Star Stryder

Archive for September, 2008

Sep 28th, 2008
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Rethinking the Magellanic Clouds

I have to admit, there is a soft spot in my heart for conference proceedings. Once upon a time, when you wanted to quickly dive into a new area of astronomy you went to the university or observatory library and searched out the ASP or IAU conference proceedings on the topic of your passion, and [...]

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Sep 18th, 2008
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Writing text with my voice

I’m playing with a bit of new technology. I’ve been doing so much typing lately that my wrists started to hurt. I love to write. I needed to find a solution, so I googled. Eventually I landed on some dictation software, MacSpeech. I’m attempting to write this blog post using that new software. I’ve [...]

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Sep 16th, 2008
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Talk at Michigan State tomorrow

Just a heads up on why I’ve gone quiet: Tomorrow I’m giving a talk at my alma mata, Michigan State University.
I’ll be talking about the International Year of Astronomy and focusing on New Media projects.
If you’re in the area and you can come, I’d love to see you Wednesday at 1:40PM in Room 1400 of [...]

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Sep 12th, 2008
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Q: Who killed the Star Formation? A: The AGN did it.

One of the neat things about being a professional astronomer is sometimes knowing the authors of neat papers. Submitted to the arXiv on Friday was one such neat paper with an author list full of people I respect from their work and 1 collaborator. So let’s just say this is all neat and move on [...]

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Sep 10th, 2008
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A Bit of Levity

In light of all my personal technical difficulties and the internets current cry of “The world is ending,” I decided that it was time for some levity.
Way back when I was at Michigan State University I had a website on Physics and Astronomy humor that then migrated to U-Texas, and now I share the link [...]

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Sep 7th, 2008
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Worst. Tech. Week. Ever.

For every good weekend, there is an equally bad one. Last weekend rocked. This one, um, did not.
Preface - My laptop is at the Apple Store being repaired. This means my computer with all my best toys is not available for use.
For those who have been following my twitter whining, here is the full story.
1) [...]

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Sep 6th, 2008
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NASA’s Manned Space Program; Dieing slowly?

The other day I had one of our first year graduate students ask me what I know about NASA. “I know some people on some of the science missions,” I said, and I asked him why he was asking. Truth be told, he, like so many other bright, athletic minds, wants to be an astronaut. [...]

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Sep 4th, 2008
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Ghosts are NOT Dark Matter

Just a quick one tonight.
At Dragon*Con (which I won’t mention again until next summer) some fascinatingly misguided person suggested that ghosts are made of Dark Matter. Dark matter is the missing 22% of the stuff the universe is made of. This is stuff - it is just stuff that doesn’t interact with the electromagnetic force [...]

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Sep 2nd, 2008
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Dragon*Con: There and back again

I’m home from Dragon*Con and I feel like I’ve popped out of the Rabbit Hole. The past 4 days were an amazing adventure. On one hand, I was in Atlanta in much the same way that I attend many conferences - I was a scientist with presentations to give and a booth to man. On [...]

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Sep 1st, 2008
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Dragon*Con: Day 3

I seem to be spending a ton of time hanging out with Skeptics at this conference. It is fun. But before getting into the serious, I’m going to be silly (thus the image at left).
I’ve been hanging out with (left to right) Richard Saunders and Phil Plait a lot, and here we are [...]

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