♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

Caek are you back in the States yet???

no, waiting for my visa. plan is end of june.

a good chance i will be in DC in jan btw.

Well that is no help to me, as I hope to still be in Baja then! But I will definitely be back in DC by May 2014!

ok i'll check with AAS, maybe that can move their winter meeting?

that = they

Yes I think that would be wise!

I hope you are planning to post on the teacher thread (on 77) when your class starts!!!

ayo caek it was good meeting u and i'm sorry to perhaps seemingly ignore u when i left. let us drink again sometime

I have a question. Will the instruments on Voyager still be capable of returning data when it breaks through the heliosphere into interstellar space? Won't it just disappear into extreme cosmic radiation and never talk again?

caek you are a v good sport for answering all these physics questions. my roommate of the past year was always such a dick when people asked him anything but the most elementary question, would just answer "you can't understand it and will never understand properly" ... really pissed me off... think it had more to do with his own embittered relationship with physics than snobbery but still

caek, I am in munich on weds for a week

where shd we eat? we eat fish, not meat

mookie: yes! let's drink again.

parrot: i'm not sure exactly how powerful voyager's communication systems are, but the heliosphere does not fatally hinder radiation. you can see this simply by noting that we can see stars, which proves that electromagnetic radiation from outside the solar system can get past the heliopause. of course it's going to get harder to communicate, and there must be some point where the strength of the signal from something that far away is going to fall below the noise level of detectors on earth. afaict tho the voyager team are in for the long haul.

would just answer "you can't understand it and will never understand properly" ... really pissed me off... think it had more to do with his own embittered relationship with physics than snobbery but still

the bitter lols of recognition.

coz: i eat fish not meat too.

the fish situation in munich is generally pretty dreadful. one notable exception is paros, a greek restaurant nr. max weber platz. they have a fish special on wednesday, or all the wine you can drink for €5 on mondays. they do the best tuna steak i've ever had. afaict they do that every day, not just wednesdays. i suggest the mixed veggie and fix starter plates for all + tuna steaks to follow + retsina. if the weather is good and you want to sit outside then you'll want a reservation. they will make you do ouzo shots if you stay till later on. the waiters tend to be obviously drunk. it's great.

there is apparently an excellent sushi place at munchner freiheit but i've never been and i know it is €€€. let me know if you want me to track down the name.

for veggie stuff, there's a surprisingly good ethiopian place called blue nile on belgradstr. there are indian restaurants too, but none of them are worth the trip for someone based in the UK imo.

it's crazy i never made it to this place, because it's supposed to be excellent too: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g187309-d718281-r134252669-Prinz_Myshkin-Munich_Bavaria.html.

just to say you've had it, if you find yourself in a beer hall or bavarian place, you should order käsespätzle, which is kind of like german macarroni cheese. you'll think the portion is too small, and then you'll have your first mouthful. if you finish it then watch out for the symptoms of heart failure.

woof, thanks caek

I am now half man, half beer

achievement unlocked

caek do u know this guy https://twitter.com/chrislintott

yes

Nice guy, met him at a soccer game in Chicago and then published some of his work in the PASP!

my favourite munich beers were the hacker-pschorr helles & the paulaner nockherberger brau, just fyi

can see how munich wd be a nice place to live but not sure I'd recommend it for tourism

yeah he's a good guy xp

"nice" is a good word to describe munich. very comfortable, clean, etc. bit boring. opposite of new york.

not very old as a town, so not much history other than, well, the obvious.

did you manage to get out into the mountains? that's the USP really.

nah, we have family there so maybe next time if we go back for oktober-/stark-fests

yeah, low crime, cleanliness, good public transport, nice climate, dece cycling infrastructure, close proximity to countryside etc. very livable

#based at Oxford

http://i.imgur.com/yQu1Hob.jpg

happy birthday caek

yeah! for my birthday i got a hangover!

my friend who is a film director was arrested and spent the night in the cells at sevenoaks police station for shushing two teenagers rather vehemently (no joke).

― caek, Saturday, 27 December 2008 16:49 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not a proper caek's corner subject but anyway, i am wondering how and why that happened

*so* improper

ha! he actually told this story again the other day when we were talking about visas so it is reasonably fresh in my mind. it was something like:

they were maybe 14. two of them. he asked them to stop talking, which made them get louder, and then start directing comments at him and his gf rather than the movie/their phones. there was a physical confrontation (no punches or anything) and the kids left. at the end of the film, the police were waiting with the kids, who had called one of their dads, and were now claiming assault. the dad apparently looked like a cagefighter with neck tattoos, etc. some of the police were privately like "this is ridiculous", but he ended up spending the night in the cells waiting for a lawyer (i think?). in the end they persuaded him to take a caution, which he later came to regret because he applied for a green card before it was expunged from his record, as he had to declare it/explain it several times to consular officials.

so "shushing rather vehemently" was what he actually did, but presumably not the wording on the caution.

here, read about what it's like to nearly drown in zero-gravity

http://blogs.esa.int/luca-parmitano/2013/08/20/eva-23-exploring-the-frontier/

messed up!

like srsly...

