Archive for August, 2006
4.5 Marshall Scholars at Dinner
Before I get around to finishing up my remaining Berkeley-related posts, I had the distinct privilege to meet up with a few of my Marshall colleagues in Washington D.C. this week. The event, something of a ‘preunion,’ was a vacation from what was already a very comfortable summer vacation and I had a lot of […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life | 2 Comments
Ah, I thought I was done with this, but I just came across a fantastic book cover that got me laughing: The book is not listed on Amazon, but I found the following description on authorhouse: This is a text on Hamiltionian and Lagrangian Dynamics aimed at the student who has just finished the calculus […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 3 Comments
Unfortunately I’ve departed Berkeley and am now hurriedly unpacking/repacking in Los Angeles. I have a short list of unfinished Berkeley-related blog posts that I’ll be putting up in a week or so, but I’ll be going on a short vacation starting on Tuesday to meet some of the other Marshall scholars a week early in […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 1 Comment
I have nothing coherent to share, but I do have a few random science-related and Cambridge-related links. Ah, tha’ed be brrrill-yunt. A repository of accents (not necessarily the best representations) are available at The Speech Accent Archive. I can’t wait to visit Glasgow. Darwin, the new King George. A Michigan State University study has shown […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life, Just for Fun, Physics | Closed
Or: How pop culture got intelligence wrong and misjuged the value of information. Ok, I should explain the sensationalistic title. “Baby grad students” refers to anyone who may have a future in academia. Despite their poor science and mathematics questions, I have nothing against Jeopardy … and mostly nothing against babies. I do have a […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Opinion | 1 Comment
Big Physics IV: Faculty Clubs
Today I was treated to a very nice lunch at the Berkeley Faculty Club, so I thought this was a natural subject to append to my “Big Physics” series: Big Physics I: Analogies Big Physics II: T-shirts Big Physics III: Parking Big Physics IV: Faculty Club(bing) Faculty clubs are interesting things that I don’t quite […]
Filed under: Berkeley and Stanford, Reviews | 2 Comments
No more scary commercials!
A message from Scooter (pictured below) and me to the television industry: Please stop playing scary previews for scary movies. I’ve recently taken to having the television on in the evening to provide some ambient noise while I grade/blog/read. However, Scooter and I have been disturbed by the number of scary movie previews that are […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 1 Comment
‘Old Boys’ of Cambridge
One thing that a professor with a Cambridge PhD once told me was that even as recently as the 90s, Cambridge still had the flavor of an ‘old boys’ club at the expense of its women. A recent article in The Times describes one current (female) Cambridge professor’s recollections of an older academic era where […]
Filed under: Expatriate Life | Closed
The scientific content of this post is due to ‘Chris at Berkeley,’ who prefers to ‘remain mysterious’ rather than have his name printed. Artist’s rendition of the threat. I just had a very entertaining conversation with fellow UCB first year Chris, who described some theories where our universe sits in a metastable ground state that […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Physics, Student Life | 1 Comment
Big Physics III: Parking
One thing that Berkeley has that Stanford doesn’t: special parking places on campus for its Nobel laureates.
Filed under: Berkeley and Stanford | 4 Comments
An American Physics Student in England 