"Chavez OTM," said an astrophysicist familiar with the history of class struggle on Mars.
― max, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:40 (thirteen years ago) link
the best part about the article is the reuters editor going "hmm, this isnt long enough... can we bring in a couple paragraphs about mars missions?"
― max, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:41 (thirteen years ago) link
haha if you can do a follow up i would be literally thrilled to be quoted on this! seriously, my parents would be so happy.
― caek, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:42 (thirteen years ago) link
next time i have a good article about economics on other planets ill solicit a quote
― max, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:43 (thirteen years ago) link
i actually read the article last night and tried to think of a comment, but i was really drunk on 241 beer and couldn't make any sense of it. i missed my chance! THANKS jjj and goole.
― caek, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:45 (thirteen years ago) link
your one shot at fame
― max, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:47 (thirteen years ago) link
i added you on facebook so you can reach me quickly for future leftists/planetary issues
― caek, Wednesday, 23 March 2011 18:51 (thirteen years ago) link
wait did you dudes go to the t rock?
― FUN FUN FUN FUN (gbx), Thursday, 24 March 2011 01:40 (thirteen years ago) link
yes! our server had a face tattoo and i drunk surly! it was a magical mpls adventure.
― caek, Thursday, 24 March 2011 04:09 (thirteen years ago) link
saw the tat face lady at 241s last night. forgot how crowded that place gets when the weather's nice.
caek,
what was your favorite part about mpls? when are you moving here? what neighborhood will you live in? rent in NE is v cheap iirc, but it as almost as isolated and barren as w st paul.
-gbx
― FUN FUN FUN FUN (gbx), Thursday, 31 March 2011 00:48 (thirteen years ago) link
(j/k jj wsp is dope as heck)
my favourite thing about mpls was mpls. i really liked it! some highlights were the birchwood cafe (fell in love with pretty much every waitress there) and also the fancy pants bar bit of "cafe and bar lurcat". the airport had a good vibe too, which is a useful litmus test for a town too ime.
re: when am i moving there? "it's complicated". i will know either way in a couple of weeks!
― caek, Thursday, 31 March 2011 04:45 (thirteen years ago) link
whoa
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/texasfire042011/s_t01_00000001.jpg
The Texas Forest Service undertook controlled burns on Sunday, April 17, 2011 to get rid of fuel on the mountains around McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. Here, Black Mountain is burning. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome is at right. (Frank Cianciolo/McDonald Observatory)
― caek, Wednesday, 20 April 2011 20:03 (thirteen years ago) link
ey up caek, this sounds important and impressive and so on? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926
― sometimes all it takes is a healthy dose of continental indiepop (tomofthenest), Thursday, 19 May 2011 21:58 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah that's good work
― caek, Friday, 20 May 2011 10:49 (thirteen years ago) link
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljgouzxixQ1qidrloo1_500.png
the smaller photo here is ngc891, which is the archetypal example of the kind of galaxy i did my phd on: edge-on galaxies with central bulges that are kind of boxy. these dude's know what's up.
