The AstroDyke

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2012-01-27T12:46:00.001-08:00

Seeking scientists for It Gets Better project

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of the It Gets Better project, which reassures queer kids who are getting bullied that life will get better. That there's a whole gorgeous life waiting for them, if they just survive their teen years and resist suicide.

I've seen Apple Employees, White House staffers, all kinds of neat people make videos for It Gets Better. Why not scientists? Anybody interested?

The accelerating universe: still blowing minds

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, the wif and I were sipping bad beer in a hole-in-the-wall bar, part of a weekly queer happy hour of friends and friends-of-friends. I had planned an evening of kvetching about officemates and such, but instead, I got sucked into this intense conversation with a new acquaintance about dark energy. I tried to keep up with her rapid-fire questions, by explaining about the expanding universe, how it's expanding ever faster and faster, that we don't know why, but blame some sort of dark energy or cosmological constant. Basically I blew her mind. Didn't mean to. Really just wanted to talk about politics or TV or the LA Dodgers ownership fiasco. But I blew her mind.

This was something she'd never heard of, but was absolutely fascinated by. And this was a well-read, well-educated, news-following person.

Which made me realize that, although astronomers have (reluctantly) accepted that the concordance cosmology is what our experiments tell us over and over again is true, the public really hasn't internalized it yet. Even though the accelerating universe was the 2011 Nobel Prize. Over and over while giving public talks, I'm asked about The Big Crunch. And I have to say, "That's so 1975! Not only will the Universe never contract into a Big Crunch, it's flying apart!"

So what's up with that? Are we just bad at explaining stuff? Or is the behavior and ultimate fate of the Universe really not something every educated person should know?

Astronomers to recognize Frank Kameny's contribution

2012-01-07T13:08:00.000-08:00

This week is the superbowl of astronomy: American Astronomical Society (AAS) winter meeting. Several thousand astronomers will be networking, sharing new results, and awarding prizes for standout contributions to our science.

At the meeting, the AAS will honor LGBTQ civil rights leader and former astronomer Dr. Frank Kameny with a certificate recognizing his contributions to society. While the grass-roots effort to honor Dr. Kameny got started while he was alive, sadly he passed away before the award could be given. Several queer astronomers will accept the certificate in memory of Dr. Kameny.

I wish Frank had lived to see the ceremony, or that astronomers had gotten their acts together to honor him earlier. After Frank was fired in 1957 from US government astronomy job for being gay, he walked away from astronomy. After all, he had no recourse -- homosexuality was considered a psychosis. Frank played a key role in changing all that, and those of us who live openly and honestly owe him big time. But I wonder if he missed his former profession -- taking data on the mountaintop, analyzing it late at night in the lab, going to lectures, trying to figure out how the Universe works. Anyone know if Frank talked about this? Would he be satisfied to be be recognized by his former profession?

The kind folks at AAVSO will be bringing their signed copy of Frank's astronomy PhD thesis, as a sort of physical memory of Frank, to be there when his citation is read. Not sure if that's cheesy or profound, but I like it.

Will astronomers recognize Frank Kameny's contributions?

2011-06-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Dr. Frank Kameny is the most famous former astronomer that astronomers don't know. Within the gay rights' community, he was a pioneer: co-founder of the Mattachine society (an early gay rights organization); a scientific conscience that challenged the American Psychiatric Association's classification of homosexuality as a disorder as grounded in prejudice rather than science; an agitator to remove the ban on gays from serving in the government or holding security clearances. Moreover, Dr. Kameny was a moral force who led by example, showing that gay people didn't need to hide in the shadows, grateful not to be beaten up. Rather, we could stand up and demand fair treatment and equality. For most of the last 50 years, that was a radical notion.

Dr. Kameny was fired from government service in 1957 for being gay. In 2009, the White House formally apologized for his firing. While this was a big deal in the gay rights' community, it didn't get much noticed by astronomers. I find that very curious. After all, the 2010 Decadal Survey (our every-ten-year examination of our profession's priorities) notes that "not all highly capable students" who are "trained in astronomical research" "will take up long-term positions in astronomy" (what a wishy-washy statement on the job market!), and that therefore students should be "educated and exposed to issues of public policy." So, students: go read about Frank. Professors: include him in your "exploring career paths" workshop. (You have one, right?)

Two new Facebook groups seek to recognize Frank's accomplishments. You can buy him a drink to thank him for his activism (actually it helps pay his utilities, but who's counting?), or you can support the creation of a Frank Kameny prize by the American Astronomical Society.

Geeky Apple employees explain why It Gets Better

2011-04-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

I've enjoyed several videos from the It Gets Better project, but so far, my favorite is this one from Apple employees.

Milky J is back

2010-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

In the next installment, Milky J, the Hubble-obsessed rapper from the Jimmy Fallon show, learns about the James Webb Space Telescope and what it can do that Hubble can't, by visiting the cleanrooms at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA was tickled to have him. Two behind the scenes rundowns, the former with links to Milky J's other Hubble episodes.

I like the Milky J saga in part because it wasn't NASA's idea. G(enerally anything with "NASA" and "rap" in the title will be a cringe-worthy attempt by a mission's PR department.) But this emerged organically, and NASA is embracing it after the fact by letting them film on location.

Also, I was pleased to see two women among the NASA engineers whom Milky J meets. It's not commented on in the piece -- they're just astrogeeks doing their job, trying to convince Milky J that JWST beats HST by spouting sensitivity limits and science cases. But I noticed it for the following reason.

Last month, two of my colleagues visited an inner-city summer program for African-American elementary school kids. As you would expect, the kids drowned these "real live astronomers" in questions about black holes, planets, aliens, the works. Several of the kids were truly incredulous that women can be scientists, and blown away to meet a real-life woman scientist. So for the sequel (they have so many more questions!) we're sending two women astronomers, one of them me. I can't wait -- I love that kind of spontaneous Q&A with kids. (Last week at friends' house, their older kid asked me, "So, what is space inside of?" I mean, that's GR right there.)

I would have thought that pathologists-in-labcoats TV shows would have gotten kids used to women as scientists. But then I go to classrooms, and one of the many things that the kids are blown away by is that I'm a woman. There's a standard classroom activity for young kids, where you ask them to draw a scientist. Without any prompting they draw a bearded white man in a labcoat. Which is a jumping-off point to talk about what scientists do, what clothing they wear to do science, famous women and minority scientists, etc.

News flash: astronomers are gossips

2010-08-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

Dennis Overbye in The New York Times: Rumors in Astrophysics Spread at Light Speed

Astronomer H-R diagram

2010-07-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

From Astronomy Blog in the UK. Larger version.

Brightest Gamma Ray Burst yet

2010-07-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

A gamma ray burst temporarily blinded the X-ray instruments on the Swift spacecraft in June. Great rundown from the blog of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

X-ray astronomers often get teased for getting so few photons, that they name each one as it comes in from space. ("Photon, I will name you Fred, and treasure you forever.") But this GRB produced a peak count rate of 143,000 photons per second! (For 0.2s -- it's a burst after all.) Incredibly bright.

I like the blog writeup because it profiles a scientist in the process of doing science, and a postdoc scientist rather than some senior guy paraphrasing for the press what his postdoc discovered. Even better, it mentions that the scientist was out camping with his family, and returned to the lab to find this crazy event waiting for him in the latest data sent down from the telescope.

