I suppose the vast majority (4 out of the 5 of you) of people who read this blog are astrophysicists (the other person will just have to wait). So maybe one of you can explain to me what's the deal with astro-ph these days? Hm, that's just asking for a bunch of punchlines, isn't it? But I have a specific problem in mind.
The average astro-ph entry looks like this:
Title: Halo X-ray Something Cosmology
Authors: X. PhD ((1) Please Donate to Me U.)
Comments: 20 pages, 10 figures, submitted to some journal
Subjects: Astrophysics (astro-ph)
Abstract:
Last week, I noticed something new. Between "Comments" and "Subjects," some entries have a new field that often reads (this appears only in the listing and not the abstract page):License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
That URL states
This seems to be pretty typical stuff but what's the point? Isn't this the terms under which all astro-ph submissions are accepted (that is, isn't adding this field redundant)?
So it didn't seem so important and I tried to put it out of my mind. Today, though, I saw something truly mind-boggling. The very first entry (arXiv:0802.1210, although once again, you can only see this on the listing page not the abstract page) has this "Comments" and "License" field:Comments: 21 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ApJ
Now wait a second. It's true that everything I know about licenses and copyrights and such comes from skimming Slashdot, but something's not making sense. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (which that URL redirects to) says that the author has the copyright to this work and dedicates it to the public domain where "the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived." I think this means that anyone can take any part of this paper and reuse for any reason without express permission of the author. That would be well within the authors' rights and, I think, acceptable to it being listed on astro-ph.
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
But this paper is also submitted to ApJ, where presumably, they intend to publish the paper. And before they can publish, they have to sign the publication agreement (that link opens a pdf), which states "you grant and assign the entire copyright for this paper exclusively to the Society" and, later, "the Society, in turn, grants to you the non-exclusive right of republication, subject only to your giving appropriate credit to the Journal." Reading this, I think that if you are writing a book, some company (not self-publishing) has agreed to publish it, and you want to include a plot from this paper, you would need to have the express permission of ApJ. How is this not in disagreement with the Creative Commons license?
So this is probably the most obscure, geeky, and pedantic blog post I've ever written, but I'm hoping I'm not the absolute only person who finds this interesting/puzzling.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Can Someone Explain to Me What's Up with astro-ph?
Monday, January 28, 2008
Wrapping Up January
Even though I don't have anything really bloggable to write about, I didn't want to end the month with paltry two posts ('oh, the shame!'). So here's the quick round up of the month:
1.) I estimated (probably while waiting in the airport) that I spent 25% of my time away from Bonn in 2007.
2.) I got a favorite bar in Bonn finally. Blow-Up has a cute little dance floor, lots of couches, and always interesting music (Motown and Funk one night, French covers of American rock standards another).
3.) I'm patiently waiting until 6pm to pick up my bike from the shop ('Ich habe ein Problem mit meinem Fahrrad.').
4.) January represents the fourth straight month of obsessively listening to the Mountain Goats (hell, I spent month one, obsessively listening to just 8 songs). I've mentioned them briefly in other posts (and Tim's blogged about them twice too), but let me say it one more time. If you've ever had any inclination to take my advice about anything, the advice to follow would be to spend some time listening to the Mountain Goats. And once you get your grubby little hands on some songs, don't just play them while you're working or doing the dishes, etc.: it's all about the lyrics. A roomful of monkeys on typewriters may produce Hamlet in an amount of time smaller than the age of the universe (I'm not clear on the probability of this), but I could never imagine to produce anything as beautiful, smart, and funny as John Darnielle manages to pack into a few lines in his many, many great songs. Is that enough of an endorsement? Sound off on your favorite lyrics in the comments.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Not Much Going On Here So ...
I haven't had a lot of blogging material lately -- all living in the code and obsessively listening to the Mountain Goats -- so I thought I'd better at least point you to something else to read. My recommendation is the Onion's AV Club blog, specifically The Box of Paperbacks Book Club (there's no label for that, sadly, I just go here and skim for it). In this feature, the writer 'purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them.' Each entry reviews a different book.
