drorzel | November 4, 2009There are at least as many ways to write really interesting essays as there are people writing really interesting essays, but for the most part, they break down into two broad types. There are the ones that completely change the way you look at some subject you thought you knew about, forcing you to change your opinion of it; and there are the ones that explain some subject in such a clear and compelling way that they change the way you think about it (even if you don't change your opinion of the subject).
Those two types account for most of the interesting essays out there, but don't cover…
drorzel | November 4, 2009
Technology Review: Blogs: arXiv blog: Protecting aircraft from high-powered lasers
Sadly, this does not involve giant laser cannons trying to shoot down planes.
(tags: science physics lasers optics)
Essay - What to Write Next - Picking a Genre for Your Next Novel - NYTimes.com
"Thriller Nothing wrong with putting a little food on the table, especially in these times of economic uncertainty.
Recommended for: Those who know only five adjectives, but know them really well."
(tags: writing books literature silly)
slacktivist: TF: Saving Hattie Durham
"Apart from the generally dull…
drorzel | November 3, 2009We're going to host the New York Section meeting of the American Physical Society next spring (joint with the New England Section, which will tax our resources), with the theme of the meeting being applications of nuclear physics. We've divided up the job of finding speakers for the meeting, and I'm supposed to be inviting people who can talk about nuclear energy, either fission or fusion.
This is not exactly in my wheelhouse, but I have a couple of ideas. It occurs to me, though, that I have access to a global audience which presumably includes some people who either could give a good talk…
drorzel | November 3, 2009Over at the Mid-Majority, Kyle Whelliston (formerly of espn.com) has a great essay on the "Sportz" phenomenon:
Sports are great. Actual participation is awesome, but watching other people do sports can still be pretty good too. These days, people can watch sports anytime, anywhere and in whatever state of undress they choose. These are truly the days of miracles and wonders! All thanks to the Sports-Industrial Complex, which brought you mantertainment, lite beer and the Sports Bubble.
When sports became industrialized in the latter part of the 20th Century, the S.I.C. became the conduit…
drorzel | November 3, 2009... until the release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. The official release is set for December 22nd, though the books are set to start printing in about three weeks. Exciting, isn't it?
Are you excited about the upcoming release of _How to Teach Physics to Your Dog_?(survey)
If you're still wondering what all the excitement is about, let me direct you to the book previews page at dogphysics.com, where you can download a PDF of Chapter 1, and watch a little video I made to go with a dramatic reading of Chapter 3's dog dialogue. There will probably be more previews in the next few weeks…
drorzel | November 3, 2009
Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog.
"I'm not real sure how I got here in the first place, and when you think about it you really have to go all the way back to school, and mom thought I should be a doctor and dad thought I should be an industrial wood lathe and I wanted to be the Cenozoic Era and we tried to work out a compromise but lookin back it was really the kinda situation where nobody was gonna end up really satisfied in the end"
(tags: fafblog silly blogs)
Unsolicited Advice X: How to Frame a Winning Proposal | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
"Pretty much every…
drorzel | November 2, 2009This year's DonorsChoose Challenge entry came up just short of $8,000, at $7,976. Many thanks to everyone who donated.
As promised during the challenge, I will be giving away one advance copy of the book (either a real copy when they start printing in a few weeks, or a galley proof if you want one Right Now) to the largest individual donation, and one to a donor chosen at random from the set of donors who sent me email asking to be considered.
At present, the list of people who have asked to be part of the drawing is much smaller than the list of people who donated. So, I'll hold off on the…
drorzel | November 2, 2009One of my pet peeves about physics as perceived by the public and presented in the media is the way that everyone assumes that all physicists are theoretical particle physicists. Matt Springer points out another example of this, in this New Scientist article about the opening panel at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival. The panel asks the question "What keeps you up at night?" and as Matt explains in detail most of the answers are pretty far removed from the concerns of the majority of physicists.
But it's a good question even for low-energy experimentalists like myself, as it highlights the…
drorzel | November 2, 2009
Boo! The optics behind "ghost" imaging « Skulls in the Stars
"Ghost imaging is in fact a fascinating and relatively new technique in which a detector can produce an image of an object that it cannot see! The physics behind this effect is somewhat subtle, and resulted in at least one minor controversy since its introduction. Let's take a look at it..."
(tags: science physics optics blogs skulls-in-stars)
nanoscale views: The unreasonable effectiveness of a toy model
"As I've mentioned before, often theoretical physicists like to use "toy models" - mathematical representations of…
drorzel | November 1, 2009
Another dumb article on why spaceflight is bad for you -- KarlSchroeder.com
"But really, people, think! This doesn't mean that space flight is intrinsically dangerous. It means that badly shielded tin-can environments that aren't spun for gravity are a bad idea. And that is quite a different conclusion."
(tags: space science sf economics blogs karl-schroeder)
Giants' Danny Clark Chose to Go Green With a Smart Car - NYTimes.com
"[T]he glances turn to stares and smiles when he parks his 1,600-pound vehicle and his 6-foot-2, 245-pound body emerges from behind the wheel.
"That's when the…
drorzel | October 31, 2009SteelyKid says "Daddy, I can help with your puppet show. Look at this awesome dragon puppet Grandma got me!"