Dire times for Italian Astronomy

2010-07-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

A new article by a chorus of Italian astronomers, "A decline and fall in the future of Italian Astronomy?", laments the precipitous cutoff of funding for astronomical research in Italy, the home of Galileo. Three excerpts:

The community is astonished, shocked by the news (most of the Italian astronomers - including the INAF president - learned this from the newspapers) that INAF is listed among several institutes considered useless. An April Fools’ Day prank? No, it is not . . . Messages rapidly overflow all our mailboxes. Is Italy turning off the stars? Is the homeland of Galileo leaving his heirs orphans? What is going to happen to us? And to all young (and not-so-young anymore) people working on short-term contracts? And to our projects funded on European or International Grants? Several protests take place in Italy, and not just from researchers working at INAF. Several other institutes have gone under the same hatchet.

How is INAF going to survive with a severely reduced budget? All programmed cuts are likely going to bring to a very significant reduction of short-term contracts and trigger a new brain drain of young (and also not so young) researchers to foreign countries. At the same time, it will become very hard to attract foreign researchers to our country. This implies that Italian astronomy will lose the most productive and competitive part of their researchers. Not the best way to save money, at least not on the long term. The prediction is that of a rapid and irreversible decline of Italian astrophysical research.

The usefulness of basic, intermediate, and high education, as well as of research, is being questioned in Italy, mainly because they do not produce quick and easy money. We realize that, unfortunately, this approach and way of thinking is not limited to our country (although Italy probably represents a dire example of cultural decay). As scientists, we cannot turn aside from fighting this way of thinking, that we consider blind, foul, and irresponsible. It is not these principles that we want to hand on to future generations of astronomers, Italians, and citizens of this world.

(Via AstroBetter on Facebook.)

Judge rules Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional

2010-07-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

Good news! U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled today in two companion lawsuits that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional! (Read the decisions: Gill v. OPM and Massachusetts v. HHS).

"The next step in the case is for the federal government to decide whether it will appeal Judge Tauro’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. That decision should come within the next 60 days." - GLAD's website

Background: seven same-sex married couples and three widowers from Massachusetts sued the federal government because their legal marriages are not recognized by the federal government under section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage (DOMA). DOMA, a blanket rejection of any marriage between persons of the same sex, hurts gay families in many ways: You can't sponsor your spouse for a green card, or collect social security survivor benefits when she dies, or file a joint tax return, or (if a federal employee) cover your spouse on your health insurance plan.

One of the two lawsuits is Gill v. OPM, argued by GLAD (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders). (The lawsuit does not challenge the rest of DOMA, which says a state can choose not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state.) (NY Times summary of the case from 3/2009.) The other lawsuit is Commonwealth of Mass v. Dept. of HHS.

Judge Tauro's 39-page opinion in Gill v. OPM includes several choice bits of sarcasm:

Furthermore, this court seriously questions whether it may even consider preservation of the status quo to be an “interest” independent of some legitimate governmental objective that preservation of the status quo might help to achieve. Staying the course is not an end in and of itself, but rather a means to an end."

"... federal agencies merely distribute federal marriage-based benefits to those couples that have already obtained state-sanctioned marriage licenses. That task does not become more administratively complex simply because some of those couples are of the same sex. Nor does it become more complex simply because some of the couples applying for marriage-based benefits were previously ineligible to marry. Every heterosexual couple that obtains a marriage license was at some point ineligible to marry due to the varied age restrictions placed on marriage by each state. Yet the federal administrative system finds itself adequately equipped to accommodate their changed status."

"In fact, as Plaintiffs suggest, DOMA seems to inject complexity into an otherwise straightforward administrative task by sundering the class of state-sanctioned marriages into two, those that are valid for federal purposes and those that are not. As such, this court finds the suggestion of potential administrative burden in distributing marriage-based benefits to be an utterly unpersuasive excuse for the classification created by DOMA."

"It strains credulity to suggest that Congress might have created such a sweeping status-based enactment, touching every single federal provision that includes the word marriage or spouse, simply in order to further the discrete goal of consistency in the distribution of federal marriage-based pecuniary benefits."

Hubble Gotchu: The Music Video

2010-07-02T13:35:00.000-07:00

The folks at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon wrote a hip-hop music video about the Hubble Space Telescope. Too catchy.

Google to pay employees' "Gay Tax"

2010-07-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

Google announced they would begin paying the extra taxes employees pay when they sign up their same-sex partners for health insurance.

What "gay tax", you ask? Let me provide a little context. When an employee puts their married, opposite-sex spouse on their company health insurance plan, the government doesn't count that as taxable income. But when an employee signs up their same-sex partner for the same health plan, regardless of marital status, the federal government counts the employer's share of the premiums as taxable income to the employee. So, several thousand dollars of extra taxes. In addition, there are other "gay taxes" -- here's a short summary.

Of course, this is a stop-gap solution. The easiest comprehensive solution would be for Congress to change the law about taxability of insurance premiums for domestic partners. And while they're at it, change the laws on Social Security, disability, and the thousand other federal benefits. Or if that seems like too much effort, just repeal Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage.

The real science gap?

2010-06-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

Recommended reading: "The Real Science Gap" in Miller-McCune magazine. Polemic, a bit hyperbolic (Are postdocs the suckers in science's Ponzi scheme?), but it certainly gets at the problem: the U.S. creates far more young scientists than there are permanent jobs in science.

A few choice excerpts:

The system had a basic flaw that was revealed only gradually, as the expansion of academe slowed in the early 1970s: The system’s central feature — the “self-replicating” professor who produces a steady stream of new Ph.D.s as a byproduct of grant research — had no control over the job prospects for those graduates.

The Academies published another report on the science labor force in 2005, Bridges to Independence: Fostering the Independence of New Researchers in Biological Research... Bridges examined the ominous “crisis of expectation” among the thousands of frustrated young scientists unable to move into suitable career employment. The report was motivated by an alarming fact: The average age of scientists winning their first independent NIH grants... had risen to 42, well past the period widely considered a researcher’s most creative.

The obstacles facing today’s young scientists... are structural features of a system that evolved over a period of 60 years and now meets the needs of major interest groups within the existing structure of law and regulation. Essentially, this system provides a continuing supply of exceptionally skilled labor at artificially low prices, permitting the federal government to finance research at low cost.

"I have noticed that you failed to come into the lab on several weekends"

2010-06-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

This is quite a memo. (Chemistry Blog, via Boing Boing.)

I'll say it again: one of my chief motivations to succeed in science is righteous indignation.

High Tech Gays v. DISCO

2010-06-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

While reading closing arguments in the federal case regarding Prop. 8, I came across a discussion by the defendents' attorney of "the High Tech Gays case". Say what?

Google... The full case name is "High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office". You heard me right: "High Tech Gays v. DISCO." The case went to US District Court in 1987, which ruled homosexuals should have the same security clearance process as others. It was overturned in 1990 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1990, and thankfully made irrelevant in 1995 by Executive Order of President Clinton, who barred the Federal government from denying security clearances on the basis of sexual orientation.

(Of course this is serious shit -- the gay bans on federal employees, and then on security clearances, ruined many people's lives.)

That said, "High Tech Gays v. DISCO" is the best-named court case ever, overtaking my previous favorite, Loving v. Virginia.

Softball-playing professors

2010-06-01T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to bring myself to care about the sexual orientation, perceived or real, of SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan. The kerfuffle does illustrate the barriers placed before powerful women -- that we are allowed to accomplish things only if we simultaneously meet standards of femininity set by male colleagues. And that regardless of their orientation, butch women (and nelly men) are not taken very seriously by our culture.

But what I really want to talk about is softball. The Wall Street Journal published a front-page photo of Elena Kagan playing... softball. Shock! For a league at the University of Chicago Law School, while a professor. Batting against the pitcher, Dean of Students Richard Badger. Presumably getting to know the faculty and students better, while enjoying a sport (sixteen inch softball) unique to Chicago.

Really, that's the smear campaign?

Also: major league batters critique Kagan's batting stance.

First light for SOFIA

2010-05-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, aka SOFIA, just took its first astronomy images on Wednesday. SOFIA is a highly modified Boing 747 jet with a telescope poking out of the side, that will fly at 50,000 ft and observe, high above most of the Earth's atmosphere.

SOFIA has been much-delayed -- I'm sure it's a huge relief to get it working.

Images courtesy NASA.

Marquette U (Milwaukee) rescinds job offer to lesbian

2010-05-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

Article from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Marquette University has pulled an offer to hire a new dean for the College of Arts and Sciences from a lesbian who has written scholarly works on gender and sexual orientation, a move that is sparking criticism from faculty and a protest by students.

It's a Catholic University, though one whose diversity statement says, "Marquette cherishes the dignity of each individual regardless of age, culture, faith, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, language, disability or social class."

I've been repeatedly told that a paper job offer from a University is legally binding. Especially once you accept the offer, sign it, and sent it back. Is it legal for Marquette to withdraw this job offer? Thoughts?

2010 Senior Review Report

2010-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

NASA periodically convenes a "Senior Review" of astronomers to consider all current missions (except Hubble, for political reasons), judge their future prospects, and recommend which ones should be given more money, and which should be axed. The 2010 report just came out. Here's the report, a table, and a summary article, via Kelle at Astrobetter:

2010 Senior Review for Operating Missions – NASA Science |
Results of the most recent Senior Review of NASA’s operating missions. Link to a PDF with comments on each mission at the bottom of the page. Their rank ordering, from highest to lowest: Plank, Chandra, Warm Spitzer, Swift, Newton, WMAP, Suzaku, GALEX, RXTE, INTEGRAL, Warm WISE. (via Adam Kraus)

A nice article and summary table at Nature News (via John Gizis).

The cost of discrimination

2010-04-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Tax day is a good time for a reminder about the "Gay Tax". The NY Times estimated the life-time cost of discriminatory laws to a typical white-color gay couple:

We gave our couple an income of $140,000, which is about the average income in those three states for unmarried same-sex partners who are college-educated, 30 to 40 years old and raising children under the age of 18. Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple’s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.

Obama orders hospital visitation rights for LGBT Americans

2010-04-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

From CNN: Obama ordered the Dept of Health & Human Services to establish a rule: if hospitals accept Medicare/Medicaid funding, they must let partners visit gay patients.

Obama requested that the regulation make clear that any hospital receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, which includes the vast majority of U.S. hospitals, must allow patients to decide who can visit them and prohibit discrimination based on a variety of characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

To quote the vice-president, "This is a big fucking deal." For years, LGBT people have petitioned hospitals, counties, and state governments to allow us to visit our sick partners in the hospital. In the back of our heads, there's the worry that we might die like Lisa Pond, alone, with our lover barred from the room, without the chance to say goodbye. Or that when our partners need us, we'll be barred from telling the doctor our partner's medical history and allergies.

Many gay people travel with our wills & durable power of attorney paperwork tucked into our suitcases, just in case. Here's hoping that Obama's order works, and we can travel lighter.

Is Space Boring?

2010-04-12T17:18:00.000-07:00

This talk from the SpaceUp Ignite series argues that Space is Boring -- or at least, manned spaceflight as presented to the public by NASA. Discuss.

Strangely, the speaker hardly discusses Mars rovers, other robotic planetary exploration, or space telescopes. Given that the shuttle program is almost finished, with no replacement in sight, that seems strange.

Update on the academic astronomy job market

2010-04-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

From the Women in Astronomy blog comes Hannah's summary of the employment session of the winter American Astronomical Society meeting. Wow:

Ulvestad estimated that the ratio of new PhDs to faculty openings was about 4:1, based on AAS membership data. If you counted non-university positions, it came up to closer to 2:1. Beckwith said that in steady state, the U of C system should be hiring about 7 astronomy faculty every year, but failed to mention anything about current and future hiring freezes until pressed during the question session.

Beckwith also had the audacity to tell a room full of young scientists, half of whom would likely leave astronomy, that our outlook is positive, that our PhDs would serve us well in jobs outside astronomy also. He gave an anecdote about his daughter who was an artist, and was waiting tables to make a living. To which one at least one person noted that she hadn't spend 12 years in school in order to wait tables.

That factor of 2-to-1 is roughly consistent with the numbers in this recent whitepaper by A. Seth et al.

So Lonely!

2010-03-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

According to blogger.com, mine's the only blog in the Galaxy.

Eureka?

2010-03-10T17:30:00.001-08:00

Overheard: "The true sound of scientific discovery is not, 'Eureka!', but "WTF?"

If anyone knows the original source of the quote, please chime in.

Discriminatory ad on the astrojob posting site

2010-02-09T17:41:00.001-08:00

So I was perusing the AAS Job Register late one night in the lab, hoping for some end-of-the-season faculty listings. Came across a small liberal arts college in Chicago (big city, check), looking for a physics professor (check) who's excellent in teaching & scholarship (check). Then there's the line, "Wassamatta College is an evangelical Protestant Christian liberal arts college whose faculty and staff affirm a Statement of Faith and adhere to lifestyle expectations."

That means no dykes, right? Google, google.... Yes, it does. Though pre-marital sex, porn, and adultery are also banned, along with unsupervised dancing -- so at least no one else would be having any fun.

Ah, well, moving on....

Job Rumor Mill

2010-01-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

Around this time of year, ants invade the pants of young astronomers. Fellowship and faculty search committees have assembled, short-lists have been ranked, fellowships are being offered, campus visits are being scheduled for would-be professors. Rumors fly, and a rumor wiki (we are organized, list-making people, after all) collects all the rumors, so that anxious job-seekers can be badly informed.

When I do check the rumor mill, I check the wiki revisions rather than the main site, to see changes only. Today, the revision notes include this wonderful exchange:

Q: Has anybody received rejection letters for Einstein yet?
...
A: Patience, young grasshopper. They'll get around to rejecting you soon enough.

Free, You Haul: Shuttle Main Engines

2010-01-19T15:55:00.000-08:00

Need to spice up your local museum, town square, or megamall? NASA has slashed prices on the soon-to-be-retired space shuttles Atlantis and Endeavor. $29 million apiece, folks!

AND, even better, they'll give away spare space shuttle main engines (you haul, some assembly required).

There's a tantalizing reference to "potential artifacts that include the space shuttle, Hubble space telescope, Apollo, Mercury, and Gemini."

If anyone can wade through the goobledgook to find out how an institution (mine?) can grab a Hubble artifact, that would be swell.

50 Best Physics Blogs? You're joking!

2010-01-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

While shoveling the backlog of email after the Thanksgiving/Christmas/AAS snowstorm, I found that the humble AstroDyke is listed as one of the "50 Best Physics Blogs" by a blog about online colleges. Right there with the ArXiv blog & Cosmic Variance. I don't know what that means, but it's funny.

On the subject of blogging: A colleague recently told me that authorship of astroblogs and how-to websites are factored into their evaluations, as a form of community service and outreach. Interesting.

Workplace Issues for LGBT Astronomers

2010-01-11T10:05:00.001-08:00

I wanted to highlight a poster from the recent "Women in Astronomy 2009" workshop, held last October. Titled "Workplace Issues for LGBT Astronomers," it's a reminder to our colleagues that LGBT astronomers face extra challenges at work, due to unequal compensation at institutions (lack of health insurance and pensions for same-sex partners), and federal laws that permit discrimination. (Props to L. Kay for presenting the poster and advocating for its inclusion at the WIA meeting.)

Comments? Suggestions for a similar poster for the next winter AAS?

Several of the other posters are also worth a read.

The big AAS meeting in DC

2010-01-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

Hi all. Finally catching my breath after the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington, DC. Attendance was well over 3000 -- as always, it's an overwhelming experience. In the next week or so, I'll post some highlights.

The AAS streams session videos for past meetings, but there are no links for the current meeting. I'm surprised that the plenary talks aren't publicly available right after the meeting. If I'm wrong, somebody send the URL pronto! Obviously, taping & streaming videos would cost money, but what a great outreach tool, and a way to reach AAS members unable to attend the meeting.

Speaking of outreach, on the DC Metro I spied an example of how thoroughly NASA images have penetrated the public consciousness:

Quick, what Messier galaxy is that? And what is it doing on an advert for dental work?

The unemployment rate, illustrated

2009-12-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

A gorgeous illustration of the rising unemployment rate in the US.

Math, Risk, and Cancer

2009-11-20T10:25:00.001-08:00

Here's a good article from Slate on the new mammogram recommendations. The article asks, Why can we discuss sports in an intelligent, statistically--savvy way -- but not health?

The Big Picture: Mars

2009-11-11T16:21:00.000-08:00

The Boston Globe's "Big Picture" is usually fantastic. They just did Mars. Go.

Via Bad Astronomy.

Where men set foot upon the moon

2009-11-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Back in July, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took amazing photos of the landing sites of the Apollo missions. You could clearly see the footpaths made by the astronauts, and little bumps of the left-behind lower stage of the lunar module.

LRO has now taken much better photos of the Apollo 11 landing site. As usual, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy does a great job of explaining them. The big white blob is the lunar lander. The four dots around it are the landing legs. The dark streak above and to the left is made by human footprints -- space travelers.

Life's not been the same

2009-11-09T10:58:00.001-08:00

Hate Crimes bill passes

2009-11-02T09:36:00.001-08:00

Catching up on legislative action: two weeks ago Congress passed the "Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act". Last Wednesday President Obama signed it into law.

The law expands the 1969 federal hate-crime law to include a victim's real or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. This is big:

No longer must the victim be engaged in a federally--protected activity like voting. Texas has no hate-crimes statute when James Byrd was lynched; a similar crime now would bring additional penalties.
The law gives the feds power to prosecute hate crimes when local authorities won't. Also, it helps state and county agencies cover the costs of high-profile investigations and trials. (The trial of Matthew Shepard's killers financially drained a Wyoming county.)
It requires the FBI to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people. We don't actually know many transgender folk are attacked and murdered every year, because the feds haven't counted.

Fundamentalist Christians have fought hate crimes measures on the grounds that they stifle free speech. That's not true. It is absolutely, 100% legal to stand on the corner and tell the world how much you hate brown people and gay people.

Hate crimes should be punished more severely because such crimes target not only the direct victim, but an entire minority community. A brick through the window of a synagogue is worse than a brick through the window of a 7/11. A lynching is worse than a murder. Therefore, the people who perpetrate hate crimes should face tougher sentences.

US to lift ban on HIV+ visitors

2009-11-02T09:27:00.000-08:00

Good news from DC on Friday: President Obama announced that the government would lift a 22-year ban on entry into the United States for people who are HIV positive. The change takes effect Jan. 2010. "If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it," the president said.

The HIV+ travel ban has been embarrassing and counter-productive -- it's prevented the US from hosting major HIV/AIDS conferences, and it's prevented foreign HIV+ activists from speaking in the US. Almost no other countries have such a travel ban.

From CNN: "Today is a great day for human rights and for people living with AIDS, their friends and their families," said Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights. "The HIV Travel Ban made the United States a pariah in human rights circles, and harmed our reputation as a world leader of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care.

Physics Nobel for CCDs and fiber optics

2009-10-06T08:59:00.001-07:00

Professor Astronomy explains how this year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for inventions that you'll find at every professional observatory on Earth (and many amateur observatories, too): charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and long-distance fiber optics.

It's not hyperbole to say that CCDs brought a revolution in astronomy -- great sensitivity that lets you find faint, distant galaxies; repeatability that lets you detect the slight dimming of a star as a planet passes in front; and an intrinsically digital format that made it easy to archive and share data.

Trivia, Telomeres, and the Nobel Prize

2009-10-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, a few weeks after the 2000 election, I was on a long Southwest flight full of antsy, pre-Thanksgiving energy. Since the flight attendants for some reason had corporate swag to give away, they decided to hold a trivia contest. A flight attendant announced a question over the PA, and the first person to ring their attendant call button and give the right answer won a prize. The prizes included tshirts, pens, and bottles of Wild Turkey.

I won a pen for the correct answer "William Jefferson Clinton", to the question, "Who is the president of the United States?", which was a trick question, since the Bush v. Gore election still had no clear winner.

One question was, "What is a telomere?" I had no idea, and was embarrassed -- it's rare for me to lose a science trivia question. Afterward, I asked the flight attendant. He gave a quick explanation (the tips of chromosomes, which control aging), and I remembered reading about them in an article about Dolly the cloned sheep, asking whether her short telomeres had caused her short life. I also asked the flight attendant why he knew so much about DNA. He had been a research biologist, got tired of the pressure, and took a job at Southwest.

So that's the roundabout way that I learned about telomeres, which are the subject of this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Pulp Fiction

2009-09-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

I stumbled into a neat antiques store here in Purple-state America, with a selection of pulp fiction, men's "physique" magazines from the 1950s, and lesbian pulp fiction.

Back before Stonewall, pulp novels were the way that many a lesbian learned that she was not the only person in the world who felt "that way", that we had a name, places where we congregated, and (in most pulps) a violent death as the wages of sin. Though most lesbian pulps from the 50s and 60s were exploitative and voyeuristic, some were written by working-class lesbians (Ann Bannon and Vin Packer, I heart you) who could have never been published in that era by any "real" publisher. Pulps were a way for lesbians to communicate, learn, and validate their own existence.

Which is why I've begun collecting pulps -- as proof that we existed in, and survived, rougher times than this. Here's the back cover text from my new acquisition, "I Am a Lesbian", publ. 1958:

Stories relating to lesbianism are very numerous today. This is surely proof that people are interested in the subject and its treatment. Lesbians are a part of our society and they will very likely remain so. In this book Lora Sela does not write that its characters have *tendencies*; instead they are *real* lesbians whose hearts are as warm and deserving of understanding as any other segment of our human life.

You are not welcome here.

2009-09-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

Visiting a purple state on business, I stopped by a pizza joint, ordered a slice, and sat down with the town's alternative weekly newspaper. I read about the GOP candidate, putting the goober in gubernatorial, and how he thinks that feminists and homosexuals are destroying America. He was asked if that meant he wouldn't appoint a gay judge, and responded "It would depend on his actions." So, if a gay lawyer spends hours fantasizing about smooth pectoral muscles, but never actually goes on a date, then he's a fine candidate for the bench. Right?

I got so mad, reading the alt-weekly, waiting for my pizza. How dare this governor-wannabe force his religion on the rest of us. Do I tell him how to live his life? Which god to believe in? How to pray to her?

Here I am, in one of the few states where astronomy jobs are currently being advertised, and here's the leading candidate for governor, telling me I am not welcome in his state, nor my family, nor our values.

I finished the pizza, walked down the street, past the opposition candidate's local storefront headquarters. I doubled back, walked in, and gave them $20.

If the media were smarter, they'd ignore Fred Phelps

2009-09-01T09:43:00.001-07:00

You've probably heard of the "preacher" Fred Phelps from Topeka, who drags his family around the country protesting same-sex weddings, funerals of gay men, funerals of American soldiers, and anything else he thinks will get him on TV.

You probably know, educated readers that you are, that Fred Phelps represents no one beyond his immediate family. He's a nutball, pure and simple. He's also extremely savvy: most of his family are lawyers, and they try to provoke violence against them in order to manufacture a lawsuit.

You know a reporter is lazy when an article contains a line about"Protesters of gay rights stood outside", and the photo illustrating this point shows Phelps' distinctive signs (huge square fonts, the theme "God Hates ______", and liberal use of the word "fag"). They're easy to spot once you know what they look like. Clearly, a reporter isn't digging hard when the "local protesters" are out-of-town Phelpsers, screaming for attention.

Many folks are wise to Phelps, and greet his demonstrations with creative counter-protests. My favorite is getting people to pledge a small donation to HIV/AIDS charities for every minute he lingers.

Lauren Ober covered today's counter-protest in Vermont, as marriage equality becomes legal there today. (Linked from her pal Alison Bechdel's blog.) Below is my favorite photo from her coverage.

New images of the Apollo landing sites

2009-07-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Too cool: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has imaged the Apollo moon landing sites. You can see the lunar module, its shadow, and the scientific instrument packages.

What really impresses me are the foot paths. See that smear? That's the path of Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell, when they walked on the moon. I wonder how long those paths will last.

Activist Frank Kameny recognized at the White House

2009-07-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

Activist (and astronomer) Frank Kameny was honored at a White House ceremony as part of Pride month.

The U.S. government officially apologized to Dr. Kameny, who was fired by the United States Civil Service Commission 52 years ago because of his sexual orientation.

"With the fervent passion of a true patriot, you did not resign yourself to your fate or quietly endure this wrong," said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management. "With courage and strength, you fought back. And so today, I am writing to advise you that this policy, which was at odds with the bedrock principles underlying the merit-based civil service, has been repudiated by the United States Government, due in large part to your determination and life's work, and to the thousands of Americans whose advocacy your words have inspired."

Dr. Kameny was instrumental in getting homosexuality dropped from the manual of mental disorders used by American psychiatrists. He also fought a long battle with the US government over the denial of security clearances to gay people, a battle finally won under the Clinton administration.

He was also a professional astronomer, until he was thrown out of the Army Map Service. Here's his publication list on ADS. As a professional astronomer and a lesbian, I'm grateful to Dr. Kameny and the other pioneers for making it possible for folks like me to live openly.

Death of a Sailor

2009-07-08T09:43:00.001-07:00

Just wrote my US Rep. to demand a full inquiry into the murder of sailor August Provost at Camp Pendleton, CA last week.

Seaman Provost was murdered while on guard duty. He was 29, gay, partnered, and 3 years into a college education as an engineer.

At present, the Navy does not consider this a hate crime. Several members of Congress are calling for a Congressional inquiry into his death, or are calling on the Pentagon to investigate the murder as a possible hate crime. Please ask your US Rep to join them.

Comic: what we send the universe

2009-07-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

From Astruse Goose.

DOMA

2009-06-18T17:10:00.000-07:00

Knitting circle

2009-05-28T10:30:00.001-07:00

I attended a new knitting group last night. Age range was 20--80, projects ranged from first-ever scarf to intricate baby clothes. Discussion topics discussed included: quark-gluon plasmas, whether gauge swatches are necessary, the northern lights, felting techniques, scenic camping sites, pronunciation of Portuguese island names, whether the Azores are too touristy (compared to 1950), the game Oregon Trail, the new Star Trek Movie (the older ladies have seen it, and I haven't!). Oh, and someone asked me whether a galaxy of sufficiently high mass and redshift could ever be discovered that would make theorists cry.

This group's a keeper.

Sonic Booms

2009-05-27T11:42:00.001-07:00

My wife and I climbed a tallish building before Atlantis landed Sunday. Didn't see it, but we clearly heard the double sonic booms (a few seconds after NASA TV reported them heard at Edwards.) Exactly what it's supposed to sound like. So, in a small way, we welcomed the Hubble repair astronauts home. As, apparently, did pickuptrucks.com (stumbled across the link from Cars.com.) Everyone does love Hubble.

Also in the news, Prop 8 decision was announced Tuesday. Exactly what we all guessed based on the oral argument: Prop 8 stands, but my wife and I stay married, and laws that discriminate on sexual orientation are still subject to "heightened judicial scrutiny".

Afterward, as always, there was a rally. Small group (where the hell are you, pissed-off straight and gay people?), including many parents with kids (I was given a lovely kid-made sign, which made up for in sincerity what it lacked in legibility). Not sure how much the rally accomplished, but the wife said it was cathartic. We wrote letters to the editor this morning, too, not that people read newspapers anymore.

CA Supreme Court to rule on Prop 8

2009-05-22T14:08:00.001-07:00

The California Supreme Court will announce its ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 on Tuesday at 10am PDT.

Thank you, astronauts

2009-05-18T13:47:00.003-07:00

A snapshot of Drew Feustel (on the robotic arm) and John Grunsfeld (deep inside Hubble's guts). Thank you, Atlantis astronauts, for splendid work refurbishing Hubble, and for risking your lives to advance science.

Lots of space telescope news!

2009-05-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

Lots of space telescope news this week:

The Shuttle launched safely on Monday, captured the Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday, and now astronauts are repairing Hubble. John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel have already removed WFPC2 and installed WFC3 - YAY! They are currently removing the faulty Data Handling Unit.

You can watch the repairs on NASA TV.

Also, Herschel and Planck launched successfully on Thurdsay morning. Herschel is an infrared/submillimeter space telescope, and Planck is a cosmic microwave background experiment.

