Dear authors,
When submitting your paper to the arxiv, please collect your bibliography data from SPIRES. This way, the arXiv will be able to recognise your references and attribute appropriate citations automatically. Whereupon, the authors you have cited will wake up to some happy news, rather than the arduous task of reformatting your bibliography and exchanging hopeful, pleading e-mails with SPIRES Corrections.
Special note to older physicists. You don't like the format? Oh dear. Well, never mind, you get yourself snuggled up by the fire and let us get on with the work. It's easier for us, you see, because we have more time: we only care about being cited, not the format the citation takes, so we don't have to waste hours of our time changing "," to "", for example, and so we can just get on with the physics.
You settled in there? Good. Cup of tea? Co-co? Oh dear, little accident, I'll get a mop...
Lots of love,
Other authors.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Grand Designs.
Notice the irreverent title? Comparing Hawking's latest book with reality TV trash? Good, just checking.
Love this paragraph from the NY times review of the book:
"The real news about “The Grand Design,” however, isn’t Mr. Hawking’s supposed jettisoning of God, information that will surprise no one who has followed his work closely. The real news about “The Grand Design” is how disappointingly tinny and inelegant it is."
Good commentry by Woit over at Not Even Wrong.
Love this paragraph from the NY times review of the book:
"The real news about “The Grand Design,” however, isn’t Mr. Hawking’s supposed jettisoning of God, information that will surprise no one who has followed his work closely. The real news about “The Grand Design” is how disappointingly tinny and inelegant it is."
Good commentry by Woit over at Not Even Wrong.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Comments.
As I've mentioned already, I have a "comment" on a paper ready to go. The paper is by a powerful professor. The paper is in PRL. My comment is one column long, but it could be a paragraph because I can demolish all his arguments in one line. Alright, two. One line for the shiny equation. So two lines, but kind of irrefutable because, um, well, the bit of maths in that second line which is, well, correct. (I might also not use the word screwed.)
Not that my comment will ever seee the light of day. I have already been warned off trying to publish it by my colleagues, because it will be politcal suicide. They are correct. They're also correct to say that most comments and the resulting counter comments end up as whingeing rants and/or personal attacks. See for example this one.
No idea who this guy is or whether the comment he is replying to was correct or not. Again, though, moderators? Hello? Five pages of text with no equations, again. (He has some in-line stuff, but it looks like notation.)
It's hard not to become irate when someone tells you the paper you've just poured months of your life into is a sack of crap. Or when you know that you can shit papers which are better the crap being published by people with All Hallowed Sacred Tenure (blessed be it's permanenty name).
But, as with most occasions in life, becoming angry does nothing for you. The sad thing is that being correct doesn't do anything for you either, when in comes to physics. Celebrity culture has infected the game - you need to have money and the prestige and networking which comes with it to get into the best journals. Once you have the money, you could scrawl your poop on a page and PRL would still go giddy over it.
Yeah, I'm jealous. I'm also right, but we've already established how relevant that is....
Not that my comment will ever seee the light of day. I have already been warned off trying to publish it by my colleagues, because it will be politcal suicide. They are correct. They're also correct to say that most comments and the resulting counter comments end up as whingeing rants and/or personal attacks. See for example this one.
No idea who this guy is or whether the comment he is replying to was correct or not. Again, though, moderators? Hello? Five pages of text with no equations, again. (He has some in-line stuff, but it looks like notation.)
It's hard not to become irate when someone tells you the paper you've just poured months of your life into is a sack of crap. Or when you know that you can shit papers which are better the crap being published by people with All Hallowed Sacred Tenure (blessed be it's permanenty name).
But, as with most occasions in life, becoming angry does nothing for you. The sad thing is that being correct doesn't do anything for you either, when in comes to physics. Celebrity culture has infected the game - you need to have money and the prestige and networking which comes with it to get into the best journals. Once you have the money, you could scrawl your poop on a page and PRL would still go giddy over it.
Yeah, I'm jealous. I'm also right, but we've already established how relevant that is....
Twilight falls on the arXiv.
26 August 2010. The seas boiled, lightning cracked, Duncan's horses did turn and eat themselves as usual, the Kraken rose in a foul mood and...
