February 12, 2013
I found myself writing about the social skills of scientists today for the book-in-progress (something I've done here before), and how they're portrayed in the media, so of course I had to drop in a reference to "The Big Bang Theory." Jim Parsons's portrayal of Sheldon Cooper pretty much nails down…
February 11, 2013
Last Friday, when I didn't have any time to blog, Zen Faulkes wrote an interesting wrap-up post on Science Online 2013 in which he declared he won't be back. Not because it was a bad time, but because other people would benefit from it more, and his not going frees up a spot for somebody else.
I…
February 6, 2013
[Scene: Dinner at Chateau SteelyPips. DADDY is starting to say something about his day at work, when STEELYKID interrupts.]
STEELYKID: If you eat too many hot dogs, you'll turn into a hot dog!
DADDY: That would be pretty silly. Luckily, you're eating chicken for dinner. Eat your chicken.
STEELYKID…
February 6, 2013
I ran across this recently while looking for something else, and was reminded of it by this discussion of jargon. It's an attempt to explain the general historical context of the whole Higgs Boson thing, and why it's important. I improvised this in response to somebody's question about how I would…
February 6, 2013
This is the third post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff, and the one I'm least settled about. Previous posts covered the in how-to-do-outreach session (posted Monday and the blogging long term session (posted…
February 5, 2013
This is the second post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff: in the how-to-do-outreach session (posted yesterday, the blogging long term session, and the what-to-do-when-people-start-taking-you-seriously session. In…
February 4, 2013
I ended up feeling that my most valuable contribution to the Science Online meeting (other than boosting the income of the Marriott's bartenders) was providing experienced commentary and advice from a slightly different angle than a lot of the other participants. A bunch of this got tweeted out by…
February 3, 2013
The Sciece Online meeting wrapped up yesterday afternoon, though the associated conversations and socialization carried on late into the night. I got to meet a lot of people I've only previously known as cartoon avatars, and spent a surprising amount of time talking about rugby.
One of the things…
January 31, 2013
I thought I had mentioned it on Twitter enough, but as several people were surprised to see me last night, it's probably worth saying more prominently: I'm at the Science Online 2013 conference in Raleigh, NC this week. This is making me tremendously popular with my class, who are taking an exam…
January 27, 2013
It's been a good while since I did any Cute Kid Blogging, due to excessive busy-ness. There's big news among the younger residents of Chateau Steelypips, though: SteelyKid lost one of her front teeth the other day:
SteelyKid showing off her missing tooth
That gap? Wasn't there on Friday morning.…
January 24, 2013
While in the library looking for something else, I noticed a book called The Trouble with Science by Robin Dunbar, whose description made it sound very much on point for my current project:
In The Trouble with Science, Robin Dunbar asks whether science really is unique to Western culture, even to…
January 22, 2013
I have mentioned before that when I was a kid, I wrote a letter to Luis Alvarez, the 1968 Nobel laureate in Physics, asking some questions about his theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, which had been featured in a NOVA special. I got a very nice letter back from him, very…
January 18, 2013
As research for the work-in-progress, I recently read Luis Alvarez's autobiography, Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist, which contains a passage that I was reminded of last night while reading another book, that seems like an amusing follow-up to yesterday's rant about theory and experiment. This…
January 17, 2013
There's been a bunch of talk recently about a poll on quantum interpretations that showed physicists badly divided between the various interpretations-- Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, etc.-- a result which isn't actually very surprising. Sean Carroll declares that the summary plot is "The Most…
January 14, 2013
Last week's post talked about the general idea of negative temperature, with reference to this much-talked-about Science paper (which also comes in a free arxiv version from which the figures used here are taken). I didn't go into the details of how they made a negative temperature gas, though, and…
January 8, 2013
The most talked-about physics paper last week was probably Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees of Freedom (that link goes to the paywalled journal; there's also a free arxiv preprint from which the above figure is taken). It's a catchy but easily misinterpreted title-- Negative…
January 7, 2013
Kate and I went down to New York City (sans kids, as my parents were good enough to take SteelyKid and The Pip for the weekend) this weekend, because Kate had a case to argue this morning, and I needed a getaway before the start of classes today. We hit the Rubin Museum of Art, which is just about…
January 5, 2013
I started following Chris Stedman on Twitter thanks to a recommendation from Josh Rosenau citing him as someone who promotes atheism without being contemptous of religious people. He was, indeed, a source of religion-and-politics material that I found congenial, and when I noticed he was flogging a…
January 3, 2013
As I hinted obliquely a little while back, I don't have a terribly high opinion of Wall Street or Wall Street traders. Given that, I'm not the most obvious audience for a book titled The Physics of Wall Street, and truth be told, I wouldn't've picked it up on my own. The publisher sent me an…
December 31, 2012
The Pip's ringing in the New Year... Well, OK, he's actually asleep upstairs. Because when you have a one-year-old and a four-year-old, you don't really get out to a lot of parties on New Year's Eve.
Anyway, to be honest, I won't be all that sorry to see 2012's taillights fade to black. There were…
December 21, 2012
We're at that time of year where people publish lists of top stories of the year, but as many crazy people will be happy to remind you, this Friday marks the end of another calendrical period, in the Mayan calendar. So, I'm going to steal an idea from a college classmate on Facebook, who wrote:…
December 17, 2012
As I'm sure you wish you hadn't heard, there was another school shooting in Connecticut on Friday, one that was hellishly awful even by the standards of such things. The Internet, of course, instantly exploded with the depressingly predictable standard response. And it's hard to put into words just…
December 15, 2012
It was a long and irritating week, for reasons that I can't discuss on the blog, and just when it finally looked like there might be some motion in a positive direction, I got a call from day care saying that SteelyKid had a fever and needed to be picked up immediately. But, on the bright side, it…
December 6, 2012
I have made allusions to a work-in-progress at various points recently, but my general policy is not to reveal any details until things become official. Well, as you can see from the above photo of signed contracts, it's official: I sold the work-in-progress to Basic Books, my publisher for How to…
November 29, 2012
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…
November 28, 2012
In which the skewing of a data plot in Ron Unz's epic investigation of college admissions makes me more skeptical of his overall claim, thanks to the misleading tricks employed.
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Steve Hsu has a new post on a favorite topic of his, bias against Asians in higher ed admissions. This is…
November 27, 2012
In which I unpack a cryptic paper title and explain how quantum superposition lets you use light to keep things from interacting with light.
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I joined AAAS a couple of years ago to get a break on the registration fee for their meeting, and I've kept up the membership mostly because I…
November 20, 2012
I've got a bunch of browser tabs open on my various computers that have been there for weeks, one of which is Alastair Reynolds on writing science fiction. This is mostly a response to a not-terribly-interesting complaint that the science fiction genre has been "exhausted," but there was a bit in…
November 16, 2012
Over at Tor.com, Kate has begun a chapter-by-chapter re-read of The Hobbit, and has some thoughts on Chapter 1. It's full of interesting commentary about characters and literary technique, but let's get right to the important bit: Physics!
Kate mentions in passing in the post that the Hobbit style…
November 15, 2012
Everybody and their siblings have been linking to this Minute Physics video, an "open letter" to President Obama complaining about the way that most high school and even intro college physics classes don't teach anything remotely modern:
I'm not entirely sure where the date of 1865 comes from, but…
