Star Stryder

Archive for August, 2008

Aug 30th, 2008
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Dragon*Con: Day 2

The PodSci panel just finished, and now Phil Plait is giving a talk based on his new book “Death from the Skies” (coming in October - it rocks, I read an pre-print). The room is utterly packed - people are lining the rows and James Randi is sitting in the front row taking it all [...]

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Aug 30th, 2008
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Dragon*Con: Day 1

OMG
That is sufficient to describe the day I had. I just left the Podcaster’s party where I got to meet, greet, and unfortunately drink too much (again). I met Michael Shermer for the first time, and the Evil Genius, who was one of the first podcasters I listened to regularly. At one point the Evil [...]

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Aug 29th, 2008
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Dragon*Con, Day 0

I’m debating posting my adventures to Astronomy Cast Live.
I haven’t decided yet.
What I have decided is it’s going to be a great convention. I get to spend 4 days talking sciene to science fiction, fantasy fiction and science geeks. This is a fun audience, and I get to talk on fun topics like the Big [...]

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Aug 27th, 2008
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Dragon*Con, T minus Two Days and Counting!

Dragon*Con is descending and I need to go pack so this will be brief.
I get in late Thursday night and am looking forward to hanging with the Bad Astronomer and the Skepticallity crew. There will also be a table just for the International Year of Astronomy! Check us out over in the Marriot.
Want to find [...]

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Aug 27th, 2008
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GLAST = Fermi, Another Chicago Prof becomes a Space Telescope

As you may have heard by now, the Gamma-ray Large Area Synoptic Telescope has been renamed from GLAST to Fermi, as in Enrico Fermi (1938 Nobel Prize Winner). This simple act appears to have brought both the NASA and Sonoma websites to all but a halt, but as of 10:30pm Tuesday, they both still say [...]

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Aug 25th, 2008
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Science as Collaboration

I’m sure I’ve spoken on this before, and I’m sure I’ll speak on this again. Science is an act of collaboration. While there are the lone geniuses among us out there making independent breakthroughs in mathematics and thought, these brilliant minds would be nothing if there wasn’t a community to hear their theories, run with [...]

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Aug 25th, 2008
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Let it Begin (again)

Monday is the first day of a new semester. I’ll be teaching just one class this semester (the rest of my time is going to IYA), second semester calculus based physics for Scientists and Engineers. This will be my first time teaching this course, although I’ve taught the algebra-based version several times. At this stage [...]

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Aug 24th, 2008
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Blue Collar Scientist, You’re still my Twitter Friend

I just logged into twitter through it’s actual website so I could edit who I was following. Scanning down the list of names I saw the friendly, sunglass wearing face of BlueCollarSci. My heart stopped for a moment. In real life BlueCollarSci was Jeff Medkeff, an astronomer (he called himself an amateur, I’d argue with [...]

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Aug 17th, 2008
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Anecdotal Evidence versus Statistics

One of the running jokes in physics/astronomy departments is that astronomers consider 4 instances of anything as statistically significant. In fact, the story goes, two points is enough to define a trend, and 1 is enough to form a theory.
Take for instance our solar system. Up until 1995 it was the only one with a [...]

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Aug 16th, 2008
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SDSS Live!

Chris Lintott is currently up in Chicago at a meeting on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Check out his live coverage on Astronomy Cast Live!

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