drorzel | April 23, 2009
Michael Bay And Shia LeBeouf Spitball Transformers 2 Ideas | Film | A.V. Club
"Michael Bay: Okay, so boom goes the sphinx. Boom goes the pyramid. Boom! Boom! Boom! Go the HondaCivicstrons we positioned all around the entrance to the tomb. And then, whhhhhhhhiiiiiiirrrrr, click, clack, crunch, sweepy spin thwaaaack! Here comes Beefy, our hero, ready to kick some ass. Zot! Crunchy noise, crunchy noise, Taco Bell product placement, claaaaaaaang claaaaaaaaaaang, and we're done! "
(tags: blogs stupid movies avclub)
â¦My heartâs in Accra » An elegy (of sorts) for Geocities
"Gregorio Espadas…
drorzel | April 23, 2009A little while ago, I was pointed to Jim Munger's blog, which is full of ranting about various topics. Not quite to the standards of alt.peeves, back in the day, but some of it is entertaining.
It also includes several mentions of his band, Better Than Abstinence. There seemed to be something wrong with the audio on the inevitable MySpace page, so I can't say whether they're any good, but if nothing else, it's a good name for a band.
Which, of course, is a nice, low-impact follow-up to yesterday's post about naming in science and art. Coming up with names for nonexistent bands is a common…
drorzel | April 23, 2009I'm speaking, of course, about this past weekend's Bloggingheads conversation between Jennifer Ouellette and Diandra Leslie-Pelecky. They both blog at Cocktail Party Physics, and Diandra has written The Physics of NASCAR.
It's a good Bloggingheads, covering a wide range of topics related to physics, sports, and entertainment. Jennifer talks about the work of the Science and Entertainment Exchange, Diandra talks about how NASCAR people know more about physics than you might think, and they both have worthwhile comments about the diificult job of explaining complicated technical subjects in…
drorzel | April 22, 2009
Particulate pollution cuts carbon dioxide, model shows - physicsworld.com
"Falling levels of aerosol pollution could make it much harder to curb the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is the conclusion of climate researchers in the UK and Switzerland, who have found that pollution in the form of aerosol particles gives a dramatic boost to plantsâ photosynthesis. "
(tags: science physics environment news biology chemistry optics)
Venus Day 2009: 10 Things You Can Do To Help Rid The Atmosphere Of Noxious, Flesh-Burning Sulfuric Acid | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Could…
drorzel | April 22, 2009The official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is December 22nd, exactly eight months from today. It's probably a little too early to go into countdown mode, but I thought I would mention a couple of recent developments with the book.
First, the book itself continues its steady progress toward publication. I got the copyedited manuscript last week, and got off remarkably easy. There are only a few substantive changes, and remarkably few grammar and spelling corrections. Credit for the easy copyedit probably ought to go to Kate, for proofreading almost as many drafts as I have…
drorzel | April 22, 2009No, I'm not talking about students bribing faculty for good grades, but the reverse: faculty bribing students to attend events outside of class. For example, I offered the students in my class five bonus points on tomorrow's mid-term exam if they attended last night's Alan Lightman lecture. I'm fairly certain that 12 of the 16 took me up on it.
My feeling is that this has an almost negligible effect on the final grades, but can make a big difference in the audience for an evening talk. And it's often beneficial for students to attend these events and get some sense of the larger intellectual…
drorzel | April 22, 2009We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein's Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts.
One of the differences he mentioned was the way the different disciplines handle names. He claimed that science is deeply concerned with naming things, because naming a thing in some sense defines it-- the word "electron" carries with it a whole host of properties that are shared by all electrons in the universe. In the arts, on…
drorzel | April 21, 2009
Pop Quiz - Advanced Placement - Education Life - Interactive Quiz - A.P. Economics - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com
I got 14/18, which isn't all that bad if you consider that I never took economics at any level.
(tags: economics business quiz)
Think Progress » TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress To Hold Impeachment Hearings Against Judge Jay Bybee
"ThinkProgress is sending a petition to the members of the House Judiciary Committee â where impeachment articles are drawn â imploring them to act now to remove Bybee from public office. Please join our efforts!
Jay Bybee has neither the legal nor…
drorzel | April 21, 2009I tagged Geoffrey Pullum's rant against The Elements of Style for del.icio.us a few days back, because it struck me as interesting, but I didn't have time to say more. In the subsequent days, I've seen a bunch of "Preach it, Brother Pullum!" responses, most recently from revere. I've also received the copyedited manuscript of the book-in-production, so I've been thinking a bit about grammar and style in my own writing.
Most of the pro-Pullum responses I've seen seem to me to be missing the point. Or, rather, they're criticizing the book because it's not very good as an absolute and…
drorzel | April 21, 2009The book-in-production will be released eight months from tomorrow, which means that I'm thinking of ways to promote it on-line. One obvious possibility would be some sort of YouTube video type thing, showing a conversation with the dog about physics. This runs into problems, though, given that the dog is, well, a dog, and thus doesn't take direction very well. It'd be really difficult to get the right sort of video of her.
