Friday, June 24, 2011
Regret
This has nothing to do with physics, but it cracks me up! I found it on a google image search for a Beatles lyric about "sheepdog standing in the rain".
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
A Parallel Universe
From the Condor user's manual: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/manual/v7.5/2_4Road_map_Running.html#SECTION00341700000000000000
2.4.1.7 Parallel Universe
The parallel universe allows parallel programs, such as MPI jobs, to be run within the opportunistic Condor environment. Please see section 2.9 for more details.Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Davis-Barnes Effect
I just read this piece of a colloquium transcription of Irving Langmuir's talk "Pathological Science".
Langmuir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Langmuir
Talk: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langA.htm
The summary of it is that Davis and Barnes made a counting measurements to try to confirm the Bohr theory of the hydrogen atom. Before the experiment, they computed what conditions should yield positive results. When they set their detector to the "wrong settings", they counted low event rates, and when they set their detector to the "right settings", they counted high event rates. Langmuir was intrigued when he witnessed Davis and Barnes throw away seemingly valid counts... and at other times count orders of magnitude more! It turns out that they just truly believed that some events should be thrown out for some such reason, but I don't know how they counted more events.
The point is that they did not do their experiment blindly, and they miscounted the data without believing that they were effecting the outcome!
I feel like this could easily happen with the stress and anticipation to find something new at CERN. Effectively, a whole field of research hangs on the line. Hopefully we have a healthy enough competition that we won't let people get away with it.
Langmuir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Langmuir
Talk: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langA.htm
The summary of it is that Davis and Barnes made a counting measurements to try to confirm the Bohr theory of the hydrogen atom. Before the experiment, they computed what conditions should yield positive results. When they set their detector to the "wrong settings", they counted low event rates, and when they set their detector to the "right settings", they counted high event rates. Langmuir was intrigued when he witnessed Davis and Barnes throw away seemingly valid counts... and at other times count orders of magnitude more! It turns out that they just truly believed that some events should be thrown out for some such reason, but I don't know how they counted more events.
The point is that they did not do their experiment blindly, and they miscounted the data without believing that they were effecting the outcome!
I feel like this could easily happen with the stress and anticipation to find something new at CERN. Effectively, a whole field of research hangs on the line. Hopefully we have a healthy enough competition that we won't let people get away with it.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Messages from the Future
from CRAB:
"from __future__ imports must occur at the beginning of the file (Client.py, line 46)"
Thanks buddy. What am I supposed to do about that?
"from __future__ imports must occur at the beginning of the file (Client.py, line 46)"
Thanks buddy. What am I supposed to do about that?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Last Day at the LPC
I tried to get to work early, since it's our last day here at the LPC at Fermilab. But I couldn't tear myself from the book I'm reading: Breaking Dawn. 4th in the Twilight series.
Last night we had a fun time reading/making meatballs/watching James Bond: Casino Royale with our couch-crasher Rob. I actually stopped the movie before the very end so that Bond was happily together with Vesper. It's wonderful if you stop the movie there!
We also had our last night of Aikido at Mushin Dojo yesterday. Joe was at home recuperating his knee, so Beth, Me, Carley, Brian, and Jimmy each took turns demonstrating techniques. It was a lot of fun! Jimmy showed shikko-Sharks and Minnows!
Beth and I were paired up for gyaku-homni katatetori shihonage, and during ura, I realized that if uke is commited enough, you can just irimi tenkan right past without even touching them! Then bring your arms down as if you had a sword! I really have to make a study of the 8 count kata with the various entrances etc. I bet I will be able to draw that connection everyone talks about between weapons and open hand techniques!
Ok off to do work/eat!
Last night we had a fun time reading/making meatballs/watching James Bond: Casino Royale with our couch-crasher Rob. I actually stopped the movie before the very end so that Bond was happily together with Vesper. It's wonderful if you stop the movie there!
We also had our last night of Aikido at Mushin Dojo yesterday. Joe was at home recuperating his knee, so Beth, Me, Carley, Brian, and Jimmy each took turns demonstrating techniques. It was a lot of fun! Jimmy showed shikko-Sharks and Minnows!
Beth and I were paired up for gyaku-homni katatetori shihonage, and during ura, I realized that if uke is commited enough, you can just irimi tenkan right past without even touching them! Then bring your arms down as if you had a sword! I really have to make a study of the 8 count kata with the various entrances etc. I bet I will be able to draw that connection everyone talks about between weapons and open hand techniques!
Ok off to do work/eat!
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
New Mission Statement
This blog will now record my life as a physics graduate student. I hope to scare undergraduates away so that the job market will always look good for me.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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