Saturday, December 29
The other night I couldn't sleep and found myself inexplicably watching a late-hour rerun of Oprah's "Favorite Things" episode (not sure which year). Christmas puts me in a list-making mood, so, here are a few of my favorite things from 2007. You will have to imagine all the screeming middle-aged women...
note: for whatever reason, i did things in threes this year. hey, three is a good number.
The National - Boxer
I think this was the best album I heard this year. Yes, I think maybe even better than their last great album Alligator.
Feist - The Reminder
Just a joy to listen to the voice of Leslie Feist. I was really excited about this album ever since Steve gave me "Let It Die" last Christmas. Still a bit surprised by how great all of it is. It's a bit of a shame "1234" got iPod commericial'd to death, but if Ryan Dombal says this is the best album of the year then I can put it in my top 5 without appology.
Justice - Cross
Heir to my love of Daft Punk this is the album from the past year I would most look forward being made into an Anime epic. Liked it so much that I'm not even worrying about damning it with such faint praise. Though I don't think D.A.N.C.E. hands would be quite so cool.
Grindhouse Saw this with Tim at Village North in Roger's Park where they masterfully mis-ordered the reels to grand effect. Also had the best trailers of the year... in the middle of the film. Read about it in Tim's magical two-part review.
Paris, Je T'aime Is there anything better than being in love and seeing a wonderful movie about love? Apparently zombies and Zoë Bell doing stuntwork on the hood of a muscle car... but this was up there too. A beautiful series of love letters to Paris.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters I did not expect to find a morality tale centered around classic video game competition, but this documentary had the most likable protagonist and loathsome foil of any film I saw this year. And it was impressive to see how the mind can take apart Donkey Kong.
Dis-honorable mention: the horror that was Mier Zarchi night. Oh god why?
At CMU he was chosen to give the "last lecture" on Sept 21. A wonderful lecture about headfake learning and life. You can read the back story here. It's fantastic. Watch it here. Or you can ask me for the 300 MB video file I've kept on my hard drive for 3+ months now.
Daft Hands
It requires a certain physical dexterity and mental craziness and probably was alcohol inspired. Spawned endless repeats and one-up-manship knock offs. And you know there are at least 100 people claiming to be the originators on facebook and thinking that means something. As internet memes go, it was just about flawless.
The year in astronomy was surely highlighted by an impressive string of planetary discoveries. Perhaps the most unexpected was hot jupiters, giant gaseous planets orbiting extremely close in to their parent stars. David Charbonneau was named scientist of the year. Spitzer snapped a few planetary spectra, but found no water, just silicate clouds (silicate clouds! that's what rocks are made of... those are some seriously bizarre clouds). And all of this could be overshadowed in the next year or two by still more impressive discoveries. Exciting times for planetary research in Astronomy. Which is just at the cusp of putting the question "Is there life out there?" into proper context, and if you can't get excited about that... well, how did you get to be reading this?
The Bullet Cluster
As Sean Carroll so wonderfully put it, "Most of the universe can't be bothered to interact with you." If you were waiting for a smoking gun for Dark Matter, well, here's your picture. Two galaxy clusters are colliding with hot intracluster gas lighting up the interaction with x-rays(red). The dark matter(blue) passes right through as it's non-interacting. Here's a nice summary from Cosmic variance saving me some text.
Comets McNaught and Holmes
Even for the most cursory backyard astronomers, this was pretty incredible. A comet you can see during the day happens about twice a century. Given the name "the great comet of 2007", McNaught had a tail measuring 35 degrees and made for some spectacular views. Comet Holmes was noteworthy for it's rapid outburst in which is brightened by a factor of half a million in 42 hours. Though it lacked a clear tail, it was easily visible from Chicago in November when I visited, which is more than you can say for the Sun for most of the Chicago winter.
Look, this is really just cloning, so I'm not sure why this sounds much better than using human embryos to some people. Still, it's a big breakthrough that will help dissolve a political impasse, and has some unique capabilities that differentiate this line of research from embryonic stem cells.