Monday, January 07, 2008
December Was a Rousing Success ... Blogwise
Yes, for the first time in a long time I did 7 posts in a month. I'm finally back in Germany -- arriving this morning and I didn't sleep a wink on the overnight flight from Boston. By the way, sunrise here was at 8:32 AM and sunset will be at 4:43 PM. I clearly don't have much to say, so why am I blogging? Well, as long as the sun is up, I should be too. I'm at work, so I don't fall asleep, but I can't actually do work, since I'll certainly do more harm than good.
Monday, December 31, 2007
San Francisco
It's a good place to catch the view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
In Case You'd Like to See More of Me Online
Now I know what you all have been thinking: weekly blog posts are not nearly enough online interaction with me. In that case, here's the fairly exhaustive list of me online.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Amsterdam, Finally
After Sean and I had to abort our trip to Amsterdam, I finally made it there when my parents came to visit me. And a few days before 2008, I've finally managed to blog about it.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Goodbye Old Friend
Friday, December 21, 2007
Snow
Monday, December 17, 2007
Washington, D.C.
Sean and I went to D.C. for the weekend, temporarily escaping the snow in Boston. It was really nice to visit some old friends (Sarah, Tim and Laura Jean, Cathy and Francis). We also did a little sightseeing: the monuments, the Capitol, the National Archives, and the Air and Space Museum. All in all, it was pretty chill and I didn't bring a camera, so I don't have pictures to share either. By the way, the National Christmas Tree is terribly ugly (giant, plastic, light-up bows?!).
Thursday, December 06, 2007
In Which I Become an Aunt
Say hello to Julia Irene, who couldn't wait any longer and arrived last Friday, 3 weeks early and weighing in at 5 lbs 9 oz.
A real cutie, isn't she? I get to see her, live and in person, in 2 weeks.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Yale-Harvard Game
I'm hoping there will be an important blog update soon, but for now I'll have to counsel patience. By the way, Saturday before Thanksgiving, I went down to New Haven for the Yale-Harvard football game. Now when I say 'I went to the Game,' let's be clear, I didn't actually see any football; I spent 4-5 hours tailgating. I mostly hung out with people I've never met before -- although I ran into several good ol' Branfordians -- and now have a hilarious story involving vomiting (not me) that I can't in good conscience put on the internet. I also ran into Ted Kennedy at a Dunkin' Donuts just across the Connecticut border.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Cambridge and Cambridge
Apologies for the long, long delay between posts (3 weeks!), but I was probably entirely psychotic during those weeks and any post might have constituted grounds for institutionalizing me, so it was probably all for the best.
I've made it to Cambridge, MA. I'm staying with Sean, who lives down the street from the Harvard Stadium (unfortunately the Yale-Harvard game is at Yale -- although I still might go) and just across the river from Harvard Square. It's a little weird to be back in the U.S., on the East Coast, in a real college-y area (hello, 1999, it's nice to see you again).
Continuing on the Yale-Harvard axis, a month ago, I was at the other Cambridge, in England, visiting the Institute of Astronomy. If you're an astrophysicist, I highly recommend visiting the IoA. The Institute building/grounds are nice (here's a photo of the cows outside my office window) and the people are friendly and seem to socialize all day (morning and afternoon tea/coffee!).
I had some fabulous Indian food, had a look around Cambridge, and went to a party. Cambridge is a very cute place (but packed with tourists and drunken students). Here's the second oldest building in Cambridge (the Round Church, 1130): 
Of course, the biggest tourist attractions are the Colleges in Cambridge. I went to (I think) Trinity, St. John's and King's -- some of the oldest and, therefore, most visited by tourists. They all charged an admissions fee, which doesn't seem quite right to me (since I was accompanied by an University employee, it was free for me). At Cambridge, walking on the very well manicured lawns is reserved for senior members of the College (hence the signs, although I saw them ignored several times by tourists). 
