Uncertain PrinciplesPhysics, Politics, and Pop CultureGreatest. Experiment. EVER.- January 12, 2006 Quite a while back, Clifford Johnson at Cosmic Variance had a post seeking nominations for "The Greatest Physics Paper Ever." Back after a long hiatus, he's now holding a vote among five finalists: Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, Albert Einstein's General Relativity, Emmy Noether's paper on symmetry and conservation laws, Dirac's theory of the electron, and the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen paper on quantum non-locality. (Newton's Principia Mathematica had a comfortable lead when I last..http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_08_principlearchive.php#113706673376355015 In Which I Sell Out to the Man- January 11, 2006 All right, here's the big news I've been hinting at: I'm shutting this blog down. Well, OK, I'm not really shutting down-- the site and the archives will remain exactly as they are. I just won't be doing my new blogging at Steelypips.org any more. I'm shifting the blog over to a new location, as part of the ScienceBlogs project run by Seed Magazine. The new address will be: http:scienceblogs.comprinciples Why am I doing this Well, they offered to pay me (a fairly trivial amount of money,...http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_08_principlearchive.php#113694714080730030 Read More Novels Month- January 10, 2006 I'm sort of marking time for a couple of days here, for reasons that will hopefully be explained soon. There are some interesting posts in the works, but I want to wait for a few more days. Of course, I need something to fill the time, and indirectly via Drink at Work, I find that Foma has the answer: National Just Read More Novels Month." I hereby, unilaterally and with no other authority that which I have granted myself, declare January to be National Just Read More Novels Month or...http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_08_principlearchive.php#113689739329023168 "Insert Allusion Here: Pithy Titles in Blogdom," Coming Soon From Oxford University Press- January 9, 2006 Scott Eric Kaufman finds himself in the odd position of defending pop-culture studies: Teaching students how to "read" the shows and films and music they fetishize should be among a teacher's first priority. When anti-intellectual critics complain about university professors teaching courses on contemporary rap I can't help but think "Isn't that the role of the intellectual Shouldn't we concentrate on the materials our students confront daily" While I've taken the occasional potshot at the.http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_08_principlearchive.php#113681224625151620 Links Dump- January 7, 2006 There will very likely be exciting developments in blogdom sometime early next week. Until then, some miscellaneous links to help pass the time: Chris Mooney talks sense about Richard Dawkins and the promotion of atheism. He gets attacked for it in comments, but I agree with him. Bad news from Chez Nielsen Hayden serevs as a reminder that Republicans aren't the only ones waging war on science. Based on some of the things said in the comments, I think they overstate the importance of Ralph...http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_01_principlearchive.php#113664559890259988 Science is Utterly Wet- January 5, 2006 Posting has been (relatively) light this week because today was the first day of classes. I'm teaching introductory modern physics (relativity and quantum mechanics), a class that I've taught before, but I've been putting a significant amount of time into revising my lecture notes, to keep the class from getting stale. This has led to a reduction in blogging because I've been preoccupied with educational matters. Happily, PZ Myers comes along with a post about education. It's one of those...http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_01_principlearchive.php#113642506773456456 The New York Times Says God Is Dead- January 2, 2006 As you can tell from the date stamp, it's now 2006, so the World Year of Physics is over. The people behind Quantum Diaries are shutting their blog collection down (though several of the diarists will be continuing on their own sites), and John "End of Science" Horgan pops up in the Times book section to say that there will never be another Einstein: Einstein is far and away the most famous and beloved scientist of all time. We revere him not only as a scientific genius but also as a moral and.http://www.steelypips.org/principles/2006_01_01_principlearchive.php#113620735479109586 |