Ask Borodog

[Borodog]

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How long did you take to get your PhD.


I took 42 months, wondered if I burned you or not. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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It took me 13 years from when I started undergrad to when I completed my Ph.D. That included 3 years off in industry, after my department made the (in retrospect) mistake of giving me a Master's Degree after I completed the Ph.D. qualifying examination. I was the first in my department to receive one of these "en route" Master's. The department instituted them to compete with other departments that were offering them (it's a scary thing to contemplate spending 3-5 years on something, busting out and have nothing; the en route Master's was viewed as a "safety net" for potential Ph.D. candidates). I had run into an 18th month wall in my research by biting off too much of a problem to chew for my dissertation topic (I was attempting to simulate radiative warping in accretion disks, without resorting to full radiative transfer, and the reradiation backpressure algorithm I developed, while clever and elegant, was never quite numerically stable enough. Combine that with the collapse of my first marriage, and them just handing me an advanced degree, and I took the money and run, so to speak.

So basically, 4 years undergrad, 5 + 1 years for the Ph.D. with the 3 years in industry thrown in between the 5 and the 1.

[pryor15]

wow. um...wow. i think my head just exploded

i remember now why i never did well in science

[Borodog]

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What is a realistic income for a first-year professor? I realize that it varies based on the discipline, so let's keep it to liberal arts. I'm about to begin teaching high school, but it would be a rather natural transition/goal to earn my Ph.D and begin teaching in college.

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I started at $45,500 the first university I taught at after receiving my Ph.D. I'm not sure about liberal arts though.

Edit to add:

This was a hard thing for me. I went back to school to complete my Ph.D. after 3 years in industry, and ended up taking a fairly massive pay cut when I went into academia. Thus far my salary has never recovered to its pre-Ph.D. levels.


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Ugh. This just about makes me want to vomit. That's just slightly more than double what I'm making right now as a grad student, and not that much more than I thought I'd make as a postdoc. Hell, that's not that much better than a high school teacher. Is this seriously typical?

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This was at a marginal university, although still a state university in the UNC system. Remember, starting pay for a public school teacher in NC is like high $20k's. My salary right now, while a bit hard to calculate (I'm currently on a temporary appointment, and won't be hired permanently until the fall) is somewhere in the mid 50s. Add in the occasional real estate deal and I'm quite comfortable, especially with my sugar momma, who expects to make 6 figs in real estate this year.

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What the hell am I doing getting my Ph. D. with the idea of becoming a professor?

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I thought the same thing in late 1999. It cost me years and untold career advancement opportunities. I am only slowly repairing the damage of the terrible decision to bail on what I loved (teaching and physics) for the almighty $.

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Also, you're a lindy hopper? I had started to believe I was the only one here. I'd posted about it a few times, but no one spoke up saying they were, too. Well, other than The Dude, once, who took a couple lessons and wanted some advice on music. How long have you been dancing? What is your home scene, or what scenes have you called home? How many exchanges have you been to? What's been your favorite exchange or workshop weekend?

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Yes, I am a Lindy Hopper, and have been for about 8 years now. The local scene is great; we have the Triangle Swing Dance Society, the Piedmont Swing Dance Society, and my favorite, the Carolina Dance Club and Mad About Dance Academy. I'm currently in the last stages of training to be an instructor with MAD Academy, which is run by Debbie Ramsey-Boz and her husband Wesley Boz. They are absolutely phenomenal, and taught me to dance.

As far as exchanges, I've never actually been. The new century has often been rather low paying for me, so travel has been rare. But having Debbie Ramsey here means a) I don't have to travel for top tier instruction, and b) we get a ton of workshops coming to the area. My absolute favorite workshops have been with Carla Heiney, who is like a Goddess. I did a workshop with her in 2000 I think, in Greensboro NC, the morning after my birthday. I was totally hung over from shots of Jaegermeister and Goldschlager. My partner could only stay for the morning session, and the afternoon session was aeriels, which was a non-rotation, must-have-partner workshop, which I desperately wanted to take. So Carla Heiney was my partner for the aerials workshop she taught. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] She told me I looked like warmed over death and asked me kindly not to drop her. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Edited to add: I read North Carolina as North California. Given that it's the former, I have another question. Were you at the MezzJelly Blues Weekend in Raliegh this past August?

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Nope.

[Dominic]

wow! I actually wanted to be an astro-physicist for a while...but then I couldn't get past the calculus. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

very cool expertise...

here's a question...do you believe string theory to be a reasonable theory or a bunch of hogwash - like many in the field are saying now?

[kitaristi0]

Whose contributions to physics have been the most significant?

50-100 years from now what is the main focus of study in the field of physics going to be? From what I gather right now it's basically going into really small crap (quarks etc.) and really big crap (astrophysics). Does it just continue in the same directions or does something completely out of left field come into play?

Are there any physicists (not completely obscure ones, say someone who a first year university physics student would know) whose contributions to physics you think could be completely forgotten and it wouldn't make a difference? Probably didn't phrase that in the best possible manner but I hope you get the gist.

[Borodog]

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wow! I actually wanted to be an astro-physicist for a while...but then I couldn't get past the calculus. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

very cool expertise...

here's a question...do you believe string theory to be a reasonable theory or a bunch of hogwash - like many in the field are saying now?

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A) Consider this opinion to be totally uninformed. String theory is so far from my area of expertise that you might as well be asking my opinion of translations of ancient Hebrew.

