Personal

Category archives for Personal

In the comments to yesterday’s post about college admissions, Joseph Yoon quoted my statement that “I’m somewhat sympathetic to claims that Asians have a difficult position in higher education,” and shot back with: I wonder if you will feel more strongly about this in 10 years when your kids are near college. Will you advise…

Four More Years…

…and The Pip will be five. Happy birthday, Little Dude! Oh, yeah, there was also some kind of election. In which a bunch of crazy people lost, and a guy I played rugby with was elected a US Senator. Which is a great way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of this momentous occasion. And here’s…

SCENE: The library at Chateau Steelypips. DADDY is typing on the computer, while THE PIP plays on the floor. Enter STEELYKID. STEELYKID: I’m already four years old. DADDY: Yes, yes you are. THE PIP: Thbbbbbbbpppt! STEELYKID: How old is The Pip? DADDY: Eleven months. Not quite one year. STEELYKID: When The Pip is four, how…

Science with SteelyKid

There are a bunch of physics stories that I’d sort of like to write about, but don’t have time for, and politics is oscillating between “darkly hilarious” and “indescribably depressing,” so that’s best left alone. So, here’s some cute kid pictures instead. SteelyKid has lately taken to telling all and sundry “This is my daddy.…

The “Ballistic” Story

Last week, in the post about fermion conduction, I left a reference hanging: There’s nothing physically blocking the atoms from flying right through the channel– in fact, an atom that enters the channel will always exit the other side without slowing down along the way. This is termed “ballistic,” a term that will always have…

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

So, a couple of months ago, I said I was taking some time off from the blog, and wasn’t sure I would make it back. What was up with that, anyway? Well, for one thing, I had a bunch of stuff to work on, and needed the extra time. I wrote a proposal for a…

Does This Thing Still Work?

I might return to physics blogging at some point, but I know what people really want from this blog. So, here’s a cute kid picture. The Pip is increasingly mobile, and here we see him trying to climb into my lap, with an assist from big sister SteelyKid. Giving them superhero-ish noms du Net may…

It’s Been Fun, But I Need a Break

The title pretty much says it all. One of the reasons I wanted to get the Ten Years Before the Blog series done was that I’m incredibly burned out on everything right now, and I need to step away from the Internet for a while. There are too many things that aren’t getting done, and…

In which we look back on the ninth full year of this blog, and one of the most unpleasant incidents in the whole run, which nearly ruined what was otherwise a good year. ———— This is probably going to be the longest of these posts, at least in terms of the number of links included–…

Weekend Family Blogging

I had hoped to get the next Ten Years Before the Blog post queued up for today, but what with one thing and another, that didn’t happen. It probably won’t happen before Monday, either, as the weekend will be full of family-type activities– taking SteelyKid to soccer this morning, and her summer camp orientation tomorrow,…