In this, you can also see a bit of the Halloween outfit her great-grandmother gave her. There are a couple of pictures below the fold that show it more clearly:
Here's one of her obligingly looking at the camera:
I kind of prefer this one where she's grinning toothily at Kate, just out of the frame on the left:
Happy Halloween to everybody who won't be offended by being wished a happy Halloween.
drorzel | October 31, 2009
A Plea for Peaceful Coexistence - The Pour Blog - NYTimes.com
"Beer and wine are not in competition. Yet people in the wine business, who I assure you drink an awful lot of beer, don't often take it seriously as a beverage. And people in the beer business, perhaps in reaction to not-so-imaginary slights, rarely even acknowledge the existence of wine, much less deem it worthy of drinking."
(tags: booze food blogs culture)
Casual Fridays: Is political wishy-washiness a general phenomenon? : Cognitive Daily
"Kevin [Drum] suggested that someone do a study to see if some people flip-flop no…
drorzel | October 30, 2009No, this is not a reference to the National Academy of Sciences report from a few years ago. This has to do with the newest Wheel of Time book, because while I'm a long distance removed from my Usenet days, some habits die hard.
If you haven't read the previous eleven books, none of what follows will make any sense. If you haven't read the latest volume, don't click below the fold unless you want everything spoiled for you.
So, how does Brandon Sanderson do at filling Robert Jordan's shoes?
The short answer is: Pretty darn good. He doesn't exactly match the style of the earlier books, but he…
drorzel | October 30, 2009Last week, I promised to do a puppet show if my DonorsChoose challenge entry claimed more than 1% of the $200,000 that Hewlett-Packard is donating to this year's Social Media Challenge. If you're quick with arithmetic, you'll see that the puppet-show threshold was $2,000.
The actual contribution was $4,064.70, more than double the threshold amount. Clearly, I needed to aim higher...
So, you'll be getting a puppet show in the near-ish future. It'll probably be a couple of weeks-- I'm buried in work at the moment-- but I have some ideas for what to do. It'll be a little while before I have the…
drorzel | October 30, 2009It's fall, which means that the major American sports are all ramping up (baseball is in its brief period of being interesting, the NFL is nearing the middle of its season, the NBA has just gotten underway, which means that real basketball will start soon). This also means that the major advertisers have rolled out the commercial that will be annoying the hell out of everybody for the next several months.
Sports are really the only place that I see commercials-- I tend to watch sporting events live, but use the DVR to time-shift other programming, allowing me to fast-forward through the ads.…
drorzel | October 30, 2009
Pimp My Novel: Tip O' the Week: Chasing Trends
"If you're currently penning a fantasy novel centering on a pious zombie vampire from an alternate 19th century in which science/alchemy/the Bible has predicted the earth's impending doom, uh, please send it to me, because that could be awesome. More importantly, though, stop doing it."
(tags: publishing writing books business blogs pimp-novel)
What Do Teens Want? - 10/26/2009 - Publishers Weekly
"In 2005, we conducted our first survey to learn what teens react to in the marketplace and what influences their reading choices. By this past…
drorzel | October 29, 2009SteelyKid is 1000000 weeks old (in binary). To celebrate, she engages in some Thursday Night Bison Wrasslin':
Atomic elbow drop! Boom!
Don't worry, it's a friendly bout. Appa's very cuddly, and a good place to relax with a drink:
And while I said we wouldn't engage in this sort of thing, below the fold is a picture of SteelyKid in the tub:
What? You didn't seriously think I'd be crass enough to take naked bath-time photos, did you? To say nothing of posting them on the Internet... Sheesh.
(The baby tub is normally stored under her crib, and she's decided it's fun to drag it out and play…
drorzel | October 29, 2009Via somebody on Twitter, Copyblogger has a post titled "7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School," which is, as you might guess, dedicated to provocatively contrarian advice about how to write, boldly challenging the received wisdom of English faculty:
What is good writing?
Ask an English teacher, and they'll tell you good writing is grammatically correct. They'll tell you it makes a point and supports it with evidence. Maybe, if they're really honest, they'll admit it has a scholarly tone -- prose that sounds like Jane Austen earns an A, while a paper that could've been written by Willie…
drorzel | October 29, 2009
Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? - The Sexist - Washington City Paper
"[E]ven though our two Steves are really brilliant economists, they just can't figure out why most of us women don't want to have sex for tons and tons of money. Why aren't more women successful prostitutes?, Levitt and Dubner ask. Is it because:
a) They don't like sex;
b) They hate men;
c) They're kind of dumb;
d) All of the above.
If you guessed D, you are probably either Steven Levitt or Stephen Dubner. (Thanks for reading, guys!)"
(tags: sex…
drorzel | October 28, 2009Some time back, commenter HI won a guest post by predicting the Nobel laureates in Medicine. He sent me the text a little while ago, and I've finally gotten around to posting it (things have been crazy around here):
Since Chad gave me the right to guest blog as a prize for correctly predicting the Nobel Prize winners, I thought it would be appropriate to write a post about the Nobel Prize. (It would have been more timely if I had written this sooner. This is why I'm not a real blogger.)
It was fun to be able to predict some of the Nobel Prize winners this year and last year. It is more…