One solution to this would be to get some really basic video of me talking to her as a frame for the conversation, and do some sort of animation to fill in the rest. So,…
drorzel | April 20, 2009
The Washington Monthly
"[S]trange to say, in 2007 the median family income in New York City was $52,871. Maybe New York takes in floods of new residents every year, and so many of them die of starvation that the median income is actually below the level needed to survive. Maybe over half of the families in New York are zombies. Or maybe -- just maybe -- over half the families in New York live well below the [$75,000] this "Goldman vet" thinks you just can't live on."
(tags: blogs politics economics stupid class-war business)
Working with Light : Photo Synthesis
"Managing light is the most…
drorzel | April 20, 2009A couple of physics stories in the last few days have caught my attention for reasons that can be lumped together under the Vizzini Effect-- that is, they say things that involve unconventional uses of common words. Take, for example, the Physics World story Physicists distinguish between the indistinguishable, which starts off:
Spurred on by their work on building one of the world's most accurate atomic clocks from strontium-87 atoms, researchers in the US have now discovered that "forbidden" collisions can occur between these atoms.
Strontium-87 atoms belong to a class of objects known as…
drorzel | April 19, 2009
Amazon.com: From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time: Sean Carroll: Books
Sure, it looks like a really good book about physics. But where's the talking dog?
(tags: science physics books)
Built on Facts : Testing 123
"In the physical sciences and physics especially, science follows an infinite loop procedure. I'll label them 1 and 2, though it's really a chicken-and-egg thing. This is the way physics works, simplified:
1. The experimental results produce data which suggest ways old theories could be refined, replaced, or strengthened.
2. The new theoretical…
drorzel | April 19, 2009The dog comes into the office looking disgusted. "Well, you've really done it now, dude."
"What? What did I do?"
"You had to go and put a bird feeder in the front window, didn't you?"
"What about it?" We put a thistle-seed feeder in front of the bay window in the living room, and I added a small regular feeder on impulse. They give SteelyKid something to look at outside.
"It's attracted ninja squirrels."
"Oh, come on." I say. "That's nothing compared to the ninja squirrel that was on YouTube a couple of years ago."
"Not yet, it isn't. But you've opened the door. Soon, they'll be climbing…
drorzel | April 18, 2009
Star Formation: The Game | DISCOVER Magazine
Play the Hand of God and place supernovae to produce star-forming regions in a cloud of gas. My best score is just over 2000.
(tags: science astronomy games internet)
Questions for Steven Chu - The Science Guy - The Green Issue - Interview - NYTimes.com
"Was anyone in your family impressed when you won the Nobel Prize in Physics?
Probably, but who knows? I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, âThatâs nice â and when are you going to see me next?â"
(tags: science physics energy…
drorzel | April 18, 2009SteelyKid is fascinated by the John Archibald Wheeler tribute issue of Physics Today:
"I find his popular writings much more digestible than the Big Book of Gravity," she says. "Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler is much too big to put in my mouth."
drorzel | April 17, 2009
slacktivist: T.F.: By the rivers of Babylon
"That's a change from the view of apocalyptic types from older times. They used to fear people like Napoleon -- those who sought to conquer the world through force, riding forth on literal, flesh-and-blood white horses, intent on empire. But to premillennial dispensationalists, would-be imperialists get a pass. They're obviously not "peacemakers," so there's no need to worry that they might be the Antichrist. This is another example of how the PMD view that the Antichrist will be a wolf in sheep's clothing leads them to be suspicious of all sheep…
drorzel | April 17, 2009
North Of The Border Case File #135: Canadian Bacon  | DVD | A.V. Club
"Just as Ned Flanders likes Woody Allen movies except for âthat nervous fella thatâs always in them,â I like Michael Moore movies and kind of hate Michael Moore himself. "
(tags: culture movies review avclub world)
Solar power sats get real; and more on the Verne gun â KarlSchroeder.com
"Solaren corporation has signed a deal with Pacific Gas & Electric to orbit a 200 megawatt solar power satellite by 2016. I mention this not because the news is amazing (it was inevitable, really) but because their plan gives me…
drorzel | April 17, 2009Via the arxiv Blog, a review article has been posted by the Haensch group with the title"Testing the Stability of the Fine Structure Constant in the Laboratory." The fine structure constant, usually referred to by the symbol α is a ratio of fundamental constants-- the electron charge squared divded by Planck's Contant times the speed of light (e2/hc)-- and usually assumed to be constant. Some beyond-the-Standard-Model theories of physics, though, include effects that could cause this ratio to change over time.
For this reason, people have been looking to see if the fine structure constant is…
drorzel | April 16, 2009SteelyKid says, "Being sick is exhausting... Zzzzzzzzzz":
She's been running a fever for the last couple of days, which happened to coincide with the closing of the JCC day care center for Passover. This has wreaked a certain amount of havoc on plans for the adults in the house, but it could've been much worse.
She's much improved today. Still, running a fever is pretty tiring, so after half of her dinnertime bottle, she decided to rack out for a while. And we snuck in the Baby Blogging picture while she was dozing.