Yale has a college system based on Cambridge and a lot of neo-Gothic architecture, so I wasn't surprised by the Colleges -- although real Gothic is a lot cooler (this is the King's College chapel): 
Despite the faux-oldness of Yale buildings, they have a logic which I had internalized as being more 'natural' or more 'authentic': Gothic buildings with gates and courtyards (you can walk on the grass at Yale) surrounded by a moat next to the sidewalk and the narrow streets. Yale is in the center of the city; the moat is at least partly functional, ensuring that fewer first-floor residents have their rooms broken into, and isn't everything in England old and close together with narrow streets? The one time I visited Princeton, I scoffed at their Gothic buildings surrounded by ginormous lawns. As it turns out, Princeton has it right (sigh). Some of the Colleges are huge, and many of the Colleges back onto the River Cam, their grounds (with ginormous, beautifully-manicured lawns) covering both banks of the river (this area is called The Backs). 
The river (a river?!) is crossed by some very cute bridges and full of tourists punting boats. 
After a few days in Cambridge, I caught a ride from a woman I met at the party up to Manchester for a few days. If Cambridge is (sigh) Princeton, then Manchester is Ohio State -- a huge campus and University. But just down the street from the campus was a the downtown area with a lot of clubs, bars, pubs, and restaurant. It looked like a cool place to be a student. I was too sick to do too much wandering, but I did manage to watch Control, the Joy Division biopic; it seemed appropriate to watch a movie about a Manchester band while in Manchester.
So, finally, I've managed to cover England, now one of these days I'll finally blog about Amsterdam. One last note, a while back I linked to this post by Tim, gushing about the music of the Mountain Goats, but it totally bears reiterating: they're totally awesome and I don't understand how I lived before hearing their music.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Yay, Germany!
After 10 days in the U.K., I've made it back to Germany. I've got at least a couple posts about the trip and other stuff to be blogged soon. Unfortunately, even though I had a lot of fun on the trip, England appears to be full of sick people and now I have a cold.
On Thursday evening, I was pretty much running on fumes when I arrived at the Manchester airport for the flight back to Bonn. And the airport was a real hassle with finding the right terminal, disorganized waiting lines to check-in (and in the U.K., the home of the queue!), very restrictive carry-on baggage rules, and not a lot of food options. And I was worried about catching one of the last buses from the Cologne airport to Bonn, but, I forgot, it's Germany (and not the U.K., nor the U.S.). The plane landed in Germany at 11:01pm. After a shuttle ride from the plane to the terminal, passport control, baggage claim, customs, the walk down to the end of the terminal, and a quick run when I saw the line of people getting on the bus, I was on a bus and out of the airport by 11:22pm. I was surfing the web in my apartment a little over a hour after landing. God bless Germany.
Anyway, stay tuned for a long-delayed post on Amsterdam, pictures from Cambridge, a story or two on Manchester, and maybe some musings on the mysteries of passport control (the woman at the London Stansted airport was seriously considering denying me entry). Also, I'm going to be in the U.S. from Nov. 10 to the new year. Make a case for why I should visit you while I'm Stateside in the comments.
Friday, October 05, 2007
Baseball Playoffs
In 2003, when the Cubs last made it to the playoffs, I lived in Chicago. In 2007, I live in Germany, and I have to wake up at 6am to catch the end of the game on a 4 inch window on my computer, using mlb.tv (which is actually kind of cool).
Still, not as cool as this: Saturday, October 4, 2003, I'm leaving my parents' house and the Cubs are losing the 4th game of the National League Divisional Series with the Atlanta Braves, when I get a call. Game 5 is Sunday night. In Atlanta. Tickets have been purchased and there's a spot for me. We leave at 5am, drive 13 hours to Atlanta, straight to the stadium. The Cubs win 5-1, Kerry Wood is the winning pitcher. Afterwards, fans mill around the Cubs dugout and cheer. When we're done, we get right back in the car and drive 13 hours back to Chicago.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
More Blog Neglect
I don't know how I convinced myself of this, but I really thought that once summer was over, I'd have a lot of time on my hands to blog. Instead, my parents came to visit (eventually, I'll put up pictures of Amsterdam), and now I'm going to the U.K. next week (severely cutting into my baseball playoffs watching). I'm not even sure my digital camera is functional. It'll all get blogged ... eventually.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
4 Songs
On a weekend where both Eugene and Tim have posted about new music, I figured I'd better blog about music too. I don't have a TV, and I haven't been to any shows, but since I last reported on the state of my iPod (5 months ago), I've acquired 2.73 GB, 640 songs, and 36 albums. And, to the shame of having a John Mayer album, I can now add a Fall Out Boy album. My full music library no longer fits on my 4 year old iPod and I can listen to music on shuffle and think "what the hell is this?" or "I have this?"
