drorzel | November 1, 2015The hot SF release of the fall is Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy, concluding the Imperial Radch trilogy. The first of these, Ancillary Justice won a Hugo two years ago, and the second, Ancillary Sword should've won this past year, because I really didn't like the Three-Body Problem.
The release of Ancillary Mercy generated a ton of buzz, to the point where, as I remarked on Twitter, I felt as if I were letting down some ill-defined "side" by not being more excited about it. But while I liked Ancillary Justice quite a bit (it's the rare book I've voted for the Best Novel Hugo that's actually won…
drorzel | October 31, 2015I took some shots of nature stuff on this morning's dog walk, and a few good action shots at the last soccer game of the season. But honestly, the only thing anybody wants to see today is Halloween costumes, so here are the kids:
The Pip as Batman, SteelyKid as a ninja.
Cleverly, they both selected costumes that are predominantly black; we augmented these with glow-stick bracelets and flashlights while actually trick-or-treating, for improved visibility.
Putting these together required a good deal more GIMP work than I anticipated, because the raw shots for the two are at slightly…
drorzel | October 30, 2015This is basically the shot I was trying to get yesterday when I ended up settling for an evil squirrel: a leaf in mid-fall.
Falling leaf in late October.
This is, of course, damnably difficult to get, as it's impossible to guess when a specific leaf will drop, and if you throw them up into the air, they don't stay airborne long enough to bring the camera up and focus it. And, you know, I could recruit somebody to toss leaves in the air for me, but I'm not sure that would make me feel any less a dumbass than standing in the yard with my camera staring up at the maple over the driveway.
It's…
drorzel | October 30, 2015I've been slacking in my obligation to use this blog for self-promotion, but every now and then I remember, so here are two recent things where I was interviewed by other people:
-- I spoke on the phone to a reporter from Popular Mechanics who was writing a story about "radionics" and "wishing boxes," a particular variety of pseudoscience sometimes justified with references to quantum mechanics. The resulting story is now up, and quotes me:
It is hard to investigate the ethereal thinking around radionics, but physics is something that can be parsed. So I got in touch with Chad Orzel, a…
drorzel | October 29, 2015You might look at this and say "Oh, what a cute little squirrel..."
A demon from another dimension, at least according to Emmy.
But Emmy will be very happy to explain, loudly and at length, that this is, in fact, a demonic alien menace, an existential threat to the safety of our house and home.
This wasn't really what I had in mind for the photo of the day today, but I took a picture of this little guy while I was outside trying to get a different sort of shot that didn't quite come out the way I wanted. So this is what you get tonight.
drorzel | October 29, 2015I got off on a bit of a rant the other day about bad defenses of "the humanities," but there's a bright side. It finally got me to write my own, over at Forbes, which is basically the last piece of a tetralogy of advice for students:
-- Why small colleges are a great place for students majoring in STEM subjects
-- What students planning to major in STEM subjects should make sure to do in college
-- Why non-STEM majors should nevertheless take science classes in college
-- Why STEM majors should take "humanities" classes, and take them seriously
That last one, posted yesterday, is my attempt…
drorzel | October 29, 2015I totally spaced on posting this yesterday, because I ended up having to take SteelyKid to the doctor, which blew a gigantic hole in my day. (She's fine.) But this is a shot of sunrise yesterday morning:
Sunrise on October 28.
This was a very strange sunrise because this is pretty much the only light in the sky we saw all day. Those bits that look sort of blue-ish around the pink clouds aren't clear sky, they're more clouds. Ten minutes after this was taken, the entire sky was unrelieved grey, and stayed that way all day. Ten minutes before this was taken, there wasn't really any hint of…
drorzel | October 27, 2015I did take some DSLR photos today, but the photo of the day is a cell-phone shot from the final soccer practice of the fall for SteelyKid's second-grade team.
The last rec soccer practice for the fall 2015 season.
SteelyKid is not, in fact, in this photo; she had a belt test for the Elite Team at her taekwondo school tonight, so she was off getting dinner before some hard-core sparring. I was at practice because I signed up to assistant coach this year-- I was going to end up going to the practices anyway, and figured I might as well help out. It's been fun, and definitely increases my…
drorzel | October 27, 2015Somebody in my social media feeds passed along a link to this interview with Berkeley professor Daniel Boyarin about "the humanities," at NPR's science-y blog. This is, of course, relevant to my interests, but sadly, but while it's a short piece, it contains a lot to hate.
For one thing, after the dismissive one-two of "so-called 'scientific methods'" (Scare quotes! "So-called"! Two great tastes that taste great together!) in the process of trying to re-brand "the humanities" as "the human sciences," Boyarin offers the following on methodology:
The primary method for the study of humans…
drorzel | October 27, 2015I was out of town last week, and doing talk prep leading up to that, so it's been a little while since my last collection of Forbes links. Here's the latest from over there:
-- Football Physics: The Forces Behind Those Big Hits: A look at force, momentum, and acceleration in tackling.
-- The Science Of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: What Is Quantum Harmonic Oscillation? A question on Twitter provides an excuse to use some video of The Pip bouncing on playground equipment to discuss the physics of the harmonic oscillator in both classical and quantum forms.