― caek, Thursday, 26 May 2011 15:26 (thirteen years ago) link
caek is this what it looks like when you're on the grind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ
― dayo, Monday, 30 May 2011 01:36 (thirteen years ago) link
pretty much, but my observing gets done mostly in way less extreme locations, e.g. west texas
http://i.min.us/iwGYU.jpg
― caek, Monday, 30 May 2011 08:02 (thirteen years ago) link
excelsior
― mookieproof, Monday, 30 May 2011 08:04 (thirteen years ago) link
^^ pictures of people who seem to have figured out how to live imo
nice vid too dayo
― russ conway's game of life (a passing spacecadet), Monday, 30 May 2011 10:13 (thirteen years ago) link
all hail west texas :D
― now at least you know what old-school doctor who fans are like (Noodle Vague), Monday, 30 May 2011 11:36 (thirteen years ago) link
that observatory is the only place on UT land where you are allowed to drink alcohol without campus police present
― caek, Monday, 30 May 2011 12:57 (thirteen years ago) link
beat me to it
― cop a cute abdomen (gbx), Tuesday, 31 May 2011 03:23 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/fun-with-fysiks
aw yeah
In the United States, the job market for people with doctorates in physics collapsed around 1970, as the huge post-Sputnik expansion of American university hiring and military spending came to an abrupt halt. By the mid-1980s, things hadn’t improved much, and it seemed likely that my recent Ph.D. in theoretical physics would be of little use in finding conventional permanent academic employment. One possible career path that came to mind was to try to follow the example of a sizable group of physicists who lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s. They appeared to have managed to pursue scientific research by dropping out of academia and adopting a countercultural lifestyle that included soaking in hot tubs at Big Sur, engaging in Tantric sex, hanging out at North Beach cafes and taking psychedelic drugs. Some of them had gotten rich writing books that mixed physics with various kinds of mysticism. I wasn’t very interested in the mysticism part, but I figured I could handle the rest.For better or worse, I did end up moving to the Bay Area for a year, but as a respectable post-doc in mathematics I saw little or no evidence of the continued existence of these countercultural physicists, and I wondered what had happened to them. David Kaiser’s entertaining new book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, does a wonderful job of recounting the twists and turns of the story of how the members of this group came together, interacted with one another and with the more conventional physics community, and then dispersed to various fates.
For better or worse, I did end up moving to the Bay Area for a year, but as a respectable post-doc in mathematics I saw little or no evidence of the continued existence of these countercultural physicists, and I wondered what had happened to them. David Kaiser’s entertaining new book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, does a wonderful job of recounting the twists and turns of the story of how the members of this group came together, interacted with one another and with the more conventional physics community, and then dispersed to various fates.
― caek, Monday, 13 June 2011 22:06 (thirteen years ago) link
my observing run in australia started a couple of hours ago.
weather looks doooope
http://i.min.us/idHbYm.jpg
― caek, Monday, 27 June 2011 09:33 (twelve years ago) link
Wait... you're IN aus? or just controlling a 'scope, or?
― Bloompsday (Trayce), Monday, 27 June 2011 09:35 (twelve years ago) link
my colleagues are there driving the telescope and i am chiming in via email for the first night. i would love to have gone but it is only four nights. bit of a trek.
― caek, Monday, 27 June 2011 09:41 (twelve years ago) link
♥ clear skies ♥
― caek, Monday, 27 June 2011 09:47 (twelve years ago) link
Technology is so cool <3
― Bloompsday (Trayce), Monday, 27 June 2011 09:49 (twelve years ago) link
which is your favorite star
― ☂ (max), Monday, 27 June 2011 11:42 (twelve years ago) link
betelgeuse because of the movie they made about it
― caek, Monday, 27 June 2011 12:13 (twelve years ago) link
but seriously, it's this beauty http://snfactory.lbl.gov/snf/spstds/EG131
― caek, Monday, 27 June 2011 12:14 (twelve years ago) link
oh nice http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=250023
― caek, Thursday, 7 July 2011 10:18 (twelve years ago) link
> >This is not the last word. The House Appropriations Subcommittee> >will consider this bill tomorrow. And the Senate will also have a> >separate bill on NASA funding. However, in the present climate this> >step puts the centerpiece of astronomy's future at great risk.> >> >JWST and Astrophysics has entered a very dangerous zone.> >> >The impacts are numerous if JWST is terminated:> >> >1) termination is very damaging for future astronomy and> >astrophysics scientific productivity and for the pre-eminence of US> >science;> >> >2) termination would result in no observatory-class mission to carry> >out broadly-based research when the current Great Observatories reach> >end-of-life;> >> >3) termination undercuts the Decadal Survey process since it was the> >top ranked program in the prior 2000 Decadal Survey, and it is> >identified numerous times in the 2010 Decadal Survey as a> >foundational program for future astrophysics research;> >> >4) termination of JWST, as the natural successor to Hubble, would> >result in the loss, once Hubble fails, of a very large part of the> >remarkable public interest that astronomy has enjoyed;> >> >5) termination would eliminate a major source of inspirational> >science education and outreach results, particularly for the interest> >in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) that comes from> >the high profile HST and JWST science results;> >> >6) termination would reduce the strength and visibility world-wide> >of the US science program, not just astrophysics;> >> >7) termination would reduce US credibility as an international> >partner given the Canadian and European partnership on JWST and their> >substantial contributions to the program;> >> >8) termination of JWST, following on from the termination of the SSC> >(Superconducting Super Collider), would send the message that the US> >is relinquishing leadership in major science projects -- it will be> >very difficult to start any other major science project or mission;> >> >9) termination would eliminate the broadly-based research funding> >for the community that results from the Great Observatory-class> >missions if none are operating, and greatly reduces opportunities for> >undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate education;> >> >It is essential that we make our voices heard.
