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drorzel | February 6, 2013This is the third post in which I'm pulling a revise-and-extend job on some things I said at Science Online at a few panels on bloggy stuff, and the one I'm least settled about. Previous posts covered the in how-to-do-outreach session (posted Monday and the blogging long term session (posted yesterday). This one covers the what-to-do-when-people-start-taking-you-seriously session.
I say that this is the one I'm least settled about because what I said in that panel had literally not occurred to me before listening to that discussion. I've been thinking about it off and on since, and am still…
drorzel | January 27, 2013It's been a good while since I did any Cute Kid Blogging, due to excessive busy-ness. There's big news among the younger residents of Chateau Steelypips, though: SteelyKid lost one of her front teeth the other day:
SteelyKid showing off her missing tooth
That gap? Wasn't there on Friday morning. Lest you think we're horrible people who let her run headfirst into a pole or something, while we were surprised to have one come loose this early, she's within the normal age range for losing baby teeth. Just barely, but then she got teeth really early, too-- she had eight at eight months old. So I…
sa smith | January 25, 2013GOOD NEWS! There are lots of different ways to do science. I like to tinker with/build stuff. After over two years of banging my head against a wall, another of my inventions, one I really wanted, is finally working!!!!!
BAD NEWS! Its only working at ~33% of capacity. I want 100%.
GOOD NEWS! I know how to fix it!
BAD NEWS! Its going to take me a couple months to fix it :(
GOOD NEWS! The idea has finally graduated from 'thats a neat concept...' to 'holy crap it actually works'. So its going to get patented, and I get a cut. YAY!
BAD NEWS! I am never going to graduate. Ever. I am too busy to…
drorzel | January 22, 2013I have mentioned before that when I was a kid, I wrote a letter to Luis Alvarez, the 1968 Nobel laureate in Physics, asking some questions about his theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, which had been featured in a NOVA special. I got a very nice letter back from him, very graciously correcting the dumber questions I asked. This made a very favorable impression, which in turn played a role in getting me to include him in the work-in-progress.
Since I was thinking about Alvarez for the book, I asked my parents if they still had a copy of the letter, which for many years I had…
sa smith | January 11, 2013My boss and I are very busy people. Weve got big stuff going on. BIG STUFF. So we didnt have time to get the free flu shots the university offered like 500 times last fall.
About three weeks ago--
Bossman: Meh, Im feeling kinda sniffly. Im gonna go get pho for lunch.
Me: Cool! Im going to stay here and work through lunch like a good grad student *angel halo shines*
(about an hour later, Bossman is hacking and coughing)
Bossman: I still feel like crap. Im going home.
Me: Okay! Feel better!
Later that night--
Email from Bossman: Im not coming in tomorrow. 103 degree temp
Email from me: Okay…
jdupuis | January 3, 2013I'm including here a list of all the books I've read in 2012, as well as some commentary my year in reading. I always enjoy when people post these sorts of lists online and actually rather enjoy doing so myself.
I've been doing this for a few years now: 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007.
If you've posted such a list online somewhere, please post a link in the comments. I'd love to see it!
The list of books I'm posting below includes all the books I started and finished in 2012, with the exception of books that I'm currently reading. As it happens this past year I only abandoned one or two books…
drorzel | December 31, 2012The Pip's ringing in the New Year... Well, OK, he's actually asleep upstairs. Because when you have a one-year-old and a four-year-old, you don't really get out to a lot of parties on New Year's Eve.
Anyway, to be honest, I won't be all that sorry to see 2012's taillights fade to black. There were undoubtedly some good things-- the publishing of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and a few smaller things, and the sale of How to Think Like a Scientist, along with some other weird-but-fun stuff that's not tangible enough to talk about yet. There were also some very bad things-- several deaths…
drorzel | December 15, 2012It was a long and irritating week, for reasons that I can't discuss on the blog, and just when it finally looked like there might be some motion in a positive direction, I got a call from day care saying that SteelyKid had a fever and needed to be picked up immediately. But, on the bright side, it was a nice day today, and SteelyKid rallied long enough to help pick out and decorate a Christmas tree:
Chateau Steelypips Christmas Tree 2012
So, there's your happy thought for the weekend. The Pip is sort of puzzled as to why there's suddenly an evergreen in the library, and he's not too keen on…
esiegel | December 14, 2012"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make." -Paul McCartney
Every once in a while, I throw the chance out there (on facebook, twitter, or google+) to ask me whatever questions you want. Yesterday, for some insane reason, I invited people across all three platforms to ask me whatever they liked, with a dual promise that I'd not only answer them, but that the best ones would receive a free "The Year In Space" calendar for 2013, courtesy of the Planetary Society.
Image credit: The Planetary Society.
So I got a ton of questions, and now I'll do my best to answer them as…
drorzel | November 29, 2012In the comments to yesterday's post about college admissions, Joseph Yoon quoted my statement that "I'm somewhat sympathetic to claims that Asians have a difficult position in higher education," and shot back with:
I wonder if you will feel more strongly about this in 10 years when your kids are near college. Will you advise them to not check the Asian box if it decreases their chances?
