drorzel | March 28, 2010Lest you think that the previous couple of posts indicate that I'm just a cranky curmudgeon who doesn't like anything he reads, let me put in a plug for Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll. I read about half of this piecemeal over a couple of months, then finished it on the plane to the March Meeting. Subtitled "An Alternative History of American Popular Music," it meticulously documents the fads and changes of American music over the first two-thirds or so of the 20th Century, and in the process tells a very different story than what you may think you know.
The origin of…
drorzel | March 27, 2010Spending less time reading blogs means that I have more time to spend reading fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction I've been reading has been letting me down. In particular, I'm very disappointed in the last two books I've (mostly) read.
For one of the books, N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (sample chapter),mit's not entirely the author's fault. Had I not gone on a big urban fantasy binge a little while back (as mentioned earlier), I probably would've liked this better. Having become fed up with the "My Awesome Werewolf Boyfriend" stuff in Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson books,…
drorzel | March 26, 2010Somebody at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a really high opinion of this blog, as they not only sent me an Advance Reading Copy of Paul Davies's forthcoming book about SETI, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, they followed it up with a finished hardcover. I read the ARC on the plane on the way back from the March Meeting, and put the hardcover in the mailbox of a colleague who just finished co-teaching a course on astrobiology.
This book is being released in 2010, which Davies cites as the 50th anniversary of an active Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI…
drorzel | March 25, 2010Not as nice a day today as some recent days, but we ended up running around in the backyard all the same. It's still not really spring, no matter what the astronomers say, but there are a few hardy little weeds poking up flowers that haven't quite opened yet. SteelyKid already knows what to do with these: Pick them up, and give them to Mommy.
We also took turns riding on the swing in the backyard:
Kate managed to get a smile with the ever-popular "got your red dog" game:
But by the time it was my turn, SteelyKid was tired of swinging, and much more interested in admiring the neighbors' yard…
drorzel | March 25, 2010Been a little while since I've done an Obsessive Update, but a few noteworthy things have come up recently:
A very nice review at Pet Connection: "this brilliant and (relatively) simple book explains the basic premises of quantum physics in terms that dogs and most English majors can understand." Which is not to say that English majors are less likely to understand it than dogs-- English majors are a big part of our target audience, and it's nice to hear that it works for at least some of them.
Another blog review, this time at Synergy of One: "Throughout the book, the author's extremely…
drorzel | March 25, 2010I did one sketchy update from Portland last Tuesday, but never wrote up my impressions of the rest of the March Meeting-- when I got back, I was buried in grading, and then trying to put together Monday's presentation. And, for reasons that will become apparent, I was unable to write anything up before I left Portland
Anyway, for those who care, here are my impressions from the rest of the meeting:
Tuesday
In the 8am session, I went to the polymer physics prize talk by Michael Rubinstein, which was a sort of career retrospective, talking about how he wandered into the disreputable field of…
drorzel | March 24, 2010Several people have sent me links to news stories about last week's Nature paper, "Quantum ground state and single-phonon control of a mechanical resonator." (It was also presented at the March Meeting, but I didn't go to that session). This is billed as the first observation of quantum phenomena with a "macroscopic" or "naked eye visible" object.
Of course, there's a nice bit of irony in a story about quantum effects in a "naked eye visible" object that is accompanied by an image of the object in question taken with a scanning electron microscope. The longest dimension of the object in…
drorzel | March 23, 2010The winners of the first Research Blogging Awards were announced today, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this blog was named the "Best Blog -- Chemistry, Physics, or Astronomy." I knew that I was nominated-- I was one of the judges, and while I abstained from voting on my own blog, I did see it in the list with many other excellent blogs. Given that research blogging is only a small part of what I do, I didn't expect to win at all.
(In the manner of such awards, I now feel guilty for not having done any ResearchBlogging posts in ages, so I've queued one up for tomorrow morning…
drorzel | March 22, 2010I gave a talk today for a group of local home-school students and parents, on the essential elements of quantum physics. The idea was to give them a sense of what sets quantum mechanics apart from other theories of physics, and why it's a weird and wonderful thing.
The title is, of course, a reference to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, and the second slide was an embedded version of the Chapter 3 reading. I set the talk up to build toward the double-slit experiment with electrons, using the video of the experiment made by Hitachi. Here's the talk on SlideShare:
What Every Dog Should Know…
drorzel | March 18, 2010Kate here, with some outdoor baby blogging:
I'd meant for this to be a comparison photo to this one from August. Unfortunately it's got neither Chad nor Appa for scale, and she's slouching, which diminishes the OMG HUGE effect—but not the killer cute.
One more outdoor picture and one indoor picture below the fold:
Here we have a somewhat crooked image of her joy at having her picture taken:
And here we have a Kate's-eye view of a very common sight here at Chateau Steelypips:
Yes, she's the cutest toddler in the universe, thank you for noticing.
drorzel | March 15, 2010I'm terrible about taking notes on conference talks, especially when I'm jet-lagged and was sleep deprived even before I got on the plane. I do jot down the occasional paper reference, though, so here are the things I wrote down, and the talks they were associated with. This should give you some vague idea of what the meeting was like on Monday.
