I haven't been doing these as regularly as I was earlier in the year, but here are a few interesting bits of news about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: LA FISICA SPIEGATA AL MIO CANE, is now available. That's the Italian edition, which Google translates to something like "Explaining Physics to My Dog." Emmy is disappointed in that translation-- she was hoping it had something to do with spaghetti, preferably with meat. This appears to be a review of the Chinese edition, though I can't read a word of it, and Google Translate isn't really up to the task, rendering one whole paragraph as "…

I'm taking a bit of flak in comments to my silly Bob Dylan post from Sunday, with various right-wingers spontaneously popping in to tell me that JFK cut taxes. My initial reaction to this is to think that supposing a perfect equivalence between JFK cutting the top rate from 90% to 70% during a time of relative peace and prosperity and our current economic scenario is yet another demonstration of the fine grasp of historical and mathematical reasoning that makes the Tea Party crowd such a treat. But, then, it occurred to me that maybe their claim is that it's the act of cutting taxes that…

Moving Toward Quantum Computing - Science in 2011 - NYTimes.com "In 1981 the physicist Richard Feynman speculated about the possibility of "tiny computers obeying quantum mechanical laws." He suggested that such a quantum computer might be the best way to simulate real-world quantum systems, a challenge that today is largely beyond the calculating power of even the fastest supercomputers. Since then there has been sporadic progress in building this kind of computer. The experiments to date, however, have largely yielded only systems that seek to demonstrate that the principle is sound. They…

The American Institute of Physics has a statistics division that produces lots of interesting analyses of issues relevant to the discipline. A couple of them were released just recently, including one on the job status of new Ph.D.'s (PDF). The key graph from the report is this one: The text of the report talks up the recent decrease in the number of post-doc jobs and increase in potentially permanent positions, but the long term trend looks pretty flat to me-- averaged over the thirty years of data, it looks like a bit more than half of new Ph.D.'s have always taken post-doc positions, and…

Last week's guess-the-number contest for my spare copy of Massive by Ian Sample generated over 150 comments. So, who won? Well, I said at the time: I am thinking of an integer between 0 and 1000 (inclusive). The person who comes closest to guessing the number by midnight Eastern time Friday, November 5 wins a copy of Massive. The number I was thinking of when I typed that was 137. Which, interestingly, was guess by two nearly simultaneous comments, numbers 10 and 11, by Nathan and Derek R. Clearly, these two know their physicist psychology-- 137 is a weirdly important number in physics, as…

Sunday Function : Built on Facts "[T]he idea of function as a machine is such a powerful and intuitive one that it tends to be used pretty universally until you have a good reason to abandon it. Non-mathematicians rarely encounter such reasons, even in the more mathematically demanding disciplines like physics, computer science, and engineering. In fact, most of the time we tend to double down and promiscuously apply the "function as machine" picture to operators. If a function is a machine that turns numbers into other numbers, and operator is a machine that turns functions into other…

I bought the Witmark Demos a week or so ago, because I could always use another 50 Bob Dylan songs, and listening to them on shuffle play has managed to earworm me with one song in particular, "I Shall Be Free", which it occurs to me has great current relevance: Well, my telephone rang it would not stop It's President Kennedy callin' me up He said, "My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow?" I said, "My friend, John, Brigitte Bardot Anita Ekberg Sophia Loren" You might think Dylan's plan for prosperity through importing attractive foreign women is a little fanciful, but it's…

Democrats didn't lose the battle of 2010. They won it. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine "Politicians have tried and failed for decades to enact universal health care. This time, they succeeded. In 2008, Democrats won the presidency and both houses of Congress, and by the thinnest of margins, they rammed a bill through. They weren't going to get another opportunity for a very long time. It cost them their majority, and it was worth it. And that's not counting financial regulation, economic stimulus, college lending reform, and all the other bills that became law under Pelosi. So spare…

This week's Short Story Club story is "The Heart of a Mouse" by K. J. Bishop, from Subterranean Press (which means I'm faintly surprised not to have to pay $15 for it). I recognize Bishop's name, and think I have a copy of The Etched City upstairs that I've never gotten around to reading, but don't think I've read anything of hers before. This is an after-the-magic Apocalypse story. Some time before the start of the story, there was a dramatic and magic change in the world, with basically all high technology disappearing, and people being turned into anthropomorphic animals. Most people…

Having written in defense of analogies in physics yesterday, I should note that not all of the analogies that are brought out in an attempt to clarify physics concepts are good. For example, there's this incredibly strained opening to a Science News article on entanglement: If the Manning brothers were quantum physicists as well as NFL quarterbacks, one of them could win his game's opening coin toss every time. The night before they played, the brothers would take two coins from a special quantum box to use the next day. If Peyton's game came first, after learning the outcome of his coin toss…

