In January this year I set myself high goals. Maybe even lofty ones. Some I have managed to achieve splendidly, others... not so much. One of my resolutions in the New Year was to allot time every Sunday to write for the purposes of this website-blog-thinga-majigg. This essay has turned out to be rather cumbersome, … Continue reading Reevaluations of the adjunct vagabond

Women in Science: 50 fearless pioneers who changed the world by Rachel Ignotofsky Fact #1. The history of scientific discovery is a vast sausage fest, layered with facial hair of varying majesty. Fact #2. Historically, the scientific contributions of the double-X-chromosomed half of humanity have often been disregarded and even discredited in lieu of the chauvinistic status … Continue reading Women in Science: 50 fearless pioneers who changed the world

The Alien franchise is among the most successful sci-fi franchises ever spawned out of Hollywood. It even commingled with the Predator series (famously through one camera shot of a Xenomorph´s skull in the Predator´s spaceship in Predator 2) allowing for Hollywood to exploit our obsessions for details with a series of video games and an … Continue reading Science of the Alien franchise I – Xenomorphic blood

The Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum & Fred Kuttner Quantum theory is the most successful theory of our time. No question. Every prediction it has portended by its rigorous mathematics has been experimentally verified. And even though it contains leagues of strenuous calculations that only the formally initiated (mathematics, physics and some chemistry graduates) can … Continue reading The Quantum Enigma

I think it was about time to start writing again. For my website that is. I've been keeping myself busy with writing postdoc applications and preparing my teaching schedule for the coming semester which includes one half of a single course. This means my teaching workload will be a mere quarter of last semester‘s. (Yay!). … Continue reading Reading and writing habits

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios I loved this book! No segue necessary. I really really loved this book. The reason is probably because I‘m probably at the epicenter of target audiences. I‘m a teacher and a scientist and I love science fiction and comic book.... movies. I‘m really sorry, but I‘ve never been … Continue reading The Physics of Superheroes

Seemingly, the X-Men (or rather the original authors of the X-Men tales) are natural law breakers of the natural laws. Given many of their departures from the physical bounds that most of us (who have not succumbed to genetic mutation) still adhere to, I can sympathize with the hostility their kind is often shown by … Continue reading Magneto-dium leviosa

*spoiler alert* *duh* Iron Man 2 is truly ridiculous. If anything, I barely know where to start with this movie. There is just so much dodgy science that it makes your head spin. In terms of characters, story line and you know, the stuff that’s kind of important to keep the audience interested and invested … Continue reading The day Iron Man fixed his heart, but broke mine

Dissociative electron attachment (DEA) is the process wherein an electron attaches onto a molecule and causes it to dissociate and / or fragment. The sizes of the molecules chosen to undergo DEA are comparatively enormous to the size of the attached electron (remember, electrons are tiny, tiny substituents of atoms, which in turn, bind together … Continue reading Dissociative electron attachment

It has now been three weeks since my teaching schedule commenced at the University of Iceland. As my postdoc applications abroad crashed and burned, I managed to procure an adjunct position here at home. That's the good news. The bad news is the gargantuan workload that follows. I'm lecturing in two courses (which totals 480 … Continue reading Re-birthed as adjunct