and standard tomato slices also came from the garden. I prepared the Spicy Black Bean burger from Morningstar Farms in the skillet, sliced up a carrot from the grocery store, and topped it all off with some mustard. It's all in the presentation, folks. I mean look at that mustard. This was quite delicious.

UPDATE: Actually, my herb garden is doing quite nicely. My attempt at humor was admittedly disrespectful of the dill weed :) And for the record, plain couscous is still delicious, but curry makes it better.

News Flash: Politicians Lie.

Though the Annenberg Political Fact Check has gotten a little overzealous over the past year or two, they do still post good hard analysis of many false and overstated claims by both presidential candidates. I often hear people around town or people I speak with repeating false accusations about policy (hey--at least they're actually paying attention to policy and not who is the bigger celebrity and why that somehow matters). I wish more people new about this neutral website.

One of the most infuriating events of the campaign season has been John McCain's outright lies about Obama's proposed tax policy. The Fact Check has a good summary of this B.S. (Bogus Stuff) right here.

And just to follow the fairness doctrine for once, I'll include a link to one of their stories on an Obama overstatement. I hope this appeases my conservative friends. (Like how I used a McCainism, my friends?)

Today, we are all Georgians.

Kites could provide electricity generation

From Physorg.com:

The kites, tethered to generators on the ground, use wind power to produce electricity.

How to begin a campaign appearance

Some moron was so obsessed with his AOL email account that he decided to defend rationality from the illusion of the terrorist threat of non-jingoism.



...Which is interesting because this guy has no plans to object to the way McCain begins his campaign appearances, which also do not open with the Pledge of Allegience. Here is one example:



Hey remember how we were so excited that we were finally going to really debate policy in this election? Yeah, that was cute.

Anthrax suspect: John Waters?

Is it just me or is there an eerie resemblance?

Dr. Horrible streaming online again for free.

So the whole internet event a couple weeks ago where we all gathered around our computer screens to watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog stream live was fun, but guess what: it's back online for free. Read the master plan at the official site www.drhorrible.com or for much more information, go to the fansite www.doctorhorrible.net

There are rumblings that for the DVD release you can submit your own video application to the Evil League of Evil. The top 10 submissions will appear on the DVD. Yes. That's happening.

Here's the whole thing. If you click on the video to go to the hulu site, you can watch it in full screen mode. If you watch it here, I don't think you can.

Nearly waterless washing machine

Read the article from physorg.com.

University Education

Here is an interesting article by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman:

New University Education Model Needed

This is really an introduction to a series to follow. He argues that the lecture model in university classrooms is inadequate because it fails to engage the students in critical thinking and other cognitive processes.

This is something I've noticed throughout my eight years (omgz) in higher education. As scientific knowledge and understanding become more important in everyday life as well as civic responsibility, non-science majors especially continue to disconnect in the lecture setting. At the University of Rochester, they have begun to overcome this problem with the workshop model. Rather than do homework sets alone or with classmates, students meet regularly with an instructor to work over challenging problems that lead thinking. This is in addition to regularly scheduled lectures where the professor introduced new concepts. The department of physics has invoked this in nearly every undergraduate course, and both as an instructor and student, I observed on many occasions how the information became clear during the workship sessions.

The contrast of this success with the huge lecture courses at Michigan State University is interesting. When the number of students enrolled in a single course reaches the 1,000 person benchmark, the workshop model isn't particularly feasible due to the limited number of qualified TAs and number of available classrooms at any given time. This is not to say it wouldn't work, but the already challenging prospect of reorganizing your physics education to fit a workshop model becomes even more difficult.

Wiesman goes beyond describing one solution, as I did, and speaks more to rethinking and reorganizing the education system. It's an interesting read.

...and the comments on that site are well-thought out and well-written. It's a miracle. What IS this site? I'm glad I found it.

House Finches in My Geraniums - Video of Feeding

Okay, so they're actually Hilary's geraniums, and the reason they're still here is because some house finches built a nest in them. Last week, the chicks hatched, and they have gotten big enough to see sticking their heads over the edge.

I'd been trying for a few days to catch the mother feeding them, when yesterday I finally did it. I almost got the father involved too--housh finch fathers typically help raise the chicks--but he flew away before I started recording. Here's the video:

One more: