Neutrinos are not traveling faster than light.

This story has been finding its way around the web for a while now. It began when OPERA released results in September of 2011 finding neutrinos traveling faster than light. This posed profound problems with current understanding of relativity since faster than light particles can be used to send signals effectively back in time. When the press was buzzing that “Einstein was wrong,” that was only partially correct. The theory special relativity doesn’t explicitly disallow faster than light particles, it just says that they cannot be slowed down past the speed of light and have to be able to travel back in time. You need to impose another condition on special relativity, called casuality, in order to disallow faster-than-light particles. Simply put, all casuality says is that the future cannot influence the past.

Susan Cain on the power of introversion.

I certainly have felt and still kind of feel like I need to be extroverted. Or at least that I should have some extroverted qualities like being gregarious and instantly likable.

But I'm not; I'm quiet and reserved and extremely contemplative. I won't win an argument with force of personality, and that should be OK.

The video below is about introversion and how it's not only OK, but a good thing.

Reason Rally, Washington D.C. 2012

Yesterday was the Reason Rally in Washington, D.C. on the mall, and since I live in the area, I decided to go. Unfortunately it was raining, but I still had a good time. Notable people speaking included: Adam Savage, Tim Minchin, Lawrence Krauss, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Sean Faircloth, and Richard Dawkins. Also, videos of Penn Jillette and Bill Maher were played. (There were many more people and activists as well.) I personally identify more with the skeptic movement than the atheist movement, but nonetheless, it was fun time. The aim of the rally was to bring more reason into government in the form of keeping our government secular like the founders wanted. There was also a large push for atheists to "come out," and to not be quiet about their (non-)beliefs.

What happens to physicists as we age...

Awesome webcomic by Zach Weiner:



I take issue with only one mischaracterization here. We're in the "Telling other fields they're wrong about everything" phase the moment we enter into physics!

And of course, we're right that they're wrong. What do they do? Not physics? That's right.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Wolfram Alpha

After seeing this memorable scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I wondered how this would have gone if they had Wolfram Alpha in their pocket, so I asked Wolfram Alpha the following:

Age of ground breaking physics discoveries gets older and older...

We've all heard the stereotype: You're a young bright student hoping to contribute to physics, but there's only one problem: You better hurry because your window of opportunity is coming to a close -- if you don't make an amazing discovery by age 30, your chances of making a good discovery start droppin'.

A conservative on gay marriage: "I believe in God, liberty and my gay son"

Thanks to a friend, I came across this article title "I believe in God, liberty and my gay son." It makes me hopeful that this issue will stretch across the divide of Democrat/Republican and theist/nontheist.

In particular, the J. P. Marzullo writes

When I found out he was gay 19 years ago when he was 15, I struggled and asked God to help me. I asked, Why me?

God's plan was to make me a more tolerant person and a more understanding human being.

While I may disagree with some of the assumptions underlying this line of reasoning, I am nonetheless happy with the conclusions he came to. With any luck, more of the religious will come to this conclusion.

via my good friend Jeremy Clark