Here are four songs that found their way onto my iPod in the last 5 months (and if any of you guys has some odd desire to actually listen to what I'm listening to, let me know):
1. Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails
The only song that for which I haven't found an appropriate YouTube video, but you can listen to the entire album, The Stage Names, on their myspace page. I've already expressed my love for Okkervil River, but I just can't help myself. A lot more rock and with a more modern sound than their previous albums, but with somewhat of a draggy middle where things get a little too twee. "Unless It's Kicks" is probably the best song: a driving rock anthem to not letting being in a rock band wear you down. But it cannot beat "John Allyn Smith Sails" for pure awesomeness. The song starts acoustic, with a narrative about the poet John Berryman and his 1972 suicide, then segues into a cover of "Sloop John B." the traditional most known by its cover by the Beach Boys. "Sloop John B." people! Listen to it
2. Elliott Smith - Waltz #2
I found a live version of this song off the XO album somewhere and it's great: sad and sweet, melacholy and anger over the people we should know best but who are forever out of reach. Here's a similar live version:
Truthfully, I don't own a single Elliott Smith album; I'm fearful of spending the money and finding that his whisper-singing drives me nuts ("speak up! I can't hear you!"). And finding the original album version of the song does nothing to reassure me (it's audio only):
With the heavy drum line, it make me imagine that they're playing in some honky-tonk bar. And someone please explain the backing vocals to me. Why?!
3. The Smiths - Girlfriend in a Coma
I've been singing this 2 minute ditty for days now. I can't explain it, but I know it's brilliant (because "it's serious"?).
4. LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
This song hasn't been released as a single yet, so I'm not sure if this is the actual music video for it (and the song seems to be a little faster than my album version) but whatever:
LCD Soundsystem has gotten a lot of press as sort of confessional indie music with an electronic dance music soul. The album, Sound of Silver, is pretty good, although I kind of think that "Someone Great" is the only can't miss track. But I can't help but wonder: who is supposed to listen to this music? What sort of giant electronica wave is LCD Soundsystem supposed to be on top of? Most people listen to electronica when they want to stop thinking and start dancing. Are people really going to start listen to it on the radio while their driving to work? Are they going to play this in Starbucks? What are we, French? (Yeah, I really don't know what makes me think that this is what the French do.)
Monday, September 17, 2007
What I Learned This Summer
So, truthfully, I don't remember 90% of the things I intended to put in a post with this title, but I'll give it my best '10 minutes after finishing one work assignment, 10 minutes before starting on another' shot:
1.) The way Germans say 'cool' is really cute. No really. It's like 'kuhl' with a bit of a rising intonation (you have to say it with a little smile). Ask Sean. He does a pretty good imitation.
2.) Even more surprising, salad is really good in Germany. In the U.S., a side salad (even in some really nice restaurants) is a couple pieces of limp iceberg lettuce. I've never seen iceberg lettuce in Germany. All the salads have really great looking and tasting greens (sadly, I don't know the names of different kinds of lettuce) and corn. Salad is really good with corn.
3.) Bring cash when you travel. In Germany and a lot of other places, credit cards aren't widely accepted (and bring small coins and make sure you've broken that fifty; no one likes to give you change).
4.) As terrible as I feel for being a stupid American and not bi- or tri- or quadlingual like some people here, it wouldn't matter if I knew 10 languages if one of them wasn't English. It's not just the language stupid American tourists use in Paris and worldwide, it's the language French tourists use in Budapest, the language Italian tourists use in Prague, etc. So, that's something. (Totally unrelatedly, everywhere I went I saw Japanese and Chinese tour groups. But I also saw young Japanese couples traveling on their own. Given what I know about Japan, not all of these couples could possibly be conversant in English, so they must be winging it. Pretty adventurous and impressive.)
5.) D'oh, I totally had a #5 and forgot it as I was writing #4.