Finally, ~~No word yet on whether~~ the Spitzer Space Telescope has run out of cryogenic coolant ~~yet -- an event predicted for this week.~~. Thank, you Spitzer, for 5 years of wonderful science.

Waiting for two launches

2009-04-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

Servicing Mission 4 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is due to launch Monday, May 11 at 2:01pm. The official estimate of the risk from space debris has been lowered to 1-in-221, but the shuttle will still fly tail-first to better shield the spacewalking astronauts, led by astronaut/astronomer John Grunsfeld.

Also, European space telescopes Herschel and Planck are set to launch on Thursday, 14 May from French Guiana. Planck is a Cosmic Microwave Background explorer (meaning it looks at the leftover light from the Big Bang), and Herschel is a far-infrared general-purpose telescope that looks mainly at baby stars in our galaxy, as well as galaxies that are rapidly forming stars.

Fingers crossed and atheist prayers delivered for two clean launches, good spacewalks, and a safe return for Atlantis.

Observing

2009-04-24T04:33:00.001-07:00

There are few things more central to professional astronomy than the observing run. They're hard to describe because they're so contradictory -- exhausting certainly, but also frustrating and exhilarating, exciting and tedious.

Right now I'm making multiple copies of my data, so that if my laptop dies on the way home, or a DVD breaks, I'll still have the data for which I've worked so hard. This is, by far, the most tedious part -- you're tired, you've accomplished what you came for (or not, if the weather was bad), and now you sit while the DVD slowly records. My ritual during this process is to listen to an old "Legends of Motown" CD. I have no idea what "Stop (in the Name of Love)" has to do with astrophysics, but it always makes me feel good after a hard night's work.

Had some long exposures toward morning, so I got to stand on the catwalk and watch the stars. Venus, Saturn, and the sliver moon were rather ridiculously lovely. (I'm far too lazy to see the 5am stars unless I've been up all night, so this is a rare treat.) A few good meteors, too, and all above, the Milky Way. Sometimes life, if not perfect, is good enough.

Prop 8: follow the money

2009-04-08T18:53:00.001-07:00

Five months later, the pain of Prop 8 still feels fresh. But I'm a data geek, and the AP compiled a database of Prop 8 donors (in support and in opposition), so here goes a quick look.

First, churches. What donors with "Church" in their names gave? Of the 13 churches that donated the most money, only 1 opposed Prop 8. Only 3 progressive churches were able to cobble together 1K to oppose Prop 8. That's just sad.

But those aren't the biggest donors. Here are the biggest donors for Prop 8, against it, and combined.

Some famous names among the big donors:

John Hormel (first openly-gay US Ambassador), against
Michael Huffington (ex-husband of Arianna), against
Brad Pitt, against
Ellen and Betty Degeneres, against (this one's so cute)
Templetons (as in the scary Templeton Foundation), for
Nerds: Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang, Apple, George Lucas, against

Interesting omissions: California's US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Governor Schwarzenegger are not listed as having made contributions.

You can search by zip code, employer, or name. Leave those blank to search all, then sort by the column headers. What else is there?

Calling your representatives

2009-04-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

After calling my state and US representatives' offices, and leaving a short message regarding issues I care about ("Yes, I SUPPORT the hate crimes bill"), I wonder, "Did I make any difference?"

Today I stumbled upon this startling example:

[Vermont state legislator] Robert South, a freshman Democrat from a conservative district, said he reversed his position after 228 of his constituents reached out and urged him to support the override, compared with 198 who urged him to oppose it.

From "Gay Rights Groups Celebrate Victories in Marriage Push", NYT, April 7 2009.

Nerdity

2009-04-08T09:07:00.001-07:00

From "Art for nerds and nurseries" by Tiffany Ard, via BoingBoing.

"If we're equal, will you trade your marriage for my civil union?"

2009-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

Nutshell-capturing photos of the marriage equality battle around the country:

Trish and Kate Varnum of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, react to the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling, 3 Apr 2009, from Yahoo News. As my wife put it, "Wow, these are midwesterners! Pasty heavyset folks with cross necklaces -- they look like everyone in my home town."

Euan Bear, of Bakersfield, Vt., in Montelier, 6 Feb 2009, from Yahoo News.

Pres. Obama emphasizes scientific integrity

2009-03-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: Scientific Integrity
Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health, protection of the environment, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other resources, mitigation of the threat of climate change, and protection of national security. The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public....

Reality-based thinkers are back in charge. Full text of President Obama's memo on science.

Faculty job drought makes the NY Times

2009-03-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

"Doctoral Candidates Anticipate Hard Times", in today's New York Times.

... A survey by the American Historical Association, for example, found that the number of history departments recruiting new professors this year is down 15 percent, while the American Mathematical Association’s largest list of job postings has dropped more than 25 percent from last year.
“This is a year of no jobs,” said Catherine Stimpson, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. Ph.D.s are stacked up, she said, “like planes hovering over La Guardia.”

See also this this caustic reaction, which estimates that tenure-track jobs are down only 25%, and argues that the real problem is that universities use "substitute student workers" instead of faculty.

Fixing this lousy arrangement could provide millions of jobs. Graduate students shouldn’t be teaching their asses off, and undergraduates should be working a lot less too. Many forms of this “work as financial aid” or extreme work-study are essentially using up and spitting out young people as disposable labor--costing them their chance at degrees, not enabling them.

Prop 8's day in court

2009-03-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

We attended Wednesday's "Eve of Justice" rally in LA. Thousands of people there, despite the rain. We rallied, then marched from Nuestra Senora (the old church for which Los Angeles is named) to the US Courthouse. I snapped this photo of a fellow marcher, whose sign quoted one of Harvey Milk's best speeches.

I listened to the oral arguments from my desk (while reducing data.) It did not go well. The justices, especially Justice Kennard, seem ready to rule that California voters are entitled to make laws as discriminatory as they want, with no check on that power. Which means that Article 1 means nothing, that equal protection means nothing -- unless 50.001% of the voters agree that you deserve equal protection. That no one has any rights, except as bestowed by the California constitution. And that you have no rights that can't be stripped from you by 50.001% of the voters.

The justices repeatedly asked what rights are "unalienable". Hard to pronounce, easy to understand. Unalienable rights are those that cannot be made alien to you, by anyone, no matter what -- because they come from GOD, not from your fellow voters. "That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." That's what Jefferson meant in the Declaration (which the California constitution quotes.)

"You've gotta give 'em hope."

2009-02-24T22:10:00.000-08:00

Satellite debris could cancel Hubble repair mission

2009-02-18T13:35:00.001-08:00

Nature.com is reporting that debris from a recent satellite-satellite collision may prevent the upcoming (desperately needed) shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Kaputnik chaos could kill Hubble", from nature.com
"Satellite collision puts Hubble at risk", from abcnews.com

The Onion: Cheney Dunk Tank raises $800 billion for Nation

2009-02-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

"WASHINGTON—Organizers reported Sunday that the 44th White House Carnival was a rousing success, raising a record $800,000,066,845 for the federal government—$800 billion of which came from a dunk tank featuring former vice president Dick Cheney.

"According to Secretary of the Treasury and carnival volunteer Timothy Geithner, the 5-foot-deep tank has provided a much-needed boost to the nation's flagging economy."

