Archive for October, 2007
Some of you might remember my post on the RS1 model where I made a nice graphic featuring Gauguin’s 1897 masterpiece “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” The work, I thought, best captured our inquisitive nature as scientists. (Also, the lecturer reading my Part III essay is a bit […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Physics | 5 Comments
Qualities of good seminar talks
Update: included a few more points on 11 Nov 2007. A big part of doing science involves `taking your show on the road’ and giving seminar talks. Seminars are a way to promote your current project. More importantly, they are a way promote yourself to other physics departments that might later be interested in hiring […]
Filed under: Opinion, Student Life | 1 Comment
Freshers Week Facetiousness
A few weeks ago, during Durham’s `Freshers Week,’ I wrote a cheeky letter to the editor of the Durham Palatinate. The editors of the student newspaper didn’t seem to share my sense of amusement and opted to print more serious commentaries instead. So, for the sake of sharing, here it is. Dear Sir/Madam (or other […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Student Life | 3 Comments
May balls, that is. A recent article from the Daily Princetonian reveals that Princeton’s Forbes College is planning a Great Gatsby-themed formal party. The name of the game is extravagance, with the college spending $20,000 on the event. Does this sound familiar? It should, the idea came from a Cambridge alumni: The idea for a […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Student Life | 7 Comments
Sports Update: SLAC
The past couple of weeks have been especially hectic for me, so this is a bit of a light-hearted post on the world of sports. Unfortunately for any English readers, I will not be going into the Rugby World Cup Final between England and South Africa. (My friends decided not to invite me to watch […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 3 Comments
I recently stumbled upon the program for the Eotvos-Cornell 2007 Workshop on Particle Theory: BSM at the Dawn of the LHC Era. If you’re thinking about attending don’t bother — it’s outside your future lightcone, the event took place earlier this year in June. `___ at the dawn of the LHC’ has been a popular […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Physics | Closed
I’ve found myself recently giving out some advice about the US grad school application process. It’s already October, so the `grad school train’ is already making its way out of the station. (All aboard who’s coming aboard!) Why didn’t I say something earlier? I did. But that was in July. The path to grad school […]
Filed under: Opinion, Physics, Student Life | 15 Comments
PlayStations for Physics
This one is dedicated to Mars, who once remarked that `a long calculation is like playing a computer game.’ Wired has a neat article about the computational research of Professor Gaurav Khanna, an astrophysicist who has put together a supercomputing cluster called the PS3 Gravity Grid. And yes, thanks to a donation by Sony, the […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Physics | 3 Comments
The geeks out there are already familiar with the lolcats meme. In a nutshell, these are silly photos of kittens with even sillier captions written in deliberately poor English (e.g. `I can has cheezburger?‘). Recently a blogger at Rum and Monkey put up his own version: lolphysicists. My favourite is the Einstein photo with the […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 2 Comments
So you’re in your final year as an undergraduate and you’re applying to PhD positions in US graduate programs in theoretical physics. You’ve been a good undergrad, so you’ve done your share of undergraduate research. But all your reserach experience is in experimental physics… perhaps not even in the same subfield. How do you incorporate […]
Filed under: Opinion, Student Life | Closed
An American Physics Student in England 