Welcome to the latest incarnation of my blog-related programming activities. As our friend Lucretius says, “All that we see about us consists of transient arrangements of atoms. Some awaken to life. None holds forever.”
I’ve bid an extremely fond farewell to Cosmic Variance, with great memories and enormous respect for my co-bloggers there who are keeping the torch lit. But I wanted to shift to a less formal, more personal and carefree mode of blogging, one where nobody else but me was responsible in any way. I’ll still be doing my best to understand and explain cool ideas in physics, but the only common thread holding the content together will be “things that popped into my head.” It may be intermittent and even inchoate, but hopefully it will be fun.
To set the tone, here’s a little ditty from Paco de Lucia, Al Di Meola, and John McLaughlin. A mixture of heavy thinking and joyful exuberance. Something to shoot for.
Comments
42 responses to “Welcome”
HELLO SEAN!!!
Your goodbye at CV made me skip a beat. Thought you were completely calling it quits.
My daily ritual every morning has been to get a large mug of coffee, wake my computer, and see if there’s a new posting at CV, before heading on to Reddit… and then school. So, yeah… glad things aren’t completely changing.
-One of your biggest fans.
Congratulations for your new blog. I am happy when I see people creating this class of sites. It is a hard job, but It deserves the effort and “payment”. Good luck, Sean. I am sure you will do great stuff here as in Cosmic Variance and similar blogs. :).
Congrats, and good luck! Looking forward to reading more interesting stuff. And that includes your new book, of which I’m part of the way through.
I know writing blog posts can be difficult when you’re under a deadline and have more pressing things to do.
Good to see that technology still allows bloggers to change their…. site designs… when they see the need to!
Updating my RSS feed as I type this. Long time reader, infrequent commenter. I remember Cosmic Variance from before it’s Discover days, but I always thought of it as Sean Carroll+. (Kind of like how Language Log is Mark Liberman+.) Perhaps you’re just that much more charismatic the other CV bloggers. 😉
Looking forward to reading your more personal missives, but I hope you don’t neglect the cosmology.
Looking forward to your future posts.
Is there any way to add a function to the blog that will send an email notice of new blog entries?
Hmm, I can look into that.
I’m actually glad to see this. I found the CV site re-design at Discover to be rather sterile and non inviting. In contrast, at this new location, I immediately liked the Hubble Deep Field background as well as the picture Boltzman tomb inscription pertaining to entropy.
In addition, I think that this format will be better for Sean as well. IMO, there were too many commenters at CV who seemed to delight in ad nauseum quibbling over trivial and highly nuanced matters. To me, that got in the way of those who were interested in learning.
On the About This Blog page you report an amazing feat of acausality: the first PU blog post was Leap Day 2008, preceded by its closing in 2005. I’m sure we’d all like to know how this feat was accomplished!
AHHHH go figure. Commented on the wrong post! It’s my first day on the job, you know. 😀
Personally? This page is way more inviting. I think the layout is just way better, less anal and cold. It’s so funny. I agreed with @Charles Morrison like, a week ago. I was actually thinking “Why doesnt Sean just make a website? Not something Discover related, but wordpress related maybe? And then go figure, you did it. Congrats. (I’m tolerant. God forbid.) I cant speak for everyone, but I totally tolerated Discover’s site.
I really do like this blog. I would have snazzed up the font, but hey. To each his own.
@CoffeeCupContrails: It’s is also my favoritie thing to do in the morning. Getting up and reading this blog is the best ever. Better than buying a kitten and watching it play with a clothes hanger. Now cosmic Variance is not being ruined by Prozac ad’s and surveys.
Amazingly I posted my orignial comment on the Bubreck post, which is funny because this situation is alot like jazz, baby. *snaps fingers*
Can you check your WordPress configuration? The Google Reader Subscribe bookmarklet can’t find a valid RSS or ATOM feed.
Great, the old site redesign is terrible. Awful colors and less then half the screen space for the blog itself on my laptop. Also having to register to comment cuts out many interesting voices out of discussion, mine included.
PS I also love Hubble deep field photos, so many worlds, and so incredibly out of reach.
EDIT: My boyfriend loves Dave Brubeck, and I spelled his name wrong, along with 2 other things. I can’t look good for doing that, that’s for sure. :/
15 minute edit window for comments would be great to have if possible.
Sean unchained. Scary to contemplate.
Hi Sean,
I was following your posts at Cosmic Variance, and I can say that I am really glad that you will continue bloggind here. The RSS is already in my Reader 🙂
And, I can’t go withoutht noticing the video you post here. This song made me addicted to guitar some 9 years ago, I started playing and became a huge fan of one of those players. I won’t tell you which one, but I’ll leave you this photo to check it out 😉
Cheers
Well, seven years later, it’s still a preposterous universe…
I’m glad one doesn’t have to register. I don’t agree with some of your personal beliefs, however I do enjoy reading your posts, even though there is much that I don’t understand when it comes to particle physics.
Stick to writing about science…
…I just wanted to be the first person to troll your new place.
Clayton, thanks for the catch. But keep in mind I am a master of time and space.
I just assumed you had a TARDIS.
Happy to see you’re independent again Sean. And those three guitarists are a great way to kick off your rebirth. Still listen to San Fr tracks, a lot. If you liked them, you might like G3 (Satriani, Vai, and now Steve Morse)
Geoff– not sure why that is, but the feed is right here:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/feed/
Okay, there should now be a preview for your comments as you type, as well as the ability to edit for 10 minutes after you submit. Let’s hope all this awesome power doesn’t bring the site crashing down to a smoldering pile of rubble.
oh yeah. This feels way better than the new discovery site. I also now feel this responsibility to keep it as civil as possible, while on the discovery site, lacking this quality was. (my sentence started to go yoda, so I just said screw it and went with it).