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Schrodinger's job interview. (tags: silly physics history comics smbc) NASA Space Games | Wired Science | Wired.com "The future is now. NASA wants to start playing space games. Check out this NASA Spaced Out Sports Design Challenge. Unfortunately, the challenge is geared towards grades 5-8, but I can't help thinking about this. The deal is that students submit some game that they design for astronauts to to play in the International Space Station. Maybe I am ruining this whole competition, but I want to share some ideas (kids, feel free to expand on these…

I haven't been flogging it as hard as in some past years, but the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is still going on, though it wraps up on Tuesday. To date, we've raised just over $1,300 to support education in needy schools, which is great, and thanks to all those who have donated. If you haven't donated yet, and have some cash, there's still time to win fabulous prizes, including the naming of one of the example animals in the forthcoming sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog after a pet of your choosing. One animal will be named after a pet chosen by the biggest single donor (the…

Regular commenter onymous left a comment to my review of Warped Passages that struck me as a little odd: The extended analogy between the renormalization group and a bureaucracy convinced me that she was trying way too hard to make sophisticated concepts comprehensible. Also, I'm not really sure that analogies are the best way to explain concepts to people without using mathematics. I'm not talking about the implication that making sophisticated concepts comprehensible is not worth doing, but rather the negativity toward analogies. It's odd because, if you think about it, a huge chunk of…

Five close-approach images of Hartley 2 by Deep Impact, with commentary - The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society "Here's the five close-approach images of Hartley 2 captured today, November 4, 2010, by the Deep Impact spacecraft, collected into one file. Boy, do these images reward close examination!" (tags: science astronomy pictures space blogs planetary-society) What real political engagement looks like "The urgency is always there, and the fact that it gets masked sometimes by the "right" candidate getting elected is what puts so much of our society to sleep.  Bitching on…

Welcome to this very-carefully-posed edition of Thursday Toddler Blogging: That's Kate and SteelyKid reading The Cat in the Hat,shot from a slightly odd angle so as to hide the wicked shiner that SteelyKid is sporting, thanks to a tumble down the stairs on Tuesday morning (while I was getting ready to take her to the doctor, no less-- Tuesday was Not A Good Day). She's doing just fine, but it's really a terrible look. This also continues the playing-with-the-camera trend of the last week or two, as this was shot without the flash. The angle is also chosen to put the lamp on the end table out…

I can't resist interrupting the relatively productive day I'm having working on the new book to point you to Conversación de fÃsica con mi perro, the Spanish-language edtion of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which sports this spiffy cover: I haven't seen a physical copy of this yet, but the vanity search turned up this blog post, which just reproduces the cover copy, but does offer a sample chapter as a PDF. So, you know, if you want to try it before you buy it, there you go... This also explains the phone call I got yesterday from a journalist in Spain, who wanted to ask me about…

I'm spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I'm avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don't want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here's a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid's continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon: How does a cow jump over the moon? The father of one of SteelyKid's classmates, who is not originally from the US, asked why there's a cow jumping over the moon in that (or, as SteelyKid puts it: "Cow jumping MOON!!"), and I don't have a good answer. I'm aware of the nursery rhyme and the Tolkien joke, but why…

Blog U.: 7 Ways College Has Improved Since 91 - Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed "We spend so much time worrying about what is wrong with our U.S. higher ed system that it is easy to lose sight of how much the system has improved over the past 20 years. This is a mistake, as if we fail to honor our successes we will forget that change can and does happen, and that our colleagues are working incredibly hard each and every day to improve our institutions. My point of reference is admittedly limited and biased -- as I graduated from one elite, private institution in 1991 (Washington…

In a case of poor communication between publicists, I have ended up with not one but two advance copies of Massive by Ian Sample, a forthcoming book about the Higgs Boson. As I barely have time to read one, I don't remotely need two; thus, I will dispose of one with a really simple contest: I am thinking of an integer between 0 and 1000 (inclusive). The person who comes closest to guessing the number by midnight Eastern time Friday, November 5 wins a copy of Massive. Leave your guess in the comments. One entry per commenter, please. In the event that two or more people choose the same…

I have nothing useful or interesting to say about electoral politics, but I suspect that's all people will want to read about today. So here's a book post that's been backlogged for quite a while. Lisa Randall's Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions dates from 2005, and was, I think, part of the huge spate of string-theory-related books at that time (just before the String Theory Backlash books of 2006). It includes the usual survey of the Standard Model and the problems thereof, with an emphasis on the sort of extra-dimension theories that Randall and…