Random Thoughts

If you follow social media, you may have been alarmed by claims that today is the day Doc Brown traveled to at the end of Back to the Future, that comedy classic from 1985, approaches. To sum up the plot, Doc Brown has created a time machine (out of a DeLorean, of course, given its all-steel construction and convenient space for a flux capacitor) and, by accident, Marty goes back to 1955. By the end of the film, Marty returns to 1985 and, in true Frank Capra-esque fashion, he is a better person, so Doc decides to visit the future.  When asked when, he says "About 30 years.  It seems…

Another Poetic Interlude Language is my first love. When I discovered the joy of the scientific method I applied it to language. The study of linguistics can be incredibly boring or a source of great joy.  The choice is there to be made.  It's a matter of approach.   You can, perhaps, switch off your emotions and study with cold logic, or switch off the logic and get so emotional that you end up talking rubbish. There is a third way. Let logic map out the landscape, but let emotion decide which bit of it you are going to ramble through today, just for the sheer joy of it.…

A Brit Celebrates July 4th I've only been writing here for just over a year.  From day one I have been made to feel very welcome, and I want to thank everyone here and all of my readers for that.  Of course, Hank gets the biggest and bestest thank you. But I want to go further.  Science 2.0 gives me an intellectual freedom which can only exist where freedom of speech is cherished. I was born just after WW2 had ended.  I grew up knowing what a great debt I owed to the brave men and women of all nations who fought a tyranny under which I might never have learned the meaning…

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is nothing but a plain disaster. It was of course a topic at ESA's Living Planet Symposium in Bergen this week, where use of satellites to help mitigate this environmental - and economic - disaster was on the agenda. But this is not about the science nor the politics of the oil spill. NASA has made a collection of their satellite images that I regularly check out on their website (click on above image to get there). And I cannot help but to find some of the images really beautiful. Inspired by an article I read in New York Times that used an image of the…

Total Football Versus The Beautiful Game Anyone who predicted Brazil would not be the World Cup winner, much less get beaten in the quarter-finals, was just being contrarian.  Virtually no analysis that went beyond hope had Brazil running through this event.  When Adriano and Ronaldinho are not good enough to be on your team, you know you have a great team. That's not to say you wouldn't have a chance picking at random.  As I discussed in David Beckham - Physicist (And A Poissonian Process For Predicting Soccer Goals) when you factor minor differences between a Poissonian and…

A subtle rainy morning of June sets in with enduring smell of the soil waking me up. A life of a scientist does not begin with a cup of coffee, but with engaging emails. Just back from a hectic work trip and now that the initial phase of flight idiosyncrasy has drifted, I glared at one of my emails at sure amazement---- a headline throbbing email for any young discoverer. Yes, I realized it is again the year of awards to young scientists who have achieved great milestones in science at an early stage of their careers. We hear a lot about Nobel Prize winners synonymous to Oscar in Hollywood,…

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts..." Sherlock Holmes

Today is the 2000th day of blogging for me. And this is my 2003rd post! It all started in December 2004, when I first learned about the existence of a thing called "blog". I had been contacted by Judy Jackson, from the office of public affairs at Fermilab. She wanted me in a project for the 2005 International Year of Physics, called "Quantum Diaries". I was taught that I would have to describe my life as a researcher in experimental particle physics, and little more. I accepted with some doubts -I had already grown wary enough of new work proposals by then, but I knew too little to understand…

As if a vaguely distant coach and a missing striker who doesn't like his fans is not bad enough, a new study says Scots are more patriotic than those in England.  Dr. Jackie Abell from Lancaster University, writing in the British Psychological Society's Journal of Social Psychology, said the study set out to understand the differences between how the Scottish and the English demonstrate their nationalism via support for the national football team. Participants were selected from two sites in England and Scotland based on their conflicting character; Glasgow and rural Perthshire in…

Okay, It has happened now.  I am starting to notice that there are some wonderful movies available on netflix that represent a much larger spectrum of life than I have found available on the hundreds of cable channels that we have here at home.  I am wondering why there is such a lack of variety and huge glut of things that I don't want to watch when there is so much air time to fill.  I think that one of the reasons that there might be a problem is that the competition to grab ratings is huge, therefore people are less likely to take risks in programing.  Another aspect…