Google Hits and Misses

There is a story in Business Week on how Google develops new products and how few of them are successful. I have tried many of these products and I have to agree that many under underwhelming. I have a high opinion of Gmail. I think that is has an excellent interface as well plenty of [...]

Homestake Receives Large Private Contribution

A colleague sent me this link on a major private contribution of $70 million to developing the Homestake mine in South Dakota into a major underground science lab. Underground facilities are used by particle physicists to study rare processes like proton decay, solar neutrino interactions, search for dark matter, etc. In all of these processes [...]

String Theory Not Even Wrong

Here is a review of Peter Woit's new book critiquing string theory. The basic argument is that string theory has very little connestion with the real world and is extremely difficult to test. Physicists have started to take this critique seriously. This article describes some of the possible tests. 
String theory is fascinating and is well [...]

Who Needs to Understand Statistics?

The New York Times has story about how the public's perception of the economy is different from the adminstration's. It seems to be that the adminstration does not have a good grasp of statistics.
The data he cited were averages, or means, and that can be misleading. "The average wage is a useful indicator if you [...]

No More Physics for Poets

Edward Morley (pseudonym) is calling for the elimination of Physics for Poets classes. He feels that they do a disservice to both students and science. I have no experience with Physics for Poets classes, having neither taught nor taken one, so I do not have data to judge the soundness of his argument. I did [...]

Fermilab Annual User’s Meeting

I attended the annual user's meeting at Fermilab this week. I have been to about 10 of them over the years and this was the most interesting one I can remember. There were several interesting "political" talks in addition to the physics talks. A combination of circumstances have come together on the political front: the [...]