-- The Science Of Alternate Worlds: The…
drorzel | October 26, 2015SteelyKid's second-grade class is doing a "Zoom Time" thing where the kids make short presentations to the class about one of their interests. It's basically an expanded show-and-tell, with fifteen minutes for talking, and five for "questions and compliments."
She, of course, decided to talk about taekwondo, so I brought her sparring gear in and she suited up:
SteelyKid in sparring gear for her "Zoom Time" presentation. Daddy included for scale.
The highlight of the presentation was when she let the whole class come up and take turns punching her in the chest to demonstrate the…
drorzel | October 26, 2015You didn't get a photo of the day yesterday because this was my day:
Southern California at sunrise, from the air.
I spent about seven hours on planes, starting before the sun was up in California, to say nothing of the time spent in airports. I had the good camera with me, so I got some cool photos out the plane window, but when I finally got home, I didn't have the time or energy to GIMP them up and post one.
So, instead, I'm doing it just before sunrise on the East Coast, before I walk Emmy and wake up Kate and the kids...
drorzel | October 24, 2015As noted yesterday, I'm visiting my sister for a few days, since I was on the West Coast anyway. Being here in Southern California, it seems appropriate to jack Kevin Drum's style and do some cat-blogging, and luckily enough, my sister is the Cat Person in the family. So, here they are:
My sister's cats. Clockwise from top left: Tate, Topher, Mona, Calliope, Oberon, Molly.
SteelyKid was really into the idea that we should get a cat for a while, though she's kind of cooled on that, but she'll probably like this photo a lot. Emmy... not so much.
I'm flying home tomorrow, leaving at an…
drorzel | October 23, 2015Having successfully given two talks in Sacramento, I'm spending a few days visiting my sister in Riverside, CA, because it's not often I'm on the West Coast at all. She had to work this morning, so I went on a bit of a hike up and down Mt. Rubidoux, where the city has built a really nice paved trail that winds around the mountain:
Part of the Mt. Rubidoux trail, coming down from the top.
I went out at around 9am, which had the advantage of being relatively cool and pleasant for walking. The disadvantage is that there was a ton of fog, making it hard to get good photos from up on the…
drorzel | October 22, 2015Having a slow morning here in Sacramento, because yesterday started before 4am and ended after 1am, according to my internal clock. This provided the opportunity to take some nicer pictures than just the obligatory hotel-window shot, so I went for a walk on the bike path by the American River. Where I saw Fire Sheep:
Animal grazing fire fuel reduction in progress.
OK, technically, according to the signs they had up, this is an "animal grazing fire fuel reduction" program, but I think "fire sheep" sounds cooler. There was a pretty sizable herd of sheep wandering around the side of the path…
drorzel | October 21, 2015I'm in California for a few days, to give a couple of talks in Sacramento. I'm told that it's traditional to commemorate such travel by taking a photo of a hotel parking lot, so here you go:
The obligatory hotel parking lot photo.
There are, in fact, palm trees around here, just not any that are visible from the hotel room window.
And now, I need to be horizontal for an hour or so, because OMG, long travel day.
drorzel | October 20, 2015When we were in DC back in July, SteelyKid purchased a toy Newton's cradle. And I already owned a 1000fps video camera, so it was inevitable that the one would end up in front of the other...
I spent a while this afternoon making high-speed video of the toy clicking back and forth, but didn't have time to write up the analysis. And I'm leaving wayyy too early this morning to fly to California for a few days (giving a couple of talks in Sacramento, then visiting my sister for a bit), so you'll have to settle for this teaser image for now:
SteelyKid's toy Newton's cradle in mid-swing.
Well,…
drorzel | October 19, 2015We've had a serious cold snap over the last few days, with temperatures dropping from the 60F kind of range down to 40F. And with that comes, well:
Frost on the windshield of my car.
Happily, it's going to warm back up over the next couple of days, but it won't be long before I need to extend nearly every morning's routine by a few minutes to clear a thick layer of frost off my car. For the moment, though, I can still enjoy the novelty of the cool spikes and stuff.
Oh, and here, have an earworm:
drorzel | October 19, 2015A few years back, I did a couple of posts on the physics of a sad balloon (that is, a helium balloon that can no longer lift itself up to the ceiling), the first on simple buoyancy, the second on how long it takes for the helium to leak out. These were based on only a couple of data points, though, and it's always risky to extrapolate too far from just two points.
Of course, in a house with two kids, we have helium balloons show up with some regularity, and SteelyKid's birthday this year provided a bounty of them-- four shiny Mylar balloons, bearing cheerful images of Scooby-Doo, some cartoon…
drorzel | October 19, 2015It's been a while since I did it, but on a few occasions in the past, I've done posts here titled "Who Are You People?" asking readers to comment and say something about themselves. This is not remotely scientific, as a survey of blog readership, though.
Happily, an actual scientist is stepping up for this: Dr. Paige Jarreau, known to Twitter as FromTheLabBench and author of a blog by that name is a postdoc at LSU studying science communication, with a focus on social media. She's put together a reader survey and recruited a bunch of bloggers to promote it, including yours truly.
The survey…