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…
Hey there,
Think I have been commenting once or twice during the last year, but that’s it, so I guess I’m a bit of a lurker too.
I’m a Physics/Astronomy student from ccopenhagen with a special interest in cosmology. I also have been following with great interest the discussions about religious influences on science and Dawkins’ new book – great review, Sean!!
I’ve wanted to comment lots of times, but I don’t wanna write unless I’m sure it’s well thought through, And I don’t have time for that very often.
However, more comments might be spewed from my throat later.
Until then, I’ll just enjoy your scribblings.
Hi
Lurking is hard work, just to think of all those times when I wanted to jump in with my new TOE, only to resist the temptation.
So let’s make this also “lurker appreciation week” in tribute to all those undisclosed TOEs.
Hi! I see you have lots of student lurkers; I’ll weigh in from the other side. I’m 64 and retired. I got a PhD in mathematics back in the Cretaceous era, but left the academic word in the 1970’s.
I started reading Cosmic Variance regularly after coming across Sean’s “Quantum Interrogation” post — a wonderful and convincing article. I wish Sean would do the same some time with an article on “Renormalization”; the popular explanations I’ve seen make me feel as though I’m watching 3 card monte or some other conjuring trick.
My favorite Cosmic Variance picture was the one in JoAnne’s “Sun Shots”. Looking at it convinces me that neutrinos are real, not some mathematical abstraction. Sean’s “Dark Matter Exists” pictures are also very nice.
Cosmic Variance is a great place to visit for people like me who are out of the academic loop, but still interested in Science.
Done.
Well, all right then. I’m delurking. I enjoy this blog immensely. It’s always interesting and thought-provoking. After reading here for a bit, my IQ shoots up at least 10 points.
Great job! Keep it.
Hi from Mexico
For an economist, its nice to take a break and read about a science with theories and data that are more than simple syllogisms and dirty white noise. Please keep it up! Also, I thought I might use this delurking moment to pass on an interesting news story related to both politics and physics.
I’m a manager at a computer company with a lifetime interest in astronomy and science. After being in the business world for 20+ years I really miss the kind of environment and people found here at CV. My lotto-winning-dream is to be able to retire early and go to grad school in Cosmology.
p.s. Keep the book recommendations coming. I’m reading Susskind’s “The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”. Good stuff!
I’m an aspiring physics undergrad. I happened upon this site while searching for African American physicists (I hope to be one myself) and was inspired by what I found. I also share a name with Clifford, so that practically sealed the deal. I mostly haven’t responded until now for fear of sounding stupid, and a general all-round laziness. 😛
Yet another physics undergrad. CV is TEH AWESOME. 🙂
I just graduated with a Phys degree and I work for LIGO. Haven’t read you for very long, but I’m slowly working my way back in time. Any gravitational physicists among you? 🙂
Hey.
I’m Meghan, and I’m a junior in high school. I thought I wanted to be some sort of particle physicist until this year. Now that I’m taking an actual physics class, it’s actually really boring. And I’m not doing too well, either.
I came across CV while researching the University of Chicago… I can’t remember how, exactly. I read it when I don’t have time, when I have massive projects due in less than 12 hours, and when I’m basically trying to forget about life.
I’m a lurker and occasional commenter. I’m a professional physicist, but in a totally different area. I read to stay abreast of discoveries in other areas and get a feeling for what my colleagues upstairs are doing.
I also appreciate the snarky atheism ;).
Love the site. Found it when you posted very smartly about Dawkins’ The God Delusion, even if I didn’t agree with every word (though I am strongly agnostic, bordering on atheist). Keep up the good work.
I went through high school being good at physics and wanting to be an astronomer, but for some reason my maths ran out of steam in my last year there. Switched to philosophy and psychology at university, then worked in IT and latterly business process improvement.
In a parallel universe I am a cosmologist. Cosmic Variance is a window to that universe. Given the prognosis on this planet, sticking around to see what dark matter turns out to be seems as good a reason as any to keep on keeping on.