B) From what I understand of string theory, it is (as of yet) completely non-falsifiable, making it essentially not science. HOWEVER, one thing that I have found in my study of physics is that the universe is an elegant thing. I find it difficult to imagine that a theory could coincidentally seem at least capable of explaining all phenomena and not in some sense be "correct." It seems imparsimonious (if that is a word) to me.

Also, the idea of fundamental particles as differing vibrational modes of "strings" of energy is aesthetically pleasing in a way that dimensionless points are not. A dimensionless point is an ugly thing to me. It's hard to describe. I've never liked the idea.

[Borodog]

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Whose contributions to physics have been the most significant?

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This is an incredibly different question to answer. In one sense, I would claim Isaac Newton, and it's not even close. The guy essentially invented the entire science as we know it.

In another sense I would say James Clerk Maxwell. What that guy did, although he stood on the shoulders of giants to do it, in uniting electricity and magnetism and out pops a wave equation (two actually) who's wave speed happens to be the speed of light, is one of the most elegant pieces of work I have ever seen. I still think Maxwell's Equations are among the most beautiful things I've ever seen:






Maxwell described all known electromagnetic phenomena, not to mention light, in those 4 equations, until the photo-electric effect reared its ugly head.

Then of course comes Einstein, who gave us the photon as we now know it. Not to mention GR.

There are a slew of giant early 20th century names, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Dirac, Fermi, Planck, Pauli, Bohr, de Broglie, Born, on and on. Mid 20th giants like Feynman and GelMann. Whose contribution has been more significant? I don't know. In a way, it's like asking which leg of the chair is the most important.

I do know that without a doubt the most significant fundamental theoretical contributions have NOT come from my field, astrophysics.

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50-100 years from now what is the main focus of study in the field of physics going to be? From what I gather right now it's basically going into really small crap (quarks etc.) and really big crap (astrophysics). Does it just continue in the same directions or does something completely out of left field come into play?

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Call me crazy, but I am almost 100% certain that the fundamental theory will be solved by then (perhaps much sooner, say within 20 years). After that, it will all be application. That doesn't mean that there won't be anything to do; far from it. That's essentially what my field is; taking the laws of physics as other people give them to us and trying to figure out what their implications are under different conditions.

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Are there any physicists (not completely obscure ones, say someone who a first year university physics student would know) whose contributions to physics you think could be completely forgotten and it wouldn't make a difference? Probably didn't phrase that in the best possible manner but I hope you get the gist.

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Me.

[Shadowrun]

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Some of the kinds of things that I might be able to comment on semi-coherently:

- Physics and astrophysics
- Fluid dynamics and CFD
- Accretion disks in binary stars
- Getting a Ph.D.
- Being a college professor
- Lindy Hop/swing dancing and teaching dance
- Austrian economic theory and evolutionary theory (no credentials, but both are major amateur interests)
- Being a pro bono internet a-hole.

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What led you to the love of austrain econmic theory above all other theories?
Who is your persobnal favorite econmist (doesnt have to be the best or whatever, just who you like the most for whatever reason)?

[Borodog]

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Some of the kinds of things that I might be able to comment on semi-coherently:

- Physics and astrophysics
- Fluid dynamics and CFD
- Accretion disks in binary stars
- Getting a Ph.D.
- Being a college professor
- Lindy Hop/swing dancing and teaching dance
- Austrian economic theory and evolutionary theory (no credentials, but both are major amateur interests)
- Being a pro bono internet a-hole.

[/ QUOTE ]

What led you to the love of austrain econmic theory above all other theories?

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Not to be too blunt about it, but it is correct. I have yet to find a piece of the Austrian theory that has not made perfect logical sense to me. This has not been the case with the alternatives. In reading Austrain rebuttals of other theories, they make perfect sense, and utterly demolish the competition. The critiques of Austrian theory are practically farcical, and really on painfully obvious, old and busted fallacies.

A major influence in this direction has been my good friend (and fellow swing dancer) Dr. Paul Cwik, an Austrian economist who was the last person to receive a Ph.D. from Auburn, home of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

It really is a beautiful, elegant theory. The axioms are unassailable and the logic is impeccable.

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Who is your persobnal favorite econmist (doesnt have to be the best or whatever, just who you like the most for whatever reason)?

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I'm biased, but my friend Dr. Cwik. Behind him would have to be Hans-Hermann Hoppe, then Rothbard, Mises, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Joseph Salerno, Walter Block, and Leonard Read. My favorite non-Austrians (poor souls) are Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell. Milton Friedman is right up there, but he had some crucial flaws, particularly when it came to money.

Edit to add: I forgot to tell you why Hoppe tops my list. His thinking is brilliantly clear and logical. His arguments leave no stone unturned, no crack unfilled, no escape. Plus I love to listen to his lectures because he has a great German accent. He has a series of lectures where he basically lays out the history of civilization, and explains from first principals why it progressed the way that it did. Mind blowing stuff.

[JaBlue]

a few questions:

-what math books or philosophy of math/science would you recommend to someone with little math background (know calc, taking more math, will just take time)

-because of my school's schedule I cannot take the physics for physics majors series until winter quarter (this one) of next year. I really like physics. Any suggestions?

-What are good math/physics-related summer job or internship opportunities for an 18 year old? Do they exist? I live close to Stanford linear accelerator center.

-What do you do?

edit: what are some cool math/physics-related jobs that do not involve design weapons or teaching?

I'll think of more later.