PhD

Well then. Today I submitted my thesis to the university, which means that I’m basically done with my PhD (there is a check of the pdf file I submitted only). Yay.
It works out that this weekend I’m going to Baltimore to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday, which I can use as a celebration for me. [...]

40 years ago, a landing

40 years ago the first people who had landed on the moon came back to Earth. I already put up pictures of the trip here, so today all that’s new is a poem (if you want to make it topical, replace the first two lines with: With a moon behind, There’s a world in front):
With [...]

What is priority?

It seems that stimulus funds for highways are not being assigned according to the way they’re supposed to be:
The rules required that states give priority to counties considered “economically distressed.’’ Yet less than half the federal highway money announced so far is directed toward those high-unemployment, low-income areas, according to an Associated Press analysis of [...]

No more card check in EFCA

I’m a little slow to get to it, but it seems that the card check part of the Employee Free Choice Act will be dropped. It was always going to be a tough sell, because of the propaganda of businesses saying that unions would intimidate workers without a secret ballot.
The revised bill still has several good [...]

40 years ago and a poem

We are in the middle of the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing (well, the first with people). Apollo 11 lifted off on July 16, 1969 (all photos courtesy of NASA):
 
it reached the moon on July 19 (this is the lunar lander and so the photo’s probably from July 20):

the lunar lander Eagle landed on [...]

Sri Lanka after the civil war

At the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, I wondered if the government would treat the Tamils well. The answer so far is no:
Hundreds of thousands of Tamils remain locked in camps almost entirely off limits to journalists, human rights investigators and political leaders. The Sri Lankan government says that the people in the [...]

Problems in Afghanistan

Back in March, Afghanistan passed a rule that severely restricted the rights of Shia women but a huge international outcry forced President Karzai to say he would rewrite it. The new version is out and it seems it’s not much better:

The changes, which are not yet approved by Parliament, would delete sections that said a woman [...]

Bottled or Tap

There’s a long article in today’s Boston Globe Magazine that looks at  the increasing trend of people using tap water instead of bottled. It asks whether tap water is safe and asks some good questions with good suggestions, but ultimately I find it to be misleading. The best suggestion is to read your community’s report on [...]

Some fighting galaxies, Saturn, and a poem

Today a couple of recent images of the day from NASA.
First is Stephan’s Quintet a set of galaxies in the midst of evolving (Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/E. O’Sullivan Optical: Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope/Coelum):

and here’s a natural color shot of Saturn (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) taken by Cassini on July 23, 2008. If you want to try your [...]

Senator DeMint a bit confused

Last night Senator DeMint at the National Press Club:
 Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in [...]

Gay marriage news

There are three developments in gay marriage:

A law recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions went into effect yesterday in Washington DC. It passed the DC council in May, but the US Congress had 30 days to rule on it and have not. DC does not allow same sex marriages.
Same sex marriage foes in [...]

The start of a story and a poem

This will be the first of x posts (with x yet to be determined, but at least one) trying to put together some form of story. I will update it at some intervals (once a week perhaps–it will partially depend on whether anyone reads this and/or comments) and put the current extent on the story [...]

The Fenway neighborhood and the Red Sox

The Boston Globe has an article about John Henry’s wedding:

When they were initially drawing up plans in May, Henry’s event planners had asked only that a few spots on Lansdowne and Ipswich streets be blocked off for parking to fit in generators that would power the reception, which took place under a massive outfield tent. [...]

Jacoby and Global Warming

Jeff Jacoby has another article downplaying/denying global warming which seems to be almost wholly based on this article in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m not a scientist in this field, so I’m going to farm out a lot of the rebuttals:

Much of the denialist information is based on a book by Ian Plimer, which is discussed here.
Some [...]