Full article here.

Job Cancellation Mill

2009-02-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

The Astrophysics Job Rumor mill currently shows 9 faculty searches are reportedly canceled or suspended. (Calstate x2, Dartmouth, Hertfordshire, Hopkins, Amherst, NC, Pitt, SC.)

Add a few other searches that may not have money to hire this year, and a few more institutions that decided not to advertise for a position this year, and you've got quite a grim year to be looking for a faculty job.

Of course, there are always positions for analytic brains in the financial secto-- oh, wait, nevermind.

Inauguration

2009-01-23T09:18:00.001-08:00

Check out the wordle that my wife made from President Obama's inauguration speech.

Recommend a car?

2008-12-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

My 10 yr old American sedan is showing its age. The power windows fail yearly ($400 to replace each motor), the paint is faded, the suspension bounces like a Jumpy Castle, and the mileage (21 city) is criminal for a midsize car. Plus, no recent safety features like side airbags or anti-lock brakes.

Replacement suggestions? Breaking from my past as a loyal Big 3 customer, I'm willing to buy a Japanese car if >50% is manufactured in the US.

Needs to be a wagon or hatchback with folding seats, for surfboard & crap-hauling.

Good op-ed piece from P. Krugman

2008-12-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman's column about Ponzi schemes is good. Two highlighted quotes:

"In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America’s G.D.P., up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier. If that extra 3 percent was money for nothing — and it probably was — we’re talking about $400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse."

"Meanwhile, how much has our nation’s future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?"

When I was finishing my B.S. in Physics, I felt a bit foolish heading off to Astro grad school -- when my classmates were off to jobs at Wall Street investment banks, large consulting firms, and internet start-ups. And several of the junior scientists I'd met left academia for hedge funds.

Then came the tech bust, the accounting scandals, and now the financial meltdown. So now my choice looks less obviously financially dumb than it did. But it would be nice if young scientists were paid at levels that allowed, as Krugman says, "our best & brightest young people" to go into science. A post-doc salary in L.A. doesn't go far....

Long article on LGBTQ scientists from "Science"

2008-12-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

There's a long article on LGBTQ scientists in Science Magazine's "Science Careers", linked for your reading pleasure.

Thoughts?

(Pictured is Stanford's Ben Barres.)

Prop 8, the musical

2008-12-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

I guess it was only a matter of time... But wait, that's Allison Janney! And Margaret Cho! And Doogie Howser!

(Amazing how Allison Janney's still gorgeous, even dressed up as a homophobe.)

Transgender Day of Remembrance

2008-11-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Light a candle, march in the streets, and remember the souls we've lost to hatred and fear.

There's a Hollywood protest tonight at 6pm.

Anyone have a link to memorial times & locations around the country?

Looking back on Prop. 8

2008-11-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

Shortly after the election, I volunteered at a public school "star party" -- just a few telescopes showing off Jupiter, the Moon, and star clusters to hundreds of school kids and parents. The students were full of questions, the parents were so enthusiastic they yoga-contorted themselves down to the kid-level eyepieces to see what the kids were yammering about. It was a rousing success -- the principal says they've never had such high turnout for an after-school event.

Despite being bone-tired and still in disbelief over passage of Prop 8, I stayed on my feet, slewed my telescope, and adjusted the eyepiece so kids of all sizes could reach. I explained how the stars in an open cluster are drifting away from their birthplace, out into the galaxy at large.

The parents in line with their children, waiting for a look through my telescope -- how many voted for Prop 8? How many realized that we, the volunteers sharing the stars with their kids, were gay? Did anyone notice my small No on 8 button, and second-guess their vote? How many parents stood up for equality & voted No, even if they weren't sure why?

Morning conversation at the Rose Bowl

2008-11-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

...
The wife: "Angelinos don't trust pedestrians."
Me: "Why do you say that?"
The wife: "People look at us funny when we're out walking."
Me: "They do?"
The wife: "Yeah, some people."
Me: "Because we're dykes, or because we're walking?"

Prop 8 -- waiting for a full count

2008-11-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

Prop 8 is ahead, though provisional and absentee ballots haven't been counted. So we wait, and hope, and know that we did what we could to create a fairer California where everybody is treated equally.

Here's a snapshot of me yesterday, outside a suburban LA polling place, asking voters to vote NO on 8. (Taken to demonstrate that I was standing outside the 100 ft line.)

We tried HARD, we really did.

Beautiful to see Obama win, though. I went to one of the afterparties in LA, tired and grubby from a day at the polls. The ballroom was full of delighted people, many with homemade t-shirts, plurality of African-Americans but with many races represented, dancing & smiling & looking around in wonderment. My wife and I saw both a dark-skinned woman wearing a chador, and a dignified elderly queen dressed in pink. Which is quite a Big Tent.

Update: Can we PLEASE kill the myth that black voters passed Prop 8? They didn't. Old voters and religious voters passed Prop 8. Go read 538's analysis.

Go, Go, Go

2008-11-03T09:41:00.001-08:00

Daughter of Slave votes for Obama

2008-10-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

Worth sharing:

Amanda Jones, age 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries... She is too weak to go the polls, so two of her 10 children — Eloise Baker, 75, and Joyce Jones — helped her fill out a mail-in ballot for Barack Obama, Baker said. "I feel good about voting for him," Amanda Jones said.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

Please vote early

2008-10-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder to vote early if you can. It's easy, and you may shorten the election day line for some poor schmuck who has trouble getting time off to vote.

Also, if you know ANY California residents, now is the time to call & ask them to vote NO on Prop 8. It's too close to call, and we need every vote for equality we can get.

And, because it's hilarious, here for your procrastination pleasure is an obama-lantern.

McCain sneers at women's health

2008-10-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

McCain's sneering finger quotes about the "health of the mother" sure scared the willies out of me.

For your slacking pleasure

2008-10-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

Pay a friendly visit to President Palin's office.

AstroJobs 2009

2008-10-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Anyone else dismayed by the small # of astro faculty jobs on the register so far this fall? Or is it too early?

The rule of thumb for corporate health care:

2008-10-07T10:05:00.001-07:00

"There is no medical procedure so uncomfortable or humiliating that it cannot be made worse by spending three hours on hold with the insurance company."

Hubble repair mission delayed to Feb 2009

2008-09-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

As you may have heard, a key control system on the Hubble Space Telescope failed Saturday. It may be possible, though laborious, to switch to a redundant backup that's been turned off for the past 18 years. However, switching to the backup means you don't have a backup anymore, and you know how NASA likes redundancy. As a result, NASA has delayed the Hubble repair mission from Oct 14 to mid-February 2009 at the earliest.

Some of that delay is for the engineers to figure out how to repair/replace the failed unit. (Apparently there's a spare in a closet.) Some of that delay is to train astronauts in the new repair (Go John Grunsfeld, go!) But most is because of two strange, crazy notions in which NASA, despite all the evidence, still believes. They are:

The International Space Station is NOT a colossal boondoggle we'll dump in the ocean as soon as it's done. Rather, it is vitally important to prove that humans can build pointless space stations in space. Even if it delays fixing Hubble, the one shining achievement of manned spaceflight in the last 20 yrs.
Keeping a backup shuttle ready on the launchpad makes the Space Shuttle safer. One Shuttle: one-in-fifty chance of catastrophe. Two Shuttle: safe.

