"Uncertain Principles" features the miscellaneous ramblings of a physicist at a small liberal arts college. Physics, politics, pop culture, and occasional conversations with his dog.
"Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics." (anonymous student evaluation comment)
Emmy is a German Shepherd mix, and the Queen of Niskayuna. She likes treats, walks, chasing bunnies, and quantum physics.
So, the big How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Photoshop contest concluded on Friday. We got five really good entries, and the judges (me and Kate) had a hard time reaching a decision. After long deliberation, though, we've come up with a solution.
I've been falling down a little in the area of shameless self-promotion, but I will be at Boskone this coming weekend, where I'll be doing three program items:
Reading: Chad Orzel (Reading), Fri 19:30 - 20:00
This will be a section from the forthcoming book, probably involving Emmy and particle physics. Or possibly William Butler Yeats.
How to Wreck Your Career with Social Media (Special Interest Group)
(M), Sat 16:00 - 17:00
What are the new opportunities for public humiliation opened by the
Internet? Join this entertaining discussion about authors getting
into nasty public spats with reviewers and fans, going off on long
unhinged political tirades, sharing a little too much of their
unfiltered id, and so on.
I was originally thinking of this as a panel, but they suggested it as a group discussion instead. Lacking any experience with this format, I'm going to hope that somebody's doing one before 4pm on Saturday that sounds interesting, so I can see what exactly I'm supposed to do. Also, suggestions of really entertaining wreckage on social media (blogs, LiveJournal, Twitter, etc.) are welcome in comments.
What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics (Solo Talk), Sun
14:00 - 15:00
Author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach
Relativity to Your Dog, Chad Orzel discusses the basics of quantum
physics for two- and four-legged audiences.
This is my public-lecture talk on quantum physics. It's also the last program slot on the schedule, which makes me wonder how many people will still be around to hear it... If you're going to be there, please do stop by.
Alright, so how do we go about quantifying how "good" a watch is? Well, there seem to be two main things we can test. The first of these is accuracy. That is, how close does this watch come to the actual time (according to some time system)? If the official time is 3:00 pm and my watch claims it is 5:00 am, then it is not very accurate. The second measure of "good-ness" is precision or, in watch parlance, stability. This is essentially a measure of the consistency of the watch. If I have a watch that is consistently off by 5 minutes from the official time, then it is not accurate but it is still stable. In essence, a very consistent watch would be just as good as an accurate one, because we can always just subtract off the known offset.
I don't have anything to add about the content of the post, but these graphs look like they came from a website spoofing confusing academic presentations, not an actual social-science paper. I'm not sure which I like more, the fade-to-invisibility technique used to distinguish some of the data series, or the way the legend implies they've done nine-parameter fits to (effectively) single data points.
If you have a gun that runs on compressed air, it would be nice to know how much air you have left wouldn't it? I'm not sure the design was fully thought through. I don't know the story of the gun, but I do know that you shouldn't need to point the barrel toward your face to read a gauge.
We send SteelyKid to preschool at the Jewish Community Center in Schenectady, because when we looked at day care programs back in the day, they had the one we liked best. This is a mixed blessing in a number of ways-- they close for a lot of religious holidays when nothing else closes, creating some awkwardness with child care and our jobs. On the plus side, though, it's a chance to learn about another culture, and as an extra bonus, most of what we learn is filtered through SteelyKid, making it extra cute.
For example, on the way home Friday, she was chattering quietly to herself in the back seat, and when I opened the door, announced "I was telling a story about Satsuki!"
"Satsuki from the Totoro movie?" She's a by fan of My Neighbor Totoro, which we have on DVD.
"Yeah. She was asking a question."
"What was the question?"
"Well, she was asking about... about... God gave the world to Abraham!"
"Really?"
"Yeah, He gave Abraham the whole world. And Jacob, too. God gave the world to Jacob, because he was a good boy."
A little later in the evening, at the dinner table, she explained that this picture was a painting of the whole world:
Jeremy Lin and Landry Fields of the New York Knicks may comprise the most intelligent starting backcourt in NBA history. It's certainly hard to top a duo that boasts college degrees from Harvard (Lin) and Stanford (Fields). So it's not surprising when Lin and Fields unveiled what has to be the nerdiest pre-game handshake in league history. The choreographed skit features the two skimming through an imaginary book, taking off their glasses and then placing them inside pocket protectors.
A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to discuss a proposed and relatively dramatic policy change with someone fairly high in state government. I objected to the change with some vigor, and outlined several objections that I thought added up to a compelling case. She listened politely, and then gave an answer for which I hadn't prepared. "You're assuming we thought it through." Well, yes. At least I would have hoped so.
Prompted by a number of people using the phrase "vast majority" recently, I wonder where the line between "majority" and "vast majority" is. Thus, a poll:
Assume for the sake of argument that the issue in question is a simple yes-or-no question, with only a small "no response/ don't know" fraction.
If there are other classes of "majority" that you recognize, feel free to define them in the comments. The poll is just about the term "vast," though.
