drorzel | October 18, 2012In which I get a little rant-y about yet another proud display of ignorance from the Washington Post's education blog.
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Some time back, I teed off on a school board member who couldn't pass a simple math test, who proudly told the world about his ignorance via a post at the Washington Post's education blog. Bragging about ignorance is apparently a Thing for that blog, which recently offered another fine example, with a parent complaining about his son being forced to take chemistry. The author, "nonprofit executive" David Bernstein, is a former philosophy major, who evidently didn…
drorzel | October 16, 2012In which I steal an analogy from Joe Emerson to explain the limits of quantum computing.
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As previously noted, a couple of weeks ago I went to Canada for the opening of the University of Waterloo's new Quantum Nano Center (their photo gallery includes one picture of me being interviewed, along with lots of more interesting pictures from the day). One of my events there was a panel discussion about the new center and what it will mean, which included me, Raymond Laflamme, the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing, and Mike Lazaridis, the founder of Research in Motion, who…
drorzel | October 15, 2012The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has just been announced, and goes to Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." I know basically nothing about these guys, but I assume they've earned their Sveriges Riksbank Prize, so congratulations to them. And congratulations also to John Novak, who correctly called Shapley in the annual betting pool.
I think that's all the winners for this year, both of Nobel Prizes and from the betting pool. If I missed one, please point it out to me. And if you…
drorzel | October 11, 2012It's a banner day for science explainer things I wrote, as a piece I wrote has just gone live at Tor.com:
Why Gandalf Is Wrong
Even as a kid, reading J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings at the golden age of twelve or so, Gandalf’s response to Saruman never sat well with me. Splitting white light into its component colors is awesome, and taking things apart is the best way to learn how they work. Knowing how things work is the first step toward making them work better, a process that leads to the technologies that make modern life comfortable enough to, among other things, provide Oxford…
drorzel | October 11, 2012In which we do a little imaginary Q&A to explain the significance of Tuesday's Nobel Prize to Dave Wineland and Serge Haroche.
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I did a quick post Tuesday morning noting that the latest Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two big names from my corner of the field. This would've been a great time to drop a long explainer post about what they did and why it's cool, but alas, I have a day job, and the Nobel committee stubbornly refuses to tell me who they're giving the prizes to in advance. Oh, well.
Still, I'm just vain enough to think I can add something a little different…
drorzel | October 9, 2012The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was announced this morning, going to Serge Haroche and Dave Wineland, "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems". This isn't a pair that was getting much love from the prognosticators, but they're an excellent choice. And, in fact, commenter KSC correctly picked Wineland in the betting pool and narrowly missed also getting Haroche.
Wineland has been on my mental list of people who ought to get a Nobel for a while, especially because he easily could've had a piece of the 1997 prize for laser…
drorzel | October 8, 2012In which we have the next round of the conversation with Puff the Mutant Dragon. Previous entries here and there.
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Amusingly, your post was singled out for high praise in the Knight Science Journalism Tracker review of the book. Probably because Deborah Blum, who wrote it, wrote a book about poisons, so the topic was close to her interests, but still, congrats.
You're definitely right about blogging being a weird hobby. I think it's one of the more interesting but less examined aspects of the rise of social media that there's been this explosion of text writing by all sorts of…
drorzel | October 5, 2012In which we do a little ResearchBlogging to look at a new paper about weird quantum effects, entangling two photons that never both exist at the same time.
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I'm teaching full-time this term, but I've blocked out Thursdays as a day when I don't do class- or chair-related work. Usually, this means trying to write something on the work-in-progress, but I finished a short thing in the morning that needed to sit for a few hours before I looked at it again, which left a nice opportunity for some blogging. And, conveniently, somebody retweeted a New Scientist story about an arXiv…
drorzel | October 5, 2012In which Heinlein helps out a friend, new Trek turns 25, the future isn't what it used to be, skeptics see a chupacabra, Star Wars characters can't read, and Frank Turner is brutally honest about John Lennon's worst famous song.
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British folksinger Frank Turner on why he hates John Lennon’s “Imagine” | Music | HateSong | The A.V. Club
AVC: You come from a punk background. That seems to fit in with the anti-nationalism, anti-corporate, and anti-religious messages of “Imagine,” no? FT: Yes, but that’s one of the things that’s so fucking annoying about it. Compared to, say, “The…
drorzel | October 4, 2012It's that time of year again, when everybody pays attention to Sweden for a couple of months: the 2012 Nobel Prizes are about to be announced. Which means it's time for the game everybody loves to tolerate: the Uncertain Principles Nobel Betting Pool:
Leave a comment to this post predicting at least one of the winners of one of this year's Nobel Prizes. If one of your guesses turns out to be correct, you win the highly coveted right to choose the topic of a future blog post.
I'm adding an additional restriction to this year's contest, though: You're not allowed to pick anything related to…
drorzel | October 2, 2012In which we use math and physics to show that the pilots of my flight from Toronto to Albany this past weekend were full of crap.