...well. Some physicists may have become a tad disgruntled this morning, but that's all that happened. Even that isn't likely these days, so I doubt anyone really marked that today was the day when the arXiv finally jumped the shark.
Theck out this missive on emergent gauge fields.
Four pages of "Microsoft Word" text with not a single equation. Moderators? No, ok.
Over on hep-ph, the only single topic which has been considered important in QCD conferences for the past N years continues to dominate -- we have yet more attempts at solving the Schwinger-Dyson equations, and an introduction to the Dyson-Schwinger equations.
For those of you not up to date on the Schwinger/Dyson/Dyson/Schwinger Saga, it goes like this: Schwinger is a scrawny looking, possibly in-the-closet sappy wet vampire, while Dyson is a super-buff certainly-in-the-closet werewolf jock. The physics community has divided itself into two screaming fan-girl groups who rate one of these two celebrity-fuelled man-whores over the other. One group works on what they call Schwinger-Dyson equations, the other on Dyson-Schwinger.
The rivalry has become so fierce that you can't even attend conferences on one "topic" if you work on the other: a young postdoc recently made that mistake and had to miss the poster session because he was putting a plaster over a really, really nasty nail scratch. That particular conference was cancelled soon after because the keynote speaker became so distressed over his broken nail that he locked himself in the toilet and cried so hard his mascara dripped all over his presentation, ruining his homemade fan-girl drawning of himself being tenderly yet firmly embraced by a mysteriously pale and moody looking Witten.
(Oh, and all that Twilight stuff goes for lattice people who argue about which fermions are less wrong on the lattice, too. You really can't mix up your conferences there -- mee-ow!)
...well. Some physicists may have become a tad disgruntled this morning, but that's all that happened. Even that isn't likely these days, so I doubt anyone really marked that today was the day when the arXiv finally jumped the shark.
Theck out this missive on emergent gauge fields.
Four pages of "Microsoft Word" text with not a single equation. Moderators? No, ok.
Over on hep-ph, the only single topic which has been considered important in QCD conferences for the past N years continues to dominate -- we have yet more attempts at solving the Schwinger-Dyson equations, and an introduction to the Dyson-Schwinger equations.
For those of you not up to date on the Schwinger/Dyson/Dyson/Schwinger Saga, it goes like this: Schwinger is a scrawny looking, possibly in-the-closet sappy wet vampire, while Dyson is a super-buff certainly-in-the-closet werewolf jock. The physics community has divided itself into two screaming fan-girl groups who rate one of these two celebrity-fuelled man-whores over the other. One group works on what they call Schwinger-Dyson equations, the other on Dyson-Schwinger.
The rivalry has become so fierce that you can't even attend conferences on one "topic" if you work on the other: a young postdoc recently made that mistake and had to miss the poster session because he was putting a plaster over a really, really nasty nail scratch. That particular conference was cancelled soon after because the keynote speaker became so distressed over his broken nail that he locked himself in the toilet and cried so hard his mascara dripped all over his presentation, ruining his homemade fan-girl drawning of himself being tenderly yet firmly embraced by a mysteriously pale and moody looking Witten.
(Oh, and all that Twilight stuff goes for lattice people who argue about which fermions are less wrong on the lattice, too. You really can't mix up your conferences there -- mee-ow!)
Friday, 2 July 2010
PRL
A paper by my rivals has been accepted by PRL. It is manifestly rubbish -- there is a problematic divergence in their calculation which they avoid by applying a random, unphysical, ad-hoc prescription which manifestly violates the most basic tennent of gauge invariance. It is therefore, total nonsense. But it's in PRL now.
Thoughts.
1) What am I supposed to do? I can prove their arguments are wrong in a second, but I don't understand how to solve the problem. I have ideas, but they're not working out yet. So do I write a comment? I'm a postdoc, and one of the rivals is a "top level" proffessor with, you know, The Power. Who do you think is going to come out on top?
2) This is what happens when people who were, two years ago, still writing the Dirac equation down with "alpha" and "beta" matrices in it, think that they understand QED all of a sudden and rush a paper out.
3) Walking into PRL seems to be easy for these people, whether what they write is bullshit or not.
