A little over a year ago we had great fun with Lurker Day, in which folks who read the blog but rarely comment were invited to bust out of their shell a little bit, say hi, and tell us why they think the blog is so wonderful. (At Cosmic Variance, we’re all about positive energy.) Now we are informed by Dr. Free-Ride that the second week in January has been declared De-Lurking Week. A whole week! Just to de-lurk. Seems a bit extravagant, but we must go along with what the blogosphere orders.
So leave a comment, especially if you usually don’t. This should fill some time while I am presently too busy to complete planned posts on gourmet chocolate, how to write a research paper, path-dependent utility, nationalism, understanding, moral humanism, and the beginning of the universe. There’s some incentive for you.
Note: Following Phil Plait’s suggestion, we’re experimenting with the wp-cache plugin. This speeds up performance by storing pages in a cache, rather than dynamically generating them each time they are accessed. The downside seems to be that comments don’t show up as long as the pages are cached. So we’ve set them to be cached for about three minutes, after which your comments should appear. There’s got to be a better way…
Hello. Nationalism is the problem, don’t you think? What does it really buy us? Immigration problems? Economic favoritism? War? I am for the abolition of Nationalism in it’s entirety. One world is enough, eh.
Hi! I just started reading your blog. I got here through Google Reader–this blog comes with the Science bundle of feeds.
I’m trying to lurk more, & babel less. So a short comment — On “how to write a research paper”, you may find helpful:
(1) how to give a seminar (in Appendix’); also there: how to write a recommendation letter (in Adenoids),
(2) how to referee a paper (in Appendix),
(3) how to write a grant proposal (in Appendix A); also there: how to apply for a postdoc (in Appendix B),
(4) how to get a job in physics (in Appendix).
(The stuff before the appendices is probably not as useful.) Just my contribution to the cosmological constant (blog=dark energy).
Here I am, ready to listen to anything anyone can tell me what the world is made of. I have a few guesses of my own, but they’re not ready for prime time just yet. Keep up the good work.
Just an undergrad engineer interested in Physics. Keep up the great work. 🙂
I think I’ve been reading since the beginning, since I had been reading Sean’s old blog (probably starting with his response to L. Summers debacle, linked to by Bitch Ph.D.)
Don’t you worry that too many lurkers are being sucked into string theory websites and missing out on opportunities to lurk in competing theoretical paradigms?
Hi, I also subscibed through the Google Reader Science bundle, and have been enjoying this blog immensely.
Funny how Lurker Day and De-Lurker week pretty much do the same thing.
Check out my blog sometime if you feel so inclined.
One day, I swear, I will read more than the first three chapters of this General Relativity book I bought because I read the author’s blog and knew if there was one book on that subject I can understand, it’s this.
Greetings from Tehran, Iran to all readers and writers of CV. This is Mostafa, a graduate student of theoretical high energy physics at SBU (no, it stands for Shahid Beheshti University, not Stony Brook University).
Just to gain a feel of how some great physicists in US think and how they look at the world, is more than enough motivation for me to visit CV everyday.
Thank you for it all.
Phys/astro grad student here seeking
wisdomhumorous anecdotes about the life ahead, and other interesting info. 🙂Hi,
I’m a graduate student in cosmology at Penn – I enjoy reading this blog although I almost never comment on blogs. I’m in my 5th year and should graduate next December, although I’m thinking about leaving the field at least for a little while, this blog and your GR book are some of the things that make me want to keep being a physicist.
Hi,
I’m a physicist (my PhD thesis was about a topic in lattice QCD) with a strong interest in astronomy, especially cosmology. About 1.5 years ago, I left the university and now work as a teacher at “Gymnasien” (German school type, includes approximately high school and college) – I like teaching much more than research, and getting a teaching job at a university without spending most of your time on research is almost impossible in Germany :(.
I’ve been reading this blog for about a year now. I like it very much because
(1) it keeps me updated on the latest news in cosmology, and
(2) there are also many nice posts on seminars, talks and other university activities etc. which I still miss.
I’m a community college English teacher interested in cosmology, astronomy, and physics, but bad at math. I read your blog because you guys are smart, multi-faceted, and, best of all, good clear writers.
I’m an undergrad physics major at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, who posts on occasion but is more prone to lurking. I rather like physicists and you guys run a great blog, so it fits quite well. 🙂
Oh, and Mark was nice enough to explain baryogenesis to me for an article a few weeks ago. *waves*
Hi,
I read you daily but rarely post comments. I’m a mathematician, trained in coding and design theory, retooling myself in mathematical biology, and running a small public education and outreach program at the university observatory, so I try to keep up with current developments in astronomy/cosmology.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Yvette!
Hi!
I was an undergrad at UofC but have followed the exodus and am now a physics grad at Stanford. I mostly lurk here, after coming over from preposterous-universe. I think that the mixture of topics here is especially good.
I am sort of teetering between high-energy and astroparticle experiment, but I think I’ll probably work on LHC for my PhD, good-timing. But what I really want to do is BUILD detectors. I got the chance to help commission the ATLAS detector last year, and I got hooked.
keep it up!
Hey ho! Thanks for a nice blog.
I’m a postdoc at JHU. This is one of a few blogs that I keep up on, but I rarely read comments. No offense meant to anyone – I just don’t have time! I don’t know how some people manage it.
Hi!
I’m a first year physics student from Finland and I’ve been lurking on this blog for about a year now. That’s after I decided I really want to be a physicist and wanted to get a glimpse on how real physicists walk and talk. 😉 I’m now studying in the university of Jyväskylä and I’ve loved the first semester! Thanks for the blog. It’s a great read. 🙂
¡Hola! I’ve been around since the Preposterous Universe days and never really thought about the lurking aspect. Maybe a bit is from being an Aspergerian Physicist who’s dyslexic tendencies help in making me loath writing/typing things out due to my high frequency of typos and word disordering. Anywho, I feel kinda better now having come out of the server rack and can now browse openly.
hello, love the blog, i was way mroe active back at my other college, but since comming to RIT things have become sever fold harder, love your post, and wish i had the time to keep up with the comments and the discussions.
Hi! I’m a ph.d. student in computer science, interested in astronomy and astrophysics. I love reading this blog as much as reading slashdot. How I got started? Took a public tour at Fermi lab, picked up a free Symmetry magazine (http://www.symmetrymag.org/cms/) , read an article about QuantumnDiary (http://interactions.org/quantumdiaries/), and then one day, from browsing the comments on QD, found a link to CV. This blog is great, I shall rate it both informative and insightful!
Greetings. I’m what you’d call an interested layman, being that I’m over twenty years out of grad school and even then never really studied any science (sad, isn’t it?). I’ve heard of Cosmic Variance for a while, via Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula or some of the others I peruse. Looked in a time or two.
But recently someone I know (Hi, Nathan!) mentioned seeing my comment at Michael Bérubé’s blog, and said he’d picked up Bérubé from reading here. Since Bérubé is hanging up his blogging skates, I thought it would make a nice balance if I started reading Cosmic Variance as part of my daily dose of science blogs.
There. Complex, yet tiresome and pedestrian. That’s why I lurk so much.
I’m an English teacher in Austin who loves science. I usually read the feed and so don’t find myself in the comment zone often. Keep it up, this is one of my favorites.