Just bitter, sorry.
Links: NYT article; Steinn's wrap-up; Julianne's take

Fantasy Dinner Party

2008-09-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

The game: think of living, real people you'd like to invite to a dinner party. (No fictional characters or dead folks in this version of the game.) You get to assume that of course, they'd come to your party.

My list so far:
Salman Rushdie. Madhur Jaffrey. Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Tina Fey. Jane Goodall. Bob Mould. Barbara Kingsolver. Larry Kramer. Adrienne Rich. Alan Bean. Jon Stewart.

Please suggest other guests -- or create your own list.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL

2008-09-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Non-embedded link here.

Do I need to say that Tina Fey rocks my casbah? Thanks to my sib for the link.

Enough Said

2008-09-10T11:19:00.001-07:00

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the Earth yet?

NO.

(props to the wife for the linky)

How two post-docs built an A-bomb

2008-09-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

Fascinating story in the Guardian about two physics postdocs who in 1964, designed from scratch an atomic bomb. They'd been hired by the US Government to see whether a few smart people with no expertise could take a nation nuclear. The answer: yes, in two years.

Up to 17 Hubble Fellows per year?

2008-09-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

"We anticipate offering up to seventeen Hubble fellowships this year, with selection by peer review by experts from areas of research spanning the full range of the Cosmic Origins theme." I suppose that's only 2 more than the old system(10 Hubble Fellows + 5 Spitzer Fellows).

Likewise, the Chandra & GLAST fellowships have been concatenated into the "Einstein Fellowships", with "up to 10 fellows in 2009".

What does this bode for fellowship-seeking astronomers?

The right to make a different choice

2008-09-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Regarding Senator McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

My nonagenarian aunt asked what I thought of "The Eskimo Governor". (Which answers the question of whether she's still mentally sharp.)
It's a personal decision for a woman, when prenatal screening reveals a serious health issue like Downs Syndrome, whether to abort. While I would have made a different choice, I strongly support the right of women to make their own reproductive choices.
What's scary is that Ms. Palin believes women should NOT have those choices.
The NYT is reporting that McCain hoped to nominate Joe Lieberman instead, or maybe Tom Ridge. Because both men support reproductive rights, religious conservatives apparently threatened a floor flight if either was nominated.
Worth reading: this BBC article, which explains the story of Palin's pregnant daughter in the context of the US's sky-high teen pregnancy rate (compared to the developed world), and does its best to explain "abstinence-only" indoctrination to a European audience.
I can't help thinking back to age 17 -- my own immaturity, that of my classmates, and how terribly equipped any of us were for parenthood at that age. My classmates who gave birth in high school -- hmm, their kids are in high school now. Wow.

Pop Quiz!

2008-08-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

Quickly, off the cuff: How many of the 100 US Senators are women?

Write down your best guess in the comments. (Then you may check the wikipedia.)
Remember, if you copy off your neighbor, you're only hurting yourself.

New book from the Female Science Professor

2008-08-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while my CPUs churned, I downloaded the new e-book "Academeology: Random Musings, Strong Opinions & Somewhat Bizarre Anecdotes From An Academic Life " by the blogger Female Science Professor. 286 pages, $5.75 to buy the PDF download.

After a quick read, it looks great -- there are sections on the academic job search, time management, grad school admissions, interpersonal research relations, grant-writing, scientific talks, and more. And a few "Oh no he didn't" war stories that we women-in-science sometimes swap to keep ourselves sane in a sometimes-hostile environment. Sprinked throughout are amusing mini-rants, as you'd expect from an edited, sorted compilation of blog posts.

Result: I've added "Academeology" to my academic career advice bookshelf, next to Richard Reis's "Tomorrow's Professor" and a few others.

Don't miss the Perseid meteor shower tonight!

2008-08-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

Advice on how to see the Perseids can be found at Sky and Telescope.

Slackers: the shower lasts several days (I saw some great Perseids last week), so if you miss Monday night, try Tuesday.

Cool astro videos?

2008-08-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Can anyone recommend favorite astronomy videos? So far I've got this one below, from RXTE (via youtube), which beautifully illustrates how the X-ray sky changes from night to night.

What other videos are out there? Of course "Powers of 10" and "Cosmos" are famous, but what undiscovered viral treasures are out there? All you have to do is beat the video of the inside of a TSA X-ray machine.

On Hubble and late-season baseball trades

2008-07-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

Astronauts are scheduled to visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 to perform "Servicing Mission 4" (SM4). They'll replace the gyroscopes and batteries, swap out the fine guidance sensor, install the WFC3 camera and the COS spectrograph, and try to fix the broken instruments ACS and STIS.

Since this is All-Star game week, let's rephrase in terms of baseball:

At the moment, Hubble is a pro baseball team whose two star pitchers (ACS and STIS) have been on the disabled list for years -- they may never play again. The Hubble All-Stars still shows up for games, but rely on just two aging nuckleball pitchers (WFPC2 and NICMOS). The team has announced a huge trade for two brilliant prospects, WFC3 and COS, who throw pitches nobody's ever seen. (WPC3 even pitches ambidexterously!*) At the same time, the team has scheduled risky surgeries to bring its two disabled pitchers, ACS and STIS, back to work.

So, Hubble fans around the world are waiting for the big trade (Servicing Mission 4), scheduled for October. If it happens, for the next several years the team will be the best in history. If it fails, the team will fall apart. Tense.

* ambidexterious: uses both UV/blue and IR/red detectors. Kinda like throwing with either arm.

Hubble Kaleidoscope finds Evidence of Space Looking All Crazy

2008-07-18T09:18:00.001-07:00

BALTIMORE—Astronomers analyzing the first images captured by the new Hubble Space Kaleidoscope, which went online Tuesday, announced that they've acquired the first concrete evidence that the universe is in a constant state of total weirdness. [full article here.]

Thank you, The Onion, and Andy for the link.

Go see Wall-E

2008-06-30T13:18:00.001-07:00

Saw Pixar's new movie Wall-E over the weekend. No kidding, it's the best movie I've seen on the big screen since "Life is Beautiful" and "American Beauty". The first hour is a Chaplin-style silent movie.

Go see it this week, while it's on the biggest screen at your local multiplex.

Compulsory Summer Reading

2008-06-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Highly recommended: Alison Bechdel's comic essay "Compulsory Reading."

Written to accompany a greatest-books list in Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Happy Birthday, Alan Turing

2008-06-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

A belated birthday shoutout to Alan Turing, the reason, as Cory Doctorow reminded us, that you're sitting at a computer, right now, reading this sentence. Please take a moment to thank a faggot for the digital age.

As you may know, Turing was prosecuted for a same-sex relationship, sentenced to jailtime or forced estrogen injections (he chose the drugs), and driven to suicide in 1954 at age 42. Had he lived to see semiconductor computers, what additional contributions might he have made?

I was reminded of this by the silly comment thread on Cosmic Variance. The post itself was sweet: Sean musing about how CA's marriage equality makes him recall, misty-eyed, his own wedding. The comment thread included the usual slippery slope bullshit arguments, plus a "Stick to your posts on physics, Sean."

Nope, no connection between math/sci/tech and queers. None at all.