[Updated 17.09.07, 11:44pm: Ah-ha! 5.) Did you realize that Canadians, the British, and all the Germans I've met refer to English units as 'imperial units'? It makes sense, but, honestly, it never even occurred to me and I'd never heard the term until I moved to Germany. I once tried to explain to someone that no American would ever use the term 'imperial units,' but they didn't really get it.]
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Summer's Over
I put Sean on a bus to the airport this morning (which explains why I'm at work at ten before 9AM). It'll be pretty weird without him. For one, I'll have to -- gasp! -- cook and clean for myself. But we basically moved into my current apartment together, so it'll take some getting used to just living there alone.
One the plus side, I can stop watching out for my nosy landlord (and start looking for him). He showed up one day a week or two after Sean arrived and was not happy at all to see that I had a guest. We avoided him for the rest of the summer by very paranoidally sneaking Sean in and out of the apartment and assiduously avoiding saying my landlord's name three time while looking in the bathroom mirror.
This probably also means that I'll start blogging more. I'm thinking that I should do a wrap-up of what I learned this summer.
Finally, there's some possibility that the Chicago Cubs will make the playoffs. What should I do if they make the playoffs? Playoff games might start at 2 in the morning. And the only option I'm aware of is paying for mlb.tv in order to listen to them. Suggestions?
Monday, September 03, 2007
Prague
My summer of tourism is almost over. It is supposed to be capped by a trip to Amsterdam this weekend, but, while train tickets were cheap, hotel rooms have been impossible to find at any reasonable price. Prague is a pretty good way to end a series of trips, though. Unfortunately, I'm too scattered these days to do Prague justice (in blog form), so you'll have to make do with a bunch of photos and some random notes.
The Old Town Square has this astronomical clock
in the tower of the Old Town Hall:
Before each hour, a giant crowd grows:
They're here to catch a glimpse of this (figures of the apostles pass the windows and wave -- it's not that exciting):
The other buildings in the square are pretty cool. Like this one
and this one, where Tycho Brahe is buried (sadly, when we wanted to go, it was closed).
From the top of the Old Town Hall, there's a nice view:
You can also see across the river to Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral.
We spent one afternoon up there at Prague Castle, looking at all the pretty buildings, a few museums and the gardens on the other side of the castle (and on the other side of a moat). Two neat things I learned here. 1.) Even after the introduction of Christianity, burial rituals were more informed by pagan beliefs and people were buried with limbs bound or dislocated and covered by rocks to ensure they'd stay put in the grave. 2.) You can stand in the room where the Defenestration of Prague which touched off the Thirty Years' War (the Czechs seem to be the inventors of defenestration; this was the second Defenestration of Prague) occurred. But those guys survived the defenestration unharmed! They landed in a pile of manure.
The house where Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler lived is up by the castle. It's now a restaurant (Sean and I stopped for a beer), but with nary a mention of Brahe or Kepler. (By the way, it's possible to get 0.5 L of beer for the equivalent of 1 euro in Prague.)
To get to the other side of the river, you can cross on the Charles Bridge
Here's the view from the bridge at sunset.
There's a crucifix on the bridge of with golden text in Hebrew reading 'holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.' The Lonely Planet guidebook explains that the text was funded by the fine imposed on a Jewish man who had been convicted of debasing the Holy Cross. At one of the old synagogues in the Jewish quarter (now a museum), it explains that his offense was in a coded letter to a friend, which was never deciphered.
Several blocks from the river is the Powder Tower (there's no particular reason I threw this in there; it's just cool looking):
We spent another afternoon going to many of the synagogues in the Jewish quarter. This is the Old-New Synagogue, built in the 13th century (and inside it really feels like it, if that makes any sense). It's still in use.
There are more than 12,000 graves in the Old Jewish Cemetary, dating from 1478 until 1786. The tombstones pile onto of each other and the ground slopes up from the path as they added more dirt to put in more graves.
The most famous person buried here is probably Jehuda Liwa ben Becalel, Rabbi Löw. Here's his tombstone and some of the people praying at it (I didn't see people praying at any other tombstones). He's probably best known for the story of his creation of a golem to protect the Jewish ghetto. According to legend, the golem's remains are hidden in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue. 