Global Warming (No Really!)
The opening of the Northwest passage, Al Gore winning a peace prize. Global warming is already turning the world on its head. Even Mars is warming up. And with meetings in Paris and Bali this year, I'm thinking I should become more active in researching this.
Elite University Endowments and Science Funding crunches
The top universities are making billions from their endowments, as best expressed here. That's fantastic, showing that people really value academic institutions, but it's a bit of a double edge sword. The elite Universities now have such a disparate advantage in funding, the doomsday scenario is that they will become the only places where good science is done(ie, funded) and that would be bad for everyone. Additionally, funding for science from the government is starting to get pinched, as was horrifically expressed in the UK's recent pullout of the International Linear Collider (the next big thing in particle physics) and the US removal of funding for ITER (probably the best and maybe only shot at getting nuclear fusion to work as an energy source). I'm a bit concerned. Is the US really turning anti-science? The public support of science still seems to be there, but the money to allow people to pursue research let alone big projects is increasingly not. Hopefully this American Competitiveness Initiative will actually get funded, though it didn't this year even with Congressional approval.
Wishing for next year: A Presidential Science Debate in 2008!?
I'm just hoping, but it would be great if they get this to happen. The ground swell has started at the end of 2007. I mean, we need a bit more than a show of hands, don't we? Science matters on all the key issues, so it would be nice to hear the presidential candidates speak their mind on the subject, and no less important, it would be nice for the public spotlight to be put on science for a few days surrounding this debate.
sign the list of supporters
note: for whatever reason, i did things in threes this year. hey, three is a good number.
Albums
2007, it was a good year for music. Not quite as good as billed with all the names releasing records this year as very few were in peak form, but nearly all were enjoyable. There's no clear handful of epic records that should top everyone's lists this year, which makes those year end lists a little more interesting reading.The National - Boxer
I think this was the best album I heard this year. Yes, I think maybe even better than their last great album Alligator.
Feist - The Reminder
Just a joy to listen to the voice of Leslie Feist. I was really excited about this album ever since Steve gave me "Let It Die" last Christmas. Still a bit surprised by how great all of it is. It's a bit of a shame "1234" got iPod commericial'd to death, but if Ryan Dombal says this is the best album of the year then I can put it in my top 5 without appology.
Justice - Cross
Heir to my love of Daft Punk this is the album from the past year I would most look forward being made into an Anime epic. Liked it so much that I'm not even worrying about damning it with such faint praise. Though I don't think D.A.N.C.E. hands would be quite so cool.
Filmgoing Experiences
I say filmgoing experience and not movies because I didn't honestly catch that many movies this year, and I'm fairly sure I missed some of the best. Still, I had a few grand movie experiences this year (and a few god-awful... yes, I'm talking about Transformers).Grindhouse Saw this with Tim at Village North in Roger's Park where they masterfully mis-ordered the reels to grand effect. Also had the best trailers of the year... in the middle of the film. Read about it in Tim's magical two-part review.
Paris, Je T'aime Is there anything better than being in love and seeing a wonderful movie about love? Apparently zombies and Zoë Bell doing stuntwork on the hood of a muscle car... but this was up there too. A beautiful series of love letters to Paris.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters I did not expect to find a morality tale centered around classic video game competition, but this documentary had the most likable protagonist and loathsome foil of any film I saw this year. And it was impressive to see how the mind can take apart Donkey Kong.
Dis-honorable mention: the horror that was Mier Zarchi night. Oh god why?