As a general matter, I try to avoid responding to comments when my initial reaction is "Oh, go fuck yourself." But I'll make an exception here, because I think it goes to a more general issue about college…
sa smith | November 19, 2012After all this blog has been through-- Exposing Creationist plagiarism and idiocy, laughing in the faces of anti-vaxers/HIV denialists/GMO alarmists/other anti-science quacks, effectively eradicating a 'retrovirus'-- This might be one of the most controversial posts on ERV, ever.
I got a Nexus 4.
"*rolleyes* Yes, Android vs Apple, how 'controversial'. And by 'controversial' we mean 'a tired cliche'" some of you might be thinking.
No, I dont mean Apple vs Android. I love my Apple products, a Macbook from 2007, and iMac from 2008. I just gave them both $50 memory upgrades, and they run like…
drorzel | November 7, 2012...and The Pip will be five. Happy birthday, Little Dude!
Oh, yeah, there was also some kind of election. In which a bunch of crazy people lost, and a guy I played rugby with was elected a US Senator. Which is a great way to celebrate the one-year anniversary of this momentous occasion.
And here's the "featured image" pasted into the post, for those reading via RSS. It's a grainy cell-phone picture from a couple of days ago, when Grandma and Grandpa brought up a big birthday balloon:
It's hard to be a little dude with a great big balloon.
Here's a somewhat better picture, of The Pip…
sa smith | October 15, 2012I get migraine headaches.
They crack me up--
My mom and bro get them too-- but we all have different triggers, different warning signs, different migraine course/severity, different solutions, it doesnt make any sense.
I think mine are pretty funny. I start out by feeling warm. Not 'hot', but like, you know how when you need to turn the air conditioner down like 2 degrees to feel more comfortable? Its just slightly too warm, but enough that you notice?
And then my brain starts to try to figure out what is going on.
Brain: Somethings up. Are you hungry?
Me: I dont think so... but I agree,…
jdupuis | October 3, 2012Ten years ago today, three days shy of my 40th birthday, I started a blog more or less on a whim. I have to admit, I only had a pretty vague idea of what blogging was all about or what its potential was. After all, my main inspiration for getting started wasn't even a blog at all, but a zine.
Sitting here, all these years later, three days shy of my 50th birthday, I can only say that it's been a wonderful, exciting and sometimes strange trip. The trip has meandered through the broad crossroads of librarianship and science at the beginning of the 21st century and I'm sure will continue to…
drorzel | September 18, 2012There are a bunch of physics stories that I'd sort of like to write about, but don't have time for, and politics is oscillating between "darkly hilarious" and "indescribably depressing," so that's best left alone. So, here's some cute kid pictures instead.
SteelyKid has lately taken to telling all and sundry "This is my daddy. He's a scientist." She also sometimes adds "I'm a scientist, too!" so it seemed appropriate to go out with her and Do A Science.
As previously mentioned, she got a bunch of Backyard Safari gear from my aunt and uncle, which included a safari vest and a collapsible mesh…
drorzel | September 13, 2012Last week, in the post about fermion conduction, I left a reference hanging:
There’s nothing physically blocking the atoms from flying right through the channel– in fact, an atom that enters the channel will always exit the other side without slowing down along the way. This is termed “ballistic,” a term that will always have a special place in my heart thanks to an incident at my Ph.D. defense.
Which was what? Let’s just leave that hanging to see if anybody actually reads this far. I can explain it in a comment if people want to know.
A couple of people asked for the explanation in comments…
drorzel | September 4, 2012So, a couple of months ago, I said I was taking some time off from the blog, and wasn't sure I would make it back. What was up with that, anyway?
Well, for one thing, I had a bunch of stuff to work on, and needed the extra time. I wrote a proposal for a third book that's being shopped around now, about which I won't say anything other than that it doesn't involve Emmy. (She's taking it in stride. As long as she gets treats and belly rubs, we're cool.).
I also wrote two papers, posted to the arxiv: first, Searching for New Physics through AMO Precision Measurements:
We briefly review recent…
drorzel | September 1, 2012I might return to physics blogging at some point, but I know what people really want from this blog. So, here's a cute kid picture.
Don't worry, Daddy, we're not up to anything
The Pip is increasingly mobile, and here we see him trying to climb into my lap, with an assist from big sister SteelyKid. Giving them superhero-ish noms du Net may have been a mistake, because I think they may be planning to take over the world...
drorzel | June 26, 2012The title pretty much says it all.
One of the reasons I wanted to get the Ten Years Before the Blog series done was that I'm incredibly burned out on everything right now, and I need to step away from the Internet for a while. There are too many things that aren't getting done, and I just can't keep putting in the time needed to produce blog content. I figured that re-reading the highlights of the last ten years would either re-invigorate me, or failing that, it would at least provide a good placeholder for when the blog goes dark.
I'm not officially quitting ScienceBlogs or anything like…
drorzel | June 25, 2012In which we look back on the ninth full year of this blog, and one of the most unpleasant incidents in the whole run, which nearly ruined what was otherwise a good year.
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This is probably going to be the longest of these posts, at least in terms of the number of links included-- I've got all of the worthwhile-looking posts open in tabs, and it comes to 82 total. I may ditch a few of them during the post-writing process, but we'll see how that goes.
Anyway, this blog year kicked off with probably the least enjoyable incident of the entire run, namely Sodamageddon. The higher-ups at…