― caek, Thursday, 7 July 2011 10:19 (twelve years ago) link
sorry this belongs here: NASA: "We're going back to the moon!"
Yeah the Cyclotron here in Melb has also been hit with "sorry no money guys" govy issues recently that threatens to close it. Sucks.
― Bloompsday (Trayce), Thursday, 7 July 2011 11:05 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/images/blog/Mrkos.jpg
― caek, Saturday, 16 July 2011 10:48 (twelve years ago) link
oh yeah, I saw this last month and thought of this thread but then forgot to post it. This is one of those small innocent discoveries that could just as well have massive implications for our understanding of everything:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/06/x-ray-penetration-of-earliest-galaxies-reveals-massive-black-holes-in-existence.html
― StanM, Saturday, 16 July 2011 18:52 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i know those guys. not necessarily a surprising discovery, but a very impressive observation!
― caek, Saturday, 16 July 2011 18:56 (twelve years ago) link
http://i.min.us/ibKx5O.jpeg
― caek, Saturday, 16 July 2011 18:57 (twelve years ago) link
behold the face of god!
― ledge, Sunday, 17 July 2011 08:49 (twelve years ago) link
http://i51.tinypic.com/153a045.jpg
― ledge, Sunday, 17 July 2011 08:53 (twelve years ago) link
looll
― caek, Monday, 18 July 2011 15:41 (twelve years ago) link
gah i'm going nuts, using vim for the first time in ages and can't remember the keystroke that reformats wrapping text to a fixed width that respects "words"
if that makes sense. not an easy thing to google
― g++ (gbx), Friday, 29 July 2011 16:12 (twelve years ago) link
in .vimrc:
set tw=80 (or whatever)
to manually rewrap a paragraph, gqap. (gq is rewrap and then ap is a motion, so can be replaced with, e.g. j)
or you can have this happen automatically:
set fo=tcqa (or whatever) (a is the crucial bit)
― caek, Friday, 29 July 2011 16:26 (twelve years ago) link
gq was what i was looking for, thx
― g++ (gbx), Friday, 29 July 2011 16:40 (twelve years ago) link
f/u q: how do go back to wrapping? (i'm moving between editing something for a colleague in vim and email, where the breaks are irritating to manage)
― g++ (gbx), Friday, 29 July 2011 17:10 (twelve years ago) link
n/m
― g++ (gbx), Friday, 29 July 2011 17:14 (twelve years ago) link
not that you care, but: i only just figured out answers to my hugest frustrations with vim
-- i'd paste something in and it would wrap and break words (set linebreak)-- i'd want to jump down a line of text and it would skip to the next carriage return instead of what i saw on the screen (hit 'g' before the navigational key you want to use, which will switch from actual lines to 'screen lines')
i've wasted a lot of time futzing around with 'gq' and then, when moving to a non-vim environment, having to go back manually and fix all the linebreaks that got inserted.
thx internet
― g++ (gbx), Friday, 29 July 2011 17:23 (twelve years ago) link
pro tips:
":set paste" before a paste and it will disable the rewrapping of text (I have this bound to something handy that toggles paste mode on and off)
there is a setting that makes movement keys correspond to displayed lines rather than actual lines in the file. i don't use this so i can't remember what it is, but it might suit you better.
i undo rewrapped text (i.e. put a long paragraph on a single line) by doing :set tw=100000000000 and then gqap or whatever. i am sure there must be a better way, but i do this about once every 6 months, so i haven't looked into it.
― caek, Friday, 29 July 2011 19:12 (twelve years ago) link