Having met Sean at my undergrad institution (thanks again for the face-to-face), I followed his internet trail back to this website and have been hooked ever since. I’ve only commented a couple times because I tend to prioritize my busy schedule, and I’m always much more concerned with reading the main posts. I’m graduating with my BS in physics this May and am currently awaiting graduate admissions results from several of the top particle theory and plasma physics schools in the country. I’m extremely inclined to the particle theorist’s lifestyle and enjoy the tedious and abstract mathematics deeply, though there are a few individuals trying to influence me to join in the international quest for controlled thermonuclear fusion power and do plasma physics in grad school. Thus, I guess you could say I’m still on the fence and am awaiting the epiphany that will (hopefully) occur soon after I learn where I have gained acceptance. Some may say it is not important to know exactly what you are doing going into grad school, but I’ve been told that with plasma physics’ limited student enrollment, they tend to strong arm commitment out of their students at the time of admission. If particle theory remains my preference, I hope to work with extra-dimensional and supersymmetric field theories, especially in a context that lends itself to making physical predictions
…and I’ll want a big chalkboard, because just like food tastes better when you cook it outside (at a campout or bbq), physics looks better messily sprawled out across a wall-sized chalkboard.
I’d really enjoy a post about the philosophical motivations that led CV’s contributors to finally decide on particle theory instead of some other advanced theoretical field during their graduate studies. In fusion research I see the potential to change the world in drastic ways (environmentally, socioculturally, politically, scientifically), but the excitement of the discovery and development of *NEW* science, new theories, and testing the absolute limits of our knowledge regarding how the entire universe works captivates me, and I know the nature of particle theory work would suit my tastes much better. Anyone care to start another thread???
Just found your blog after seeing your article in Physics World (the magazine of the UK-based institute of physics…)
I’m a sell-out physicist who ended up working in a bank!
Hello! I’m a grad. student in particle theory. Have been reading your blog for about a year now.
It’s great to hear from all the lurkers. We’re not trying to shame anyone into becoming a regular commenter! Okay, we are, but we’re resigned to failure.
undergrad physics student.
de-lurked
Hello from a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area who has physics envy: I almost earned a Physics/Astronomy degree, but CS got me out of school faster.
Thanks for all the great posts, I look forward to reading more exciting news on work I missed out on.
Hi! I am a physics grad., who has started research, but it still searching for her ultimate interest.. one that’ll draw me like a magnet does to iron.
Shocking as it may seem, what I enjoy the most about CV are the non-scientific posts. I get enough in the name of science 24*7. What I am most ignorant about is the non-academic aspects of scientists’ minds, and their experiences. That explains my “lurking” 🙂
Some of the posts here have been pretty eye-opening, and helped me understand what I experience as I enter the scientific community myself!
Thank you very much!
As a dead languages Orientalist, I understand very little of what I read here, but do keep on coming back for more, if only for the intellectual engagement of the writers.
I am just an average middle-aged guy who is fascinated by much of what I read here. At a certain point, it might as well be written in Aztec, but otherwise I find the articles and discussions here to be a wonderful change of pace from everday life on a softare development team.
Now I shall go back to my typical lurker role.
I’m a high school senior in Chicago, IL (U of C Lab Schools) and will be heading to Yale next year, probably studying math, physics, or something related. I have been reading this site for maybe a month or so. I only really discovered how fun physics and math can be a year ago, since the math/science curriculum is really anti-intellectual throughout much of school. My physics teacher has really convinced me that math and physics are as beutiful as any of the arts, and he’s guiding me in GR self study right now (starting with semi-pop treatments before I hunker down with the math).
It is really heartening to see that professional physicists think about some of the same things as “regular” people. My parents are both economists, and they sort of guide me away from physics because it is so hard and so “useless.” This blog is certainly increasing the probability that I end up majoring in physics.