Censorship, American-style

(Many updates below. If your feed reader is complaining, I apologize.)

Sean Carroll's latest post, about his surfing experiences on a laptop in a hotel room in Beijing, is an interesting read.

Of course, things could be better here in the U.S., too, as Sean notes by linking to this post on Obsidian Wings. Good ol' AT&T.

(Update, a little later):

On an unrelated note: In an earlier post, Sean weighs in on "the God particle" as terminology, reacting to the same Dennis Overbye piece that I noted a few days ago. Sean is a physicist by profession, and also one of the best at communicating science to the interested lay audience (I've gushed ^{[1], [2]} about this before). His views are both worth considering and well-expressed.

(Update, a little more later):

This tends to happen every time I visit Sean's blog: I can't help but link to one piece, and then I keep reading, and another worthy post presents, and then another, and pretty soon, I have my own post that has nothing to do with my title or original thought. Nonetheless, you might enjoy reading what a theoretical physicist means when he says "axis of evil." Prior to that, fire up a separate browser window, visit this post, scroll to the bottom, and fire up some Mussorgsky for background music while reading. A full service blog, indeed.

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Update

2007-08-11 23:32 EDT

Okay. Just one more. From the same site, but this time, from Julianne Dalcanton. You want to read a great post on how a real scientist thinks? Read this.

Man. All I can say is, I wish I'd hung with these people, instead of the cool dope dealers, back in my college days.

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Update

2007-08-12 00:37 EDT

In another post, Julianne introduces (to me, at least) the term gastrophysics. I like it! (And we know now, at last, whence came gastronomy.)

Further on, she cites a cliché for the distant past: "… back when I was a grad student (you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the iPhone did not yet exist) …"

I don't know how any self-respecting person in her field neglects to add "… and when Pluto was a planet."

Just sayin'.