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As previously noted, I was in Waterloo, Ontario this past weekend for the Open House at the University of Waterloo's new Quantum Nano Center. My talk went very well, save for some new-building technical glitches, and video of both the talk and the panel discussion should be posted to their web page soonish-- I'll post a link when it goes up.
The trip back from Toronto was slightly marred by the fact that the gates from which the tiny little prop planes…
drorzel | October 2, 2012This one's for Matthew Francis, whose tweet from yesterday lodged this in my head until I broke down and typed it out. With apologies to Stealer's Wheel and their Dylanesque pop bubblegum classic:
Still Stuck in Paragraph Two
Well, I don't know why I came here tonight, I brought the laptop but still just can't write. I try and try but the words just aren't there, and it makes me want to pull out my hair.
Nouns to the left of me, verbs off to my right and I'm still stuck in paragraph two.
Yes, I'm still stuck in paragraph two, how to go on, I haven't a clue. It's so hard for me to find the…
drorzel | October 1, 2012My post post Faster Than a Speeding Photon, doing a Q&A explainer of the OPERA fast-neutrino measurement was picked for inclusion in The Best Science Writing Online 2012 (confusingly published in late 2012, featuring blog posts from 2011...). As promotion for the book, it was suggested that pairs of authors from the collection "interview" each other about their posts, blogging, and whatever else, and I was paired with Puff the Mutant Dragon.
We exchanged several emails over a week or so, and thought about cutting them up into typical Q&A type "interview" posts. That seemed like it…
drorzel | September 28, 2012I'll be taking advantage of the one daily flight to Toronto that allows Albany to claim an International Airport today, en route to Waterloo, where they are celebrating the opening of their shiny new Quantum and Nano Center with an Open House on Saturday, September 29. I'll be giving my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" (now with 100% more ephemeral pop-culture references!) at 12:30, and appearing as part of a panel discussion at 4pm with people who are more famous than I am. If you're in the general area, stop by for one or both of those.
This will, obviously, keep me from…
drorzel | September 27, 2012SCENE: The library at Chateau Steelypips. DADDY is typing on the computer, while THE PIP plays on the floor. Enter STEELYKID.
STEELYKID: I'm already four years old.
DADDY: Yes, yes you are.
THE PIP: Thbbbbbbbpppt!
STEELYKID: How old is The Pip?
DADDY: Eleven months. Not quite one year.
STEELYKID: When The Pip is four, how old will I be?
DADDY: You'll be seven.
STEELYKID: And when he's seven, how old will I be?
DADDY: You'll be ten.
THE PIP: (pulls himself to a standing position) GA BA DA BA Phbbbbt! (falls down)
STEELYKID: Daddy, how old are you?
DADDY: I'm forty-one.
STEELYKID: And when I'm…
drorzel | September 26, 2012In which Rhett almost makes me want ridiculously expensive sneakers, space loses its aura of cool, the Dean Dad introduces his kids to Star Trek, John Myers Myers overreaches in an interesting way, and a blogger asks for information on why women leave physics.
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Physics Not Physical: Why I'm Asking Why
I want to know WHY the percentage of women in physics going down. Right now there is a ton of support for women entering physics. We have conferences and mentorship programs all over the nation. But one crucial voice is missing: the women who dropped out of the physics major, and the…
drorzel | September 25, 2012There's been a lot of bloggage recently about a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicating bias toward male students on the part of faculty who thought they were evaluating an application for a laboratory manager. Half of the faculty in the study were given an application with "Jennifer" at the top, the other half one with "John" as the first name, and both male and female faculty rated the male student more highly, and would offer the male student a higher salary. Sean Carroll and Ilana Yurkiewicz talk about the study and the results in more detail.
So,…
drorzel | September 24, 2012In which we look at the real goal for the Giants, how they've overspent on running backs over the last twenty years, the capital-S surrealism of Daniel Pinkwater (author of Lizard Music and The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death), and an attempt to put the cost of the Large Hadron Collider in perspective.
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One LHC A Year
Italy, who is one of the contributors to CERN, and thus helped financing the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in measure proportional to their gross internal product, is a country full of people who visit magicians, tarot readers, healers, etcetera.…
drorzel | September 20, 2012Having been on hiatus for a couple of months has made me forget my obligation for self-promotion via the blog, but I should note one fast approaching public appearance: I'll be at the University of Waterloo next weekend, where they are celebrating the opening of their shiny new Quantum and Nano Center with an Open House on Saturday, September 29, featuring a bunch of public events. Two of these involve me: first, at 12:30 pm, my "What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics" talk:
Chad Orzel, author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, will explore everything you — and your canine best…
drorzel | September 19, 2012In which we look at the death of a sports-media pioneer, the settling of the Chicago teachers strike, writing while a parent, why even highly educated people hate school teachers, and a different approach to teaching students not to plagiarize papers.
A Positive Solution for Plagiarism - Do Your Job Better - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The first writing assignment I give students in my writing courses involves plagiarism as a topic. I ask them to investigate and read resources on the Web assembled by experts on the subject such as Nick Carbone, a new-media consultant for Bedford/St.…