Purvis's New Writeups

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (thing)

2004-02-07T07:13:55Z

The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, or simply "The ITP," is a National Science Foundation funded institution at the physics department of the University of California, Santa Barbara dedicated to the study of frontier theoretical physics, including string theory, theoretical condensed matter physics, and theoretical astrophysics. According to the mission statement, "The general purpose of the Institute is to contribute to the progress of theoretical physics, especially in areas overlapping the traditional subfields, in ways which are not easily realized in existing institutions."

The ITP is housed in Walter Kohn Hall, a pastel and vaguely hacienda inspired building located on bluffs above the Pacific Ocean on the UCSB campus. The director is David Gross, inventor of the field theory of the strong interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics, and there are five other faculty members: deputy director Daniel Hone, astrophysicist Lars Bildsten, condensed matter…

National Scientific Ballooning Facility (place)

2004-01-19T04:41:44Z

The National Scientific Ballooning Facility (NSBF) is a NASA facility that provides for the launch, support, and retrieval of high-altitude balloon based scientific experiments. It is advantageous to do some experiments in the upper atmosphere, in the range of 100,000 ft. in altitude, as opposed to on the ground, and these include observations of cosmic rays and their atmospheric reactions, some measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, and atmospheric and weather observations. To reach the upper atmosphere, the experiments are attached to large helium balloons, some up to 400 feet in diameter, and consequently, a specialized launch site and apparatus are needed. The main NSBF base is located a few miles outside of Palestine, Texas, and the facility is managed by the University of New Mexico , under the guidance of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility.

The Palestine base consists of a large field, approximately two square miles in…

Palestine, Texas (place)

2004-01-16T05:09:32Z

Palestine (pronounced PAL-eh-steeeeen), Texas, is a small town approximately 100 miles southeast of Dallas in the humid and swampy terrain of East Texas. The population is approximately 30,000 and it lies at the intersection of several US federal and state highways, and is about 50 miles from interstate 35. It is the home of NASA's National Scientific Ballooning Facility, a site from which high altitude balloons are launched, and, coincidentally, it is also where some of the wreckage from the space shuttle Columbia landed. Other employers include a hospital and a community college.

In the last half of the 19th century, Palestine was a railroad loading point for the produce of the region and was the major city in East Texas, with a population larger than Dallas. In the years since, the town center has been almost completely shuttered, and commercial activity is entirely concentrated in the strip malls that line the wide by-pass ring road built around the town. With Palestine, there truly is no there there.

ARCADE experiment (thing)

2004-01-16T02:53:48Z

ARCADE II (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission) is a high altitude balloon-borne experiment which will measure the radiometric temperature of the sky at six frequencies, ranging from 3.3 GHz to 90 GHz. The radiometric temperature at a given frequency is a measure of the intensity of electromagnetic radiation at that frequency, being the temperature that the radiating body would be if it were a perfect blackbody emitter and emitting with the observed intensity at the frequency in question. After the contributions to the measured radiometric temperatures from the galactic foregrounds are subtracted out, the remainder will be the radiometric temperatures of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB).

The major science goal of the ARCADE II experiment is to achieve a measurement of the extent to which the CMB deviates from a blackbody spectrum at long wavelengths. The question of the extent to which the CMB…

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (thing)

2004-01-15T07:18:26Z

well, they ate my w/u here with lyrics so I'll node it without lyrics.

A great song by The Band, containing a moaning harmonica and moving lyrics atop piano and guitar harmonies. It is sung from the perspective of Virgil Caine, a fictional veteran of the Confederate side in the American Civil War, and is personal enough that it could have been written by Virgil himself while sitting around a campfire in a Union POW camp. However, it was actually written in 1968 by a half Jewish Mohawk Indian from Canada, Robbie Robertson.

In the course of the song, Virgil tells us where he was when the Confederacy was defeated, and shares his admiration for Robert E. Lee and hard working people. In addition to being performed by The Band, it has been done by Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, who butchered it into a particularly lounge-y form.

CB4 (thing)

2004-01-03T03:34:05Z

Chris Rock's 1993 feature length spoof of the gangster rap of the late 80s and early 90s and the culture that surrounded it. The premise is that three middle class boys looking to break into the rap music charts adopt the persona of a local gang lord who they think is safely in prison, taking the name CB4 from the cell block in which he is incarcerated. Unfortunately, the gangster, "Gusto" (Charles Q. Murphy), based loosely on Nino from New Jack City, escapes from prison, and sets out to exact revenge on the now wildly successful rappers, to hilarious results. Other characters include a politician (Phil Hartman) trying to score points by demonizing rap, the group's producer Trustus Jones (Williard E. Pugh), who has shades of Don King, Sissy (Khandi Alexander), a bombshell rap groupie hired by Trustus to debauch the boys, and A. White (Chris Elliot), a documentarian.

The three members of CB4 are based to varying degrees on the three big stars of the real…