Never read Godel, Escher, Bach and need a push? Here’s your opportunity. I read it a million years ago as a grad student and really enjoyed it, think it probably perma-tweaked my mind.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? See
http://www.amazon.ca/Godel-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_…
Details on the Read-through event are here: http://redd.it/nwh4d
Best space photos of 2011: on.natgeo.com/rENnSk
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) December 30, 2011
6 Guys in a Capsule: 520 Days on a Simulated Mars Mission. Are we there yet? bit.ly/pn1WEX
— Wired (@wired) November 15, 2011
Planetary science students at UCLA simulate Jupiter’s atmosphere in SPINLab tests (via @volcanojw) fb.me/1mOAJo8n6
— Jason Major (@JPMajor) December 21, 2011
Mercury’s magnetic field — nipped in the bud tw.physorg.com/243840360
— PhysOrg Science News (@physorg_com) December 23, 2011
!Prof Wiegert!: what do you think about this?
Earth Must Have Another Moon, Say Astronomers bit.ly/rMTgTE
— SpaceMeme (@spacememe) December 21, 2011
Lack of correlation is interesting RT @globeandmail How Canada’s fastest rising Google searches compare to world’s tgam.ca/DMaJ #fb
— Bob Sica (@bobsica) December 27, 2011
#xkcd: Mnemonics. Finally a mnemonic that works for #Taxonomy. #KernelPanics #WhosKatyPerry? post.ly/4P769
— UWO Lidar Group (@purplecrowlidar) December 21, 2011
Michael McIntyre’s Fellow talk at #agu11. WOW. @theagu I demand Michael get his own session next year. I’m #Gyroscop… post.ly/4BmmO
— UWO Lidar Group (@purplecrowlidar) December 7, 2011
What a heckuva moving day @uwophysastro. Thanks for everything Phin you are amazing! Let’s do it again Monday (the lab) #westernu #fb
— UWO Lidar Group (@purplecrowlidar) December 16, 2011
Today’s Winter Solstice is something scientists measure and and predict, so now you can decide whether to “believe in it.”
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) December 22, 2011
Top tweet of the month (true dat):
The best engineering flow chart ever: twitter.com/neiltyson/stat…
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 21, 2011
It’s the New Year and thus given Day 1 in the blog rotation I sense a need to offer some life advice for the our padawans. Let them know there is a purpose to what they are doing beyond the next assignment. I take this responsibility with great fear and loathing, but if your wakeup bell hasn’t been rung yet allow me. And if I offend any sensibilities along the way so be it.
You might be worried about a job. You’ve already got one. You’re a citizen of Earth and here to make this a better place then when you arrived. So how are you going to do that?
By pursuing some esoteric path of N-dimensional fantasy theory of everything? Trying to find an Earth clone 100,000 light years away we can’t learn from? Higgs Boson? A better cherry-flavor cola substitute?
I got life advice once. I was your age working the summer at Fermilab, thinking I would do real (e.g. particle) physics when if I grew up. The lab manager took me aside one day and said, “you seem like a smart kid, get out of this field it’s a dead end.” He was right. The grad students were in their late 20s, the PDFs in their 40s and, truth be known, the science was really not relevant to things that matter like hunger or disease. I was soon gone to Alaska to become an atmospheric scientist.
Dave Kendall from the Canadian Space Agency was down here last month talking to the students and challenged them to take risks. That’s an excellent way to put it. Staying in school and studying something with no goal to make this Planet a better place to live is safe and easy and Wrong. If you have a passion or an idea run with it. Believe in yourself. Visionaries like Frank Zappa, Larry Page, Steve Schneider, Ken Kesey, Steve Jobs, etc. did not sit on their fannies and wait for someone to tell them what they wanted to do was “OK”.
Don’t turn your back on Gaia now. There is a war on out there with battles being fought on the fronts of climate, health, social justice, to name a few. You can name more. Pick one that burns in your belly and fight it.
Don’t
Do
I’m not trying to be an irrational doomsayer here but if we look farther than our FirstWorldProblems to the big picture there is much work to be done to make our home a better place. I am not a gear in an Economic Engine and don’t encourage you to be either.