4) Annoyed.
Thoughts.
1) What am I supposed to do? I can prove their arguments are wrong in a second, but I don't understand how to solve the problem. I have ideas, but they're not working out yet. So do I write a comment? I'm a postdoc, and one of the rivals is a "top level" proffessor with, you know, The Power. Who do you think is going to come out on top?
2) This is what happens when people who were, two years ago, still writing the Dirac equation down with "alpha" and "beta" matrices in it, think that they understand QED all of a sudden and rush a paper out.
3) Walking into PRL seems to be easy for these people, whether what they write is bullshit or not.
4) Annoyed.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
The Higgs will eat your soul.
Some of the billions of dollarpounds going into the LHC are being given to the same kind of people who actually put a monkey in a cage with a typewriter and waited for it to produce a sonnet. (It threw its shit around and pressed "s" a lot, apparently.)
According to this article over at the BBC, a "sonification team" (oh my lord) are working on a way to convert the LHC data into sounds so that scientists can identify the Higgs via "listening to the data".
"The aim is to give physicists at the LHC another way to analyse their data," apparently. Clearly we haven't been doing enough:
"Dear God. The powerful supercomputers, hugely sophisticated algorithms and achingly exauhstive statistial analyses which have been devised aren't going to be enough to prove the Higgs exists!"
"Sir! What do we do, sir?"
"Jenkins? Jenkins! Find me a god-damn hippy and get it inside that control room, STAT."
"A hippy, sir?"
"That's right, man, a hippy. We need some flower power loving hippy chick with grass in her hair, sitting in the lotus position and listening to the sound of the universe. If the Higgs is out there, only a hippy will be able to hear its cosmic rhythm."
"By god, sir, you're right!"
"Permission to speak freely sir!"
"Go ahead, Daniels."
"Sir... a hippy, sir? It's... it's not right, Sir!"
"I know, Daniels, I know! By god, do you think I don't feel the shame? Hippies make me sick to my stomach but it's the only god-damned hope we have of detecting the Higgs."
"Sir. Yes sir."
"Stiff upper lip, men! Now, we don't have much time. Get me that hippy. And we're going to need her stoned. Off. Her. Tits. before that machine fires up."
"Sir, YES SIR!"
"Carry on, men."
On the plus side, if you take a listen to the Higgs on the BBC site, you'll find it sounds just like Aphex Twin, which is always good. I look forward to the first high energy collision which results in a twisted voice screaming "I will eat your soul!" from inside the machine.
Rather that than supersymmetry.
According to this article over at the BBC, a "sonification team" (oh my lord) are working on a way to convert the LHC data into sounds so that scientists can identify the Higgs via "listening to the data".
"The aim is to give physicists at the LHC another way to analyse their data," apparently. Clearly we haven't been doing enough:
"Dear God. The powerful supercomputers, hugely sophisticated algorithms and achingly exauhstive statistial analyses which have been devised aren't going to be enough to prove the Higgs exists!"
"Sir! What do we do, sir?"
"Jenkins? Jenkins! Find me a god-damn hippy and get it inside that control room, STAT."
"A hippy, sir?"
"That's right, man, a hippy. We need some flower power loving hippy chick with grass in her hair, sitting in the lotus position and listening to the sound of the universe. If the Higgs is out there, only a hippy will be able to hear its cosmic rhythm."
"By god, sir, you're right!"
"Permission to speak freely sir!"
"Go ahead, Daniels."
"Sir... a hippy, sir? It's... it's not right, Sir!"
"I know, Daniels, I know! By god, do you think I don't feel the shame? Hippies make me sick to my stomach but it's the only god-damned hope we have of detecting the Higgs."
"Sir. Yes sir."
"Stiff upper lip, men! Now, we don't have much time. Get me that hippy. And we're going to need her stoned. Off. Her. Tits. before that machine fires up."
"Sir, YES SIR!"
"Carry on, men."
On the plus side, if you take a listen to the Higgs on the BBC site, you'll find it sounds just like Aphex Twin, which is always good. I look forward to the first high energy collision which results in a twisted voice screaming "I will eat your soul!" from inside the machine.
Rather that than supersymmetry.
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