From Joel Moore's talk on topological insulators, one of the Hot New Topics in condensed matter, a review in Nature.
From Phillip Treutlein's talk on optomechanics, a recent preprint on coupling atoms to mechanical oscillators.
From Nathaniel Brahms'…
drorzel | March 14, 2010I'm en route to the March Meeting in Portland, which involves a three-hour layover in Chicago, between two flights on Southwest, my preferred airline. I'm always impressed by how much more efficient Southwest seems that the other major airlines.
One weird manifestation of that efficiency is the flight plans that Southwest uses. Where most flights on other airlines seem to go back and forth between two cities over and over, Southwest's routes tend to roam all over the country. This morning's flight from Albany to Chicago continued on to San Antonio, TX, Phoenix, and San Jose. Another recent…
drorzel | March 12, 2010I think I've mentioned before that I'm on the local committee that selects nominees for the Watson Fellowship, which is one of the best committees to be on, because you get to interact with some of our best students doing things that they really love. This year, we're thrilled to have two of our nominees selected as members of the 2010-2011 awardees:
Frederick Franke, Union College
Out of the Kitchen and Into the Fire: Exploring Open-Fire Cooking Methods
South Africa, New Zealand, India, Jamaica, Turkey
People don't generally like to eat alone; food is a necessity, but it also serves to bring…
drorzel | March 11, 2010SteelyKid says "You know what? Bacon tastes good!"
We've had a hard time convincing her that anything that isn't either 1) crunchy, or 2) goopy is food. Cooked vegetables, she'll pick up, look at, and toss aside laughing. Cooked meat is similarly rejected. This week, though, we discovered that she'll eat bacon, which evidently is crispy enough to overcome its Meat Nature. Also, bread is ok, probably because in addition to being yummy, it can be ripped into lots of little pieces that can be scattered all over the table.
Emmy, of course, is insanely jealous that SteelyKid gets bacon. It's very…
drorzel | March 11, 2010Lots of good suggestions as to Portland activities for my trip to the March Meeting next week. There's a second, related problem that I also need help with: What should I do at the meeting itself?
My usual conference is DAMOP, which I'll be going to in May, so while DAMOP is a participating division, and offers some cool-sounding sessions, it seems a little silly to go to the March Meeting and go to DAMOP talks. The whole point of being at the gigantic meeting is to see different stuff than usual.
The problem is, the scientific program includes forty-odd parallel sessions in each time slot,…
drorzel | March 10, 2010Several items in the general category of charitable activity:
Kate is running the Con or Bust auction again this year, with proceeds going to support people of color interested in attending SFF cons, principally Wiscon. Bidding is open through Saturday at 11:59pm ET, and items up for bid include many things that may be of interest to readers of this blog, including a certain book, plus a bunch of other stuff I will put below the fold.
I got email from the Nobel Prize committee the other day. Well, OK, the webmaster for Nobelprize.org. They have an "Ask a Nobel laureate" feature going on…
drorzel | March 10, 2010On this morning's walk, a woman stopped me and Emmy to say that she recognized us from a picture. Emmy was adopted from the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society shelter back in 2003, and when they heard about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, they contacted me about writing Emmy up as a distinguished alumna. And, in fact, there's a piece in their print newsletter, including a picture of the two of us sitting by the couch (page 8 of the PDF newsletter for February 2010).
Emmy, of course, regards this as no more than her due. She's hoping to be invited to give a commencement address at some…
drorzel | March 9, 2010I'm going to be attending the March Meeting of the American Physical Society next week, in Portland, OR. This will be held at the Oregon Convention Center, which is apparently on the opposite side of the river from every hotel in the city.
I have never been to Portland (or, indeed, anything in the Pacific Northwest) before, so I have no idea what there is to do there. I'm sure that at least some of my readers have been there or are from there, though, so here's your chance to clue me in: What essential Portland activities/ eateries/ whatever should I make sure not to miss while I'm there?
I…
drorzel | March 5, 2010Another dramatic reading of a chapter from How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, just because. This is Chapter 4, which is based on the original Many Worlds, Many Treats post that kick-started the whole thing:
I'm sitting at the computer typing, when Emmy bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she's sniffing the floor around my feet intently.
"What are you doing down there?"
"I'm looking for steak!" she says, wagging her tail hopefully.
"I'm pretty certain that there's no steak down there," I say. "I've never eaten steak at the computer, and I've certainly never dropped any on the floor."
"…
drorzel | March 4, 2010Here we see SteelyKid kickin' back in her babypod, sharing a meal of Cheerios and dried fruit with Appa:
SteelyKid says "You know, Daddy, if we traveled by sky bison, you wouldn't have to worry about the wiring in your car, and you wouldn't be faced with driving a giant rental pick-up truck to Vestal tomorrow..."
She's not always the world's most helpful baby.