Internet Memes
Randy Pausch's Last Lecture"Really achieving your childhood dreams"At CMU he was chosen to give the "last lecture" on Sept 21. A wonderful lecture about headfake learning and life. You can read the back story here. It's fantastic. Watch it here. Or you can ask me for the 300 MB video file I've kept on my hard drive for 3+ months now.
| Lolcats R everywherz Carol & co. were obviously way ahead of the curve on this, but seems like this kind of came to a head this year. Even astronomy got the Lolcat treatment, and it's updated not nearly often enough! And the pictures are so cute. And of course it spawned the LOL Schordinger. |  |
It requires a certain physical dexterity and mental craziness and probably was alcohol inspired. Spawned endless repeats and one-up-manship knock offs. And you know there are at least 100 people claiming to be the originators on facebook and thinking that means something. As internet memes go, it was just about flawless.
Science Stories
Of course, much of the best science from this year is still being written (I still have three papers to finish up for my thesis, not that that's related to the first sentence in any way). Still, there were a lot of great big-picture-solving results to come out this year.Astrophysics
Planets, like everywhereThe year in astronomy was surely highlighted by an impressive string of planetary discoveries. Perhaps the most unexpected was hot jupiters, giant gaseous planets orbiting extremely close in to their parent stars. David Charbonneau was named scientist of the year. Spitzer snapped a few planetary spectra, but found no water, just silicate clouds (silicate clouds! that's what rocks are made of... those are some seriously bizarre clouds). And all of this could be overshadowed in the next year or two by still more impressive discoveries. Exciting times for planetary research in Astronomy. Which is just at the cusp of putting the question "Is there life out there?" into proper context, and if you can't get excited about that... well, how did you get to be reading this?
The Bullet Cluster
As Sean Carroll so wonderfully put it, "Most of the universe can't be bothered to interact with you." If you were waiting for a smoking gun for Dark Matter, well, here's your picture. Two galaxy clusters are colliding with hot intracluster gas lighting up the interaction with x-rays(red). The dark matter(blue) passes right through as it's non-interacting. Here's a nice summary from Cosmic variance saving me some text.
Comets McNaught and Holmes
Even for the most cursory backyard astronomers, this was pretty incredible. A comet you can see during the day happens about twice a century. Given the name "the great comet of 2007", McNaught had a tail measuring 35 degrees and made for some spectacular views. Comet Holmes was noteworthy for it's rapid outburst in which is brightened by a factor of half a million in 42 hours. Though it lacked a clear tail, it was easily visible from Chicago in November when I visited, which is more than you can say for the Sun for most of the Chicago winter.
non-Astronomy Science Stories
New Stem CellsLook, this is really just cloning, so I'm not sure why this sounds much better than using human embryos to some people. Still, it's a big breakthrough that will help dissolve a political impasse, and has some unique capabilities that differentiate this line of research from embryonic stem cells.
Global Warming (No Really!)
The opening of the Northwest passage, Al Gore winning a peace prize. Global warming is already turning the world on its head. Even Mars is warming up. And with meetings in Paris and Bali this year, I'm thinking I should become more active in researching this.
Elite University Endowments and Science Funding crunches
The top universities are making billions from their endowments, as best expressed here. That's fantastic, showing that people really value academic institutions, but it's a bit of a double edge sword. The elite Universities now have such a disparate advantage in funding, the doomsday scenario is that they will become the only places where good science is done(ie, funded) and that would be bad for everyone. Additionally, funding for science from the government is starting to get pinched, as was horrifically expressed in the UK's recent pullout of the International Linear Collider (the next big thing in particle physics) and the US removal of funding for ITER (probably the best and maybe only shot at getting nuclear fusion to work as an energy source). I'm a bit concerned. Is the US really turning anti-science? The public support of science still seems to be there, but the money to allow people to pursue research let alone big projects is increasingly not. Hopefully this American Competitiveness Initiative will actually get funded, though it didn't this year even with Congressional approval.
Wishing for next year: A Presidential Science Debate in 2008!?
I'm just hoping, but it would be great if they get this to happen. The ground swell has started at the end of 2007. I mean, we need a bit more than a show of hands, don't we? Science matters on all the key issues, so it would be nice to hear the presidential candidates speak their mind on the subject, and no less important, it would be nice for the public spotlight to be put on science for a few days surrounding this debate.
sign the list of supporters
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