A few other people got the same email I did, promoting a list of the 50 Best Physics Blogs put together by Accredited Online Colleges Dot Org. It's a fine list, with one glaring problem: They didn't include Matt Springer's Built On Facts. As you can probably tell from its frequent tagging for the daily links dump, I'm a big fan, and think Matt's got one of the best physics blogs going. I could probably come up with a blog or two that I'd drop off the existing list, but that would be impolitic. So let's just add him as the 51st blog, leaving us one blog shy of a pack of cards. The comments of…

Windows MovieMaker has inexplicably decided to work again, today. Maybe it can only produce useful output on odd-numbered Fridays. Whatever the reason, I was finally able to edit down and paste together a couple of really cute video clips of SteelyKid playing in her babypod: We can (and do) watch this sort of thing for hours. She very clearly has something she's trying to do, even if we can't quite tell what it is. It's fascinating to see the wheels turning, though, and I can't wait until she can explain what she thinks is going on. whatever it is, she obviously thinks it's pretty cool.

Here's yesterday's turkey a la Good Eats, a little while after coming out of the oven: As in past years, we brined it overnight. Unlike past years, we didn't have any of the plastic roasting bags, so instead we took advantage of the spiffy new roasting pan (a Christmas gift after the liquid turkey incident) and the convection roast setting on our oven. A 21-lb turkey cooked in 2hrs, and came out pretty darn tasty. The rest of the menu: funeral potatoes (recipe here), steamed broccoli and green beans, and stuffing. The stuffing is probably my favorite part. How much do I like stuffing? I made…

Spins spotted in room-temperature silicon - physicsworld.com "Physicists in the Netherlands are the first to show that spin-polarized electrons can be injected into silicon at room temperature. The team injected the electrons into both p-type and n-type silicon and measured how long the polarization lasted. Although the lifetime was shorter than expected the physicists believe it is long enough to support the development of spintronics devices." (tags: science physics condensed-matter materials electronics news experiment) The Popdose 100: The Best Songs of the Decade | Popdose "[H]ere's…

We hosted Thanksgiving this year, and SteelyKid was the life of the party. When she saw Grandpa make the unwise decision to sit down on the couch with a glass of red wine, she came running, and spilled it all over him. To make up for it, she graciously decided to include him in this week's Baby Blogging: (He borrowed dry clothes from me.) We also took advantage of having everyone here to get a Baby Blogging picture with four generations in it: Actually, we took a bunch, as Kate was trying to get one where SteelyKid wasn't partially obscrued by her red dog. This was probably the best of them…

Chiefly, this: Also, this: Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers; the rest of you, have a lovely Thursday.

The Mid-Majority : Assistant Coach for a Night "[Northwestern State Coach] McConathy did things a little differently than most coaches -- he subbed his players five-in, five-out, ran an offense that was almost as old as the NCAA Tournament itself. He often allowed coaching friends and local children into the locker room at halftime, even for big games. He let national journalists give pregame pep talks. And for the middle part of this decade, his unconventional ways were paying off. The Demons had a long string of 20-win seasons, and made four consecutive Southland title games. But now, the…

The Onion kindly provided this Patton Oswalt demolition of the "Christmas Shoes" song. while it's funny, it is a reminder that we have reached the time of year when radio stations across the country will begin inflicting holiday "cheer" on their listeners. which seems like an excellent subject for a poll: Which of these holiday songs is the most excruciating?(opinion) This is thrown together very quickly between steps in the food preparation for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner, so I'm sure I've forgotten several horrible songs that belong on the list. Please feel free to offer your own least…

Thony C has a post about the Great Man theory of science spinning off some thoughts about Darwin by ex-ScienceBlogs silverback John Wilkins. As Thony writes: Now you may ask why I as a historian of Renaissance mathematics should comment on a blog post about a 19th century work of biology and its author? The answer is quite simple; everything that John says about Darwin and his book can and should be applied to Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and a host of other scientist from the early modern period and their works. Nothing that any of these scholars did or wrote existed in a…

Confessions of a Community College Dean: Teaching Governance "As an administrator, I'm constantly struck by the unacknowledged contradiction among many faculty between "consult us in all things" and "back off and leave us alone." It's not that I don't understand the impulse; depending on local practice, 'service' may or may not count for tenure or promotion. If it doesn't, then the duck-and-cover approach makes short-term sense. Certainly, anybody who has put in time in contentious meetings (hi!) can attest that they can be draining, that you'll sometimes see people at their worst, and that…

