An extremely rapid technique for deconvolving single exponential luminescence decay data is described that involves essentially no mathematical manipulation of the experimental data. The method permits "real time" measurement of deconvolved luminescence lifetimes with conventional pulsed, lifetime-fluorometers and phosphorimeters. The method assumes that the true luminescence decay of the chromophore is accurately represented by a single exponential decay function.

A nomogram for deconvolution of single fluorescence decays, M.G. Rockley.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I haven't seen an official note yet, but Rand Simberg has posted that Robert Bussard has passed away. Wikipedia confirms this. He threw off ideas the way some folks shed skin. Physics will be that much the poorer for his death.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I open up today's The New York Times and find a big article on adding a home observatory to your house. Geekdom spreads!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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From the description this does not actually appear to be about October-ish subject matter such as ghosts, but the title certainly caught my eye. Another addition for Mount Toberead!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Geekpress, a report of a real-life droud.

(As the technovelgy entry on "droud" notes, this is not actually the application Niven envisioned.)

Posted by: JohnL at 09:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As I've mentioned (briefly), I'm building a travel Dobsonian telescope around a mirror that I made with my Granddad back in 1982. Here's what I looked like back then. (I'm the one on the left ;-)

We're in the process of polishing the mirror with rouge (as evidenced by the red-stained pitch lap).

Here's the resulting fine piece of optics, some 25 years in the future:
more...

Posted by: JohnL at 06:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via BoingBoing, not quite worksafe flowcharts. But ones that probably best describe your day-to-day crisis management...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When you look at something like this (a 1965 miniature library), you get a sense of how far technology has gone (and might still go). I routinely carry around several hundred books and stories with me on a storage card the fraction of the size of this gadet.

Why stop at some books? Why not the universe in a library? more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Change the planet! However, I would suggest an even better solution would be to re-engineer our entire Solar System. If that's no good, what about a disk, or a ring, or even cosmic spaghetti?

Don't go backwards. Leap forwards.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:06 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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You can build anything with Lego! Even interstellar probes! Presenting a Lego version of the British Interplanetary Society's Daedalus probe to Barnard's Star.

Barnard's Runaway Star? You know the Medusae would never have stood for us poking around in their neighborhood!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

(Richard Feynman, Ph.D.)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One of the smartest guys I know is coming out with a new book! And...in this essay...he has some interesting things to say about "climate change".

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:17 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Like this. Once upon a time (when I was in college), I could go to a back road around the campus and see the Milky Way. When we got our house, I could still see the Milky Way. Then it was only during the dead of winter, or after the air had been cleared out, etc. Now it is a rare occasion when our increasingly urbanized skies allow me to see sights like this with one of my telescopes, let alone my naked eyes.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, not quite. But here are a ton of links about one of the funniest SF (well, mostly)-related shows out there! MST3k! Everybody sing! more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 09:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jay Lake's Mainspring is on the ever-tottering Mount Toberead. Over at SF Signal (their review here), they link to a posting by David Levine. I think I've found Project Rho's (see the Atomic Rockets sub-site) missing twin!

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 08:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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(2006 continued...)

I am shocked (still) to find that the person who made such a major contribution to several of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's books (especially The Mote in God's Eye and the other books in that series; Exiles to Glory, where he appears as a character; and Lucifer's Hammer, where he appears as a character) still does not have his own Wikipedia entry. Surely somebody who knew him at JPL or in fandom in California can do something about this!

(2007 Addendum: A stub of an entry is better than none!)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 01:08 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(2006 continued...)

The omnibus review can now be found here.

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(2006 continued and part of 2007...)

Chet Raymo: The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage.

Made up of: Preface; The Silence; In a Dark Time; Faint Lights; Night Creatures; Beginnings; An Ancient Brilliance; Snakes and Ladders; Stardust; Far Down a Billowing Plain; Hidden Matter; The Monster in the Pool; Night Brought to Numbers; The Blandishments of Color; Follower of the Pleiades; The Shape of Night; A Midwinter Night's Dream; Earth, Kind, Mild; Waiting for the Comet; How Slowly Dark; The Bird and the Fish.

Counts as three entries in the 2006 short story project.

Part of the 2007 Short Story Project.

Part of the 2008 Year in Shorts.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 04:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(2006 continued...)

Douglas R. Hofstadter: Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (An Interlocked Collection of Literary, Scientific, and Artistic Studies. more...

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