• So here I am, watching Dinosaur Train with my 4-year-old. He’s sitting with me, or, more precisely, on as well as around me, in a big armchair. He keeps moving around and poking me with his elbow, as he repositions and props himself up. I learn about new dinosaur species. Scott the Paleontologist — who reminds me…

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  • I had never read a Stephen King book until I picked up his “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” which Eldest had borrowed from a friend and left on the dining room table. I can tell why the man has sold millions of books. “On Writing” is part memoir, part writing advice, and I couldn’t put it…

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  • (Originally appeared here.) A few weeks ago, with his post “What do theoretical physicsts actually do?”, Thoreau inspired me to write a post about what my work entails. But, theory and computation are certainly not the province of physics, and an idea for this carnival was born. I am very excited to share with you a…

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  • Fall Semester

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  • Peer Review Blues

    I am really disillusioned by peer review today. No, it’s not my paper that got rejected. And no, it’s not the first time an incident like this happens. I just got a notice that a paper I had reviewed for Prestigious Society Letters got editorially accepted for publication after 1st revision. I reviewed the original manuscript but never…

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  • Time to PhD

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  • Redneck

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  • This post, ill-formed when I started writing, has been motivated in part by an email exchange with a former undergraduate researcher of mine, now in grad school at Fancypants Uni, and in part by a recent online interaction with another blogger. I am not even sure how to articulate what it is about, but I guess it has…

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  • I have been in the US for well over a decade. About 2/3 of all Thanksgivings we spent at other people’s houses, and the rest we either didn’t celebrate very much (e.g., I’d cook some turkey breasts, but not the whole bird), or we simply had a nice, but nontraditional meal (Thanksgiving is often close to DH’s birthday,…

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