The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and obscuring my vision. I realise that to get over one of the antennae on my route I will have to move my body into a vertical position, also in order for my safety cable to rewind normally. At that moment, as I turn ‘upside-down’, two things happen: the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose – a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can’t even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid.

Jesus.

Have they determined what caused it yet?

not afaik

watch the first (i think?) nasa launch from virginia, which will be visible from most of the north east!

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/display.cfm?ST_ID=2591

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/images/Empire_State_Building_720.jpg

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/images/LADEE_Elevation_720.jpg

Launch Window: 6 September 2013 from 11:27 - 11:31 PM EDT.

the first pic vaguely resembles one of those 9/11 trufax diagrams

don't forget the rocket tomorrow, noreasteners

Yes!

did you see this?

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/interactive/2013/oct/11/dominic-cummings-michael-gove-thoughts-education-pdf

quotes displaying the usual right-wing educationalist tropes reported elsewhere

he likes science and technocracy

the introduction sets out his ever so slightly ambitious idea for the uk's post-imperial usp to be the #1 scientific country in the world, quoting all sorts of estimable people in support of his idea for a 'crude' generalist education with an emphasis on complex systems

then he starts ragging on the poor standard of maths and scientific education here

i) is he more than a crank and ii) do we need to have more people in public/corporate life with a higher mathematical education

i only read the summary, but

i) he seems like more than a crank, although this also seems like an unusually febrile and utopian document, even for a spad.

ii) "need" is perhaps a strong word, but it certainly wouldn't hurt in public/corporate life. clearly, trivially, an MP or a civil servant should understand statistics better than it seems most currently do. that is the reason that institutions like my current one, which aspire to produce leaders and empire builders absolutely should be trying to offer an education in, most epsecially, statistsics/probability/quantitative reasoning, etc. designing the course(s) is hard, but actually implementing them in a liberal arts system like the US is relatively straightforward. with the hyperspecialization in the UK, where the high flyers essentially declare their major at 15/16, and drop all other courses, it's less clear. i can't imagine the politics that would be involved in trying to make "physics for future presidents" a compulsory course somewhere like oxford. (he actually mentions that course in the summary, by the way, which is kind of impressive. based solely on watching a few lectures on youtube, it's a good course.)

there is a tendency though to take this further and to say things like "the entire population should know what a normal distribution is, and if you don't then you're not equipped to vote", etc., which i reject. there's not much you can say to people who say "i never used algebra since i left school". they're right. and clearly a lot of people find maths and science hard/incomprehensible. not clear to me that we're doing them a service by obligating its study at an advanced level. and even assuming his ideas could be implemented, a country where everything is "evidence-based" sounds terribly bloodless and dull.

also this is an absolutely booming article:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-myth

there is absolutely no shortage in technically qualified graduates in any developed country. not even close. on the whole, business leaders are acting out of self-interest and a desire to depress wages when they call for government to encourage/oblige people to do maths or science at university.

yeah i'd agree with most of that

as well as this quixotic idea for a crude synoptic education he seems to want to cull the top 2% by iq at a fairly young age and give them an intensive education with a heavy scientific emphasis because we need to solve global warming and nuclear fusion etc

i think there is something like this in israel already

lol good plan

max you should read the report

there is some content to be mined about how genetic testing will allow us to create specialist computerized education for the slow kids, also a lot of quotes by john von neumann, a hat tip to sokal

maybe a bit niche i suppose

i agree with caek

I most definitely agree with caek

and yeah, the idea that we need to aggressively recruit scientists from abroad in the US is definitely linked to depressed wages

I know that a friend who is a lab scientist has had issues with assistants who are from abroad and have science degrees (typically not graduate degrees, though) but have no lab experience and are actually not so great at lab work. They are decent candidates for the job on paper, but really, someone with an associate degree or even vocational training geared toward lab experimentation would probably be better.

Then again, she might just have bad luck and keep getting the assistants who just don't understand that you have to balance the damn centrifuge before turning it on.

nah i'm not talking about international recruitment

get rid of all borders

lol

you would say that, you scab

How is your teaching going, caek? Do you generally like your students or wish them to hell? What about your fellow faculty? Administrators?