I've been a little too busy to participate, but His Holiness and Eric Weinstein on Twitter have gotten into an interesting exchange about the structure of academia, and the appropriate number of Ph.D.'s in science. As usual, I suspect I'm not fully understanding the majesty of whatever Eric is arguing in favor of, but it's provocative. At about the same time, the Dean Dad has been on something of an anti-tenure bender, starting here, continuing here, and culminating in a blistering rant about Michael Berube. Dean Dad is in favor of replacing tenure with infinitely renewable five-year…

The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is exactly four weeks from today. So here's a dramatic reading of Chapter 3 to mark the occasion: I've put this up before, but I edited it to remove the URL, which was apparently a deal-breaker for booksellers. And yes, I will post about something other than the book, Real Soon Now...

During this year's DonorsChoose fundraiser, I promised books as prizes to people who contributed to my challenge. Now that the finished books are ready, it's time to congratulate the winners. Lauren Uroff wins one copy for giving the largest individual donation of the people who forwarded me receipts (the largest overall contribution was from Hewlett Packard, but we're not giving books away to faceless corporations). The person who posts as tcmJOE was the winner of the random drawing (the person has a real name, but I'm not sure it's public. He also used an email address that may be a spam…

CHART ATTACK!: 11/20/76 | Popdose "I keep trying to figure out what this song is really trying to say in its subtext -- but no, I'm pretty sure it's actually about two muskrats courting. I know I said this a few songs ago, but WHY? Why did we need a song about two muskrats on a date? And even more importantly, why were Captain & Tennille the third artists to record the song? Originally titled "Mukstrat Candlelight" -- and let's just pause a second to think about the meeting where the artistic merits of this title were debated -- the song was written and recorded by Willis Alan Ramsey in…

I have a whole slew of grading that I need to do, so here's some baby video to keep you entertained: While it may not sound that way, this is SteelyKid in a very, very good mood. The high-pitched dinosaur shrieks are happy shrieks. And the silly baby running is very cute.

The pictures I posted last night aren't really the greatest for seeing the cover of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so here's a shot of the book jacket spread out on my desk: This isn't the greatest, either, but it does give you a sense of the key features of the jacket design, which I like a lot: First of all, there's the quizzical looking black dog on the cover. I've known about this image for a while, but I really like the dog's expression. I wish I could reliably get Emmy to do that and get a picture of it. The second element, and the first new to me, is the yellow spine with the…

Seeing Laser Beams : Built on Facts "I have to say it's a nice job perk that I can see old science fiction tropes come to life pretty much every day." (tags: science physics optics blogs built-on-facts lasers) blarg? » A Note To Maya "So according to the old joke, a fed-up student asks the physics prof who's going over kinetics in protracted detail, what good is all this? What will I ever use this for? To which the professor, not even looking up from where he's writing on the board, says "This stuff saves lives." The student balks for a second and then gets belligerent, demanding to know…

Look! How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is a real book: Emmy says, very seriously, "You will buy a copy, won't you?" Of course, like everything else in this house, SteelyKid had to grab a copy: She whipped through to the last page pretty fast: Emmy says "What'd you think, human puppy?" SteelyKid says "If I knew how to read, Daddy's book would be my favorite book ever. People who can read should definitely buy it." You heard the kid and the dog...

Kate and I went to the two games of the "semifinals" of the 2K Sports Classic Supporting Coaches vs. Cancer, Your Name Here for a Prince pre-season "tournament" last night (the scare quotes are because the four teams playing last night were guaranteed to be playing last night, regardless of what happened in the earlier "rounds"). We were in section 329 of Madison Square Garden, which aren't great seats in an absolute sense, but are pretty darn good for a game-day impulse buy. Not that there was any trouble getting seats-- the lower levels were maybe 3/4 full. The first game saw Syracuse beat…

It's not often that I regret having a cell phone that is just a phone, but this is one of those occasions-- I stopped by my publisher today to talk about marketing and publicity, and record a video for the web, and got a stack of finished copies of the book, hot off the presses. If I had a cell phone camera, I'd post a picture, but I don't, so you'll have to settle for a plain-text "Woo-hoo!" On an only vaguely related note, our cultural activities in NYC will include some college hoops, as there's a preseason "tournament" taking place at Madison Square garden tonight. Syracuse vs. Cal, and…