Web Links

Physics

Right now I have two roles at Nevis Labs.

• I maintain the computer systems network.
• I work on physics simulation software for the GRAMS experiment.
• I give a hands-on tutorial on ROOT for the REU students. I've taught it annually since the summer of 2001.

C++ and programming books

• My Contributions

  I've been lucky enough to have made, and to continue to make, some small contributions to scientific research. They are listed below with my most recent work first.

  • I'm working on the detector simulation for the GRAMS experiment.
  • I worked on the simulations software of the MicroBooNE experiment.
  • I worked on physics simulation software for the NuSOnG experiment.
  • Here's a talk I gave on NuSOnG to the Nevis REU students on 30-Jun-08.
  • I worked on software development for simulations that make use of the Reactor Analysis Tool.
  • My work at Nevis included working with the ATLAS collaboration to simulate the liquid-argon calorimeter using Geant4.
  • I helped to produce two parts of the Nevis publication Matter and Energy: Introduction and On Particle Physics.
  • The CCFR experiment collected the data I used in research, and I developed their web site. If it were ever finished (unlikely as of Sep-1999), I would have explained my analysis in terms that (I hope) most people would understand. Unfortunately, I never had the time to finish this site.
  • NuTeV was the follow-up incarnation of the physics experiment in which I collected my data. The experiment probed the detailed structure of matter using a neutrino beam on an iron target. You can see pictures of some of the collaborators.
  • The 6-page technical article I wrote on my analysis results was published in the 18-Aug-97 issue of Physical Review Letters 79: 1213-1216 (1997)
  • The thesis errata were last updated on 18-Oct-1999.
  • You can see the numerical results of my analysis, including my 475-page thesis "A Next-to-Leading-Order QCD Analysis of Neutrino-Iron Structure Functions at the Tevatron."
  • I received my Ph.D. in high-energy physics from Columbia University on 24-Nov-96.

Statistics books

• Particle Physics in General

  • Want to learn the basics of high-energy physics? The Particle Data Group maintains the Particle Adventure site.
  • Nevis Labs is the high-energy physics research facility operated by the Columbia University Physics Department. It's where I work.
  • Fermilab had the highest-energy particle accelerator in the United States. It's where I collected the data for my doctoral thesis.
  • Spires is a search engine for locating research papers related to high-energy physics.
  • The Los Alamos e-print archive contains TeX and postscript files of many high-energy physics research papers.
  • CERN is the major European particle physics lab; the LHC is the highest-energy accelerator in the world. They maintain the world's standard physics-analysis software.
  • Of course, let us not forget the foundations of high-energy physics.

Particle-physics books

Daily

These are the sites I check every day.

• News sources:
  • AP News
  • ProPublica
• 'Toons that don't have decent RSS feeds:

  Doonesbury	Calvin and Hobbes	Non Sequitur	Brewster Rockit
  Gasoline Alley	Alley Oop	xkcd	Far Side
  Joy of Tech	Dinosaur Comics	Tom the Dancing Bug	Foxtrot

UNIX

My formal title at Nevis Labs is "Network Engineer." Basically, I'm a UNIX systems administrator (though my Mac has proved itself to be enormously useful on the job).

• If you're a UNIX beginner, check out:
  • UNIX Tutorial for Beginners
  • Learn UNIX

Books on systems administration

Macintosh

I'm a Macintosh fan... or haven't you figured that out yet?

• Information

  • TidBITS is an on-line Mac magazine with lots of tips.
  • MacWorld is a monthly magazine. Mac fan that I am, I admit that let my subscription to MacWorld lapse. It was just easier to find the same information elsewhere on the web.

• Software support

  • BBEdit is a nice text editor and a fine way to prepare Web pages.
  • To make the plots for my physics analysis and my thesis, I use IGOR. Aside from its excellent plotting and macro capabilities, it's also a good quick-and-dirty mathematical programming language. Alas, IGOR is dropping Mac support; in a year or two, I'll no longer be able to read my old IGOR files. So it goes.

Astronomy

• Table of Full and New Moons. I created this table using public-domain astronomy algorithms.
• Sky and Telescope is an excellent astronomy magazine, with lots of useful web links on their home page. However, the magazine I used to subscribe to is ASTRONOMY Magazine.
• I don't actually check the Astronomy Picture of the Day every day, but it's fun to look at now and then.

Paganism

I came out of the broom closet the modern way... by including the following links in this web site.

• Acorn Garden is my own teaching group's site.
• If you're looking for lots of pagan-related links, or some basic information on paganism, check out Isaac Bonewits' Web Pages and the links therein.
• Four Quarters Farm is an amazing place in the Alleghenies. They're building a megalithic circle there, one giant stone each year. It will take twenty years to complete. Come to Stones Rising in September to help raise the next stone.
• Moving a little to the east, in Maryland we have Free Spirit Alliance, which puts on the excellent Free Spirit Gathering and the Free Spirit Healing Retreat every year.
• Heading north, EarthSpirit is a pagan community and resource in the New England area.

Pagan-related books

The Written Word

I've had a life-long fascination with books and references. Here are a few good references I've picked up while browsing through the Internet.

• Miriam-Webster offers a dictionary and a thesaurus.
• Myth and Legend
  • Windows on the Universe has an overview on world mythologies.
  • Before you believe what you see on the 'net, check out Snopes -- before you hurl a chair through a mirror!

SF

I've been a science fiction fan since about 1966, when my third-grade teacher gave me a copy of Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.

• FANAC is a good place look for material on SF fandom.
• I'm a card-carrying member of the Klingon Language Institute.

SF books

Personalities

People I know, people I've met, people I've seen... and people with cool web sites.

• Dan Holzman-Tweed was the first of my circle of friends to have his own home page.

Fun and games

• Medieval Recreation

  • I enjoy Live-Action Role-Playing (in fact, I was director of LAIRE for two years). From 1997 to 2003 I played in Mystic Realms.
  • During the summers, I used to work at the Ren Faire in Tuxedo, NY. I could occasionally be seen at other fairs as well.
  • I'm often asked where I get the costumes I wear to the Ren Faires. Moresca sells Middle-Age, Renaissance, and fantasy costumes, as does Authentic Wardrobe, and Garb the World.
  • If you play in LARPs, you'll need masking tape and duct tape in exotic colors.

• Television

  • I still retain a fondness for Doctor Who.
  • My own personal favorite was the original Star Trek. The newer stuff ain't bad, but the shows take fewer risks and lack the flair of the original.

• Movies

  • For movie reviews, I check out James Berardinelli's site.
  • The Internet Movie Database is the standard reference for information about movies on the net.
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey remains the greatest SF film ever made.