So there you have it: That's the best case that can be made against gay marriage. An appeals court dissent that rests on the premise that states needn't act rationally, or offer evidence of rationality, or even be rational in creating classifications, so long as someone publishes a study and someone else believes it. That's the best they've got, it seems. That is not legal argument or empirical evidence. It is the death rattle of a movement that has no legal argument or empirical evidence.
There are upstate die-hards who still curse Sleepy Floyd's name, go into conniptions when they see a white hand towel, and recall every errant jumper that ever spun off the rims in the Carrier Dome. What I remember most are the players. There were Syracuse stars such as Pearl Washington, Derrick Coleman, Billy Owens, and Lawrence Moten. Georgetown's pantheon of heroes boasts names like Ewing, Mourning, Mutombo, and Iverson. But supporting characters were just as memorable. We rooted for local Orange products like John Wallace and Ryan Blackwell. We sneered at foes like Robert Churchwell and Irvin Church, both of whom seemed to spend a decade in Hoya colors. With the impending collapse of the Big East, Wednesday's game could be the last time the two teams play in the Carrier Dome.
In a book that I read recently (either The Cloud Roads or The Serpent Sea-- I finished the first and immediately started the second), as some characters are traveling from one place to another, there's a passing mention that they weren't able to hunt at night because the moon wasn't out and it was too dark. Which sort of bugged me, and I was reminded of it tonight when I took Emmy out for our post-dinner walk-- it's very clear tonight, and a lot of stars were visible, even here in the light-polluted suburbs, but the moon wasn't up yet.
And the thing is, while it's darker when the moon isn't out, it's not really too dark to see, because there are a whole lot of stars. This isn't that obvious if you live in a built-up area, but one time we went on a fishing trip up in the mountains in New Mexico, and it was really amazing just how bright the stars can be, if you're in a place with no clouds and no light pollution. A couple of times, I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (also, because the air mattress we were using had a leak, and would slowly deflate), and you really didn't need a flashlight-- just the stars provided plenty of light to see by.
Of course, if there's thick cloud cover and no moon, and you're out in the middle of nowhere, it really is alarmingly difficult to see anything. But that's a function of the overcast skies, not the absence of the moon per se.
I don't have a larger point to make here-- this is mostly to fill time while SteelyKid watches one more episode of Animaniacs before bedtime. But it's something that bugged me, and probably not all that many other people. This is the price of geekdom.
Co.Exist:What does the average environmentalist get wrong? Wagner: Environmentalists, all too often, think that the best way to go about solving the problem is to get everyone to do as they--we, I included--do. I don't eat meat. I don't drive. But individual do-gooderism won't solve global warming. And it may actually be counter-productive, for two reasons. First, there's a well-documented psychological phenomenon called "single-action bias." You do one thing, and you move on. You carry your groceries home by foot, in a cotton canvas bag, and you think that single act of environmental kindness makes up for other sins.
A physical phenomenon that is widely used to slow and store pulses of light in clouds of atoms has been seen for the first time in a system of nuclear-energy levels. The breakthrough has been made by a team of physicists in Germany that has seen evidence for the phenomenon, known as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), as X-rays pass through nanometre-scale layers of iron. The researchers think their method, which is also the first to achieve EIT using just two energy levels rather than the usual three, could lead to the development of devices for controlling X-rays, which is currently very tricky to do.
Grantland editor Robert Mays loves going to the movies. January and February, or Dumpuary, as we've dubbed the post-holiday, pre-Oscar period when Hollywood disposes of its least promising fare, is a terrible time to see movies. And so, in an attempt to break him the way Kevin Spacey broke that fat guy who loved spaghetti in Se7en, we asked him to spend two consecutive days at the biggest multiplex we could find, seeing everything they had to offer, from the moment they opened to the minute they closed. This is his viewing journal.
President Obama looks on in amazement as 14-year-old Joey Hudy demonstrates his Extreme Marshmallow Cannon at today's White House Science Fair. UPDATE: Now with video goodness, courtesy of Barack Obama's Tumblr:
C. In the past five years, no team with an animal nickname has won the Super Bowl. The odds against this are astronomical. There's only a 3 percent chance it would happen, given a random sample. And that random sample wouldn't include men like Peyton Manning. D. In that same time period, only two animal teams even reached the Super Bowl. They both lost. One, the Arizona Cardinals, lost in mysterious last-minute fashion, and the Saints resorted to trickery to beat the Colts. Both results are more than a little suspicious. E. In the 32 playoff games pitting an animal team against a nonanimal team, the nonanimals are 20-12. Again, the success rate is unrealistic for a random sample. If you're looking at the real world, on the other hand, humans are typically far more successful than animals, a few shark attacks aside.
The only stories that might make [Asian-Americans] pause and reconsider the paradigm of endings are the ones that provide us with an alien set of destinations--the stand-up comedian, the police chief, the mass murderer, the potential first round pick in the NBA Draft. In other words, those stories that belong to other races. The lineage of Jeremy Lin isn't found in racial pie charts or in the history of unlikely minorities in big-time sports. Yao, Ichiro, Wat Misaka and Eugene Chung are not his context. Neither is Hines Ward. Instead, to understand Jeremy Lin, we must look to Jin, the diminutive Chinese emcee from Jackson Heights who, for seven weeks, dominated the Battle Stage on BET's 106th and Park.