One person can make a difference, and it starts today with you. We at P&A will do our best to prepare you to succeed at whatever challenges you dare.
Happy New Year.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FcKxTyh1Qc?wmode=transparent]
Music: Canada’s Broken Social Scene.
[warning: post contains graphic images, view at your own choosing]
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting nearly [over] 20,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students, and policy makers. This meeting showcases current scientific theory focused on discoveries that will benefit humanity and ensure a sustainable future for our planet.
UWO P&A’s own Crown Emily is at wits end with deep Fear and Loathing over her advisor’s insistence she get her poster to the printer by EOB yesterday for printing (see photo). Emily worked past 4 (pm) last night making crucial decisions on the poster (she decided on Times New Roman over Times) and picked up today at the crack of noon, when she decided it would be wise to do that analysis she had written about so lavishly last September for her abstract.
“Bob is such a nudge-nik on these things, he thinks just because there are 5,000 posters in the queue to be printed by Monday morning mine won’t be ready. As if, I’m at Western, not like ***** (institutional name deleted at publisher’s insistence).”
Crows Robin and Justin were not available for comment, as they had finished their posters last week and were last seen heading out to play squash.
The Old Crow has the honor (?) of being on the AGU Fall Meeting Blog Roll and intends to type up a storm down there next week (Dec 5 to 9) as he roams the poster hall. Follow @robin_wing, Emily and I via twitter (@purplecrowlidar), facebook (The Purple Crow Lidar) or directly on our blog, Scatterings.
(originally posted by Robert Sica)
Opportunities are now available for undergraduate summer research experiences and graduate studies via the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Arctic Atmospheric Science (http://www.candac.ca/create). If you want to hear more about this you can contact Bob Sica (sicaATuwoDOTca) locally or check out the website.
Need some science to get you through your commute? Download this Planet Earth podcast about the summer’s BORTAS campaign which flew out of Halifax. In this podcast Sara Moller talks about the global effects of forest fires.
On a local note, the Purple Crow Lidar has measured smoke particles in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (e.g. about 15 km altitude) and been able to show this smoke was associated with forest fire activity a few days earlier in Saskatchewan. This smoke can affect the production of ozone in the stratosphere.
[warning: post contains graphic images, view at your own choosing]
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting nearly [over] 20,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students, and policy makers. This meeting showcases current scientific theory focused on discoveries that will benefit humanity and ensure a sustainable future for our planet.
UWO P&A’s own Crown Emily is at wits end with deep Fear and Loathing over her advisor’s insistence she get her poster to the printer by EOB yesterday for printing (see photo). Emily worked past 4 (pm) last night making crucial decisions on the poster (she decided on Times New Roman over Times) and picked up today at the crack of noon, when she decided it would be wise to do that analysis she had written about so lavishly last September for her abstract.
“Bob is such a nudge-nik on these things, he thinks just because there are 5,000 posters in the queue to be printed by Monday morning mine won’t be ready. As if, I’m at Western, not like ***** (institutional name deleted at publisher’s insistence).”
Crows Robin and Justin were not available for comment, as they had finished their posters last week and were last seen heading out to play squash.
The Old Crow has the honor (?) of being on the AGU Fall Meeting Blog Roll and intends to type up a storm down there next week (Dec 5 to 9) as he roams the poster hall. Follow @robin_wing, Emily and I via twitter (@purplecrowlidar), facebook (The Purple Crow Lidar) or directly on our blog, Scatterings.
La Nina promises most of Canada a colder & more snowy winter this year. But not Southern Ontario, at least yet. La Nina is the cold/wet phase of the global ENSO cycle. The El Nino – Southern Oscillation cycle results from the Pacific Ocean sloshing back and forth like a giant bathtub affecting the circulation and has been found to influence temperature even in the polar stratosphere! You can read more about ENSO here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation
My boards are all ready to go as soon as Circle R gets some snow!
Paul will talk to us today at Western’s Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration weekly meeting about the studies he and his colleagues have done to find the first Trojan asteroid found to share Earth’s orbit. This result was featured on the July 28 issue of the journal Nature.