Pop Culture
drorzel | February 13, 2010Since I'm at Boskone, talking and listening to people talking about science fiction and fantasy literature, it seems appropriate to do a quickie post listing notworthy genre stuff I've read recently. There isn't that much of it, as I've been doing a lot of non-fiction reading, and also slightly preoccupied with book promotion. Still, I've been reading a few things while putting SteelyKid to bed, and might as well comment on them here:
The Alchemist's Apprentice, The Alchemist's Pursuit, and The Alchemist's Code by Dave Duncan. Duncan occupies a literary position similar to that of the late…
drorzel | February 12, 2010Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
-- There's a nice review by Margaret Fisk (who has been reading it for a while, and mentioning it on her blog, which kept turning up in the vanity search):
Orzel does a wonderful job of finding physical parallels to explain quantum concepts in ways that make a reasonable amount of sense, whether in the behavior of dogs on a walk or the "magically" refilled food bowl. Though scientifically inclined, through a series of events I ended up with little formal training, and this book is written for people in just that situation…
drorzel | February 10, 2010The never-ending discussion of whether the Web can or should replace books has shifted into the corners of blogdom that I follow again, with Kevin Drum arguing for more books, Henry Farrell arguing for shorter books, and Jim Henley agreeing with Henry, and expanding it to fiction. They're all at least partly right-- more shorter books would be a good thing.
I do want to pick up on one thing Kevin said, though. He writes:
This is, I grant, a purely personal reaction, but one of my occasional frustrations with the blogosphere is a sense that people sometimes think they can understand complex…
jstemwedel | February 8, 2010Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)
This was sort of an odd session for me -- not so much because of the topics taken up by session leaders Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette, but because of my own sense of ambivalence about a lot of "entertainment" these days.
The session itself had lots of interesting glimpses of the work scientists are doing to help support filmmakers (and television producers, and game designers, and producers of other kinds of entertainment) who want to…
drorzel | February 8, 2010What's the application? The use of lasers to provide an entertaining light show for humans, dogs, or cats.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How will I entertain my dog or cat?"
2) "How can we distract people from the fact that Roger Daltrey has no voice left?"
Why are lasers essential? Lasers provide coherent beams of light, which remain small over very large distances, allowing you to project a small spot or a tight beam across a room, or even a football stadium.
Why is it cool? Duuuuude! Lasers, duuuuude!
Why isn't it cool enough? 1) It's fundamentally just a toy. 2) No amount…
drorzel | February 8, 2010The usual "This is the stuff that looks interesting to me" post, based on the preliminary online program. Subject to change if they move things around, or if I discover something I overlooked that sounds more interesting, or if I decide I'm hungry, and opt to blow off panels in favor of food.
This year's program is lighter on panels, but includes both a signing and a reading. Which will be a very different experience than years past...
Friday 7pm Harbor 1: The Singularity: An Appraisal
Arguably the idea of the Singularity -- a period where change happens so quickly that life afterwards is…
drorzel | February 7, 2010It occurs to me that if you take the Super Bowl as a comment on the current state of the US of A-- which, you might as well, because it's as good as anything else-- we are totally screwed.
I mean, consider the fact that two-thirds of the ads were for Bud Light. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I think every commercial break in the first half had at least one Bud Light ad in it. That basically tells you that the only company with the money to spend on Super Bowl advertising is one that makes its money from helping people drown their sorrows. That's an encouraging statement.
Worse yet…
drorzel | February 7, 2010Miscellaneous stories and links about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
Kathy Ceceri, who wrote the story about the book that ran in the Times Union, has posted the full article on the Home Physics blog. The link to the paper itself may very well disappear behind a paywall, but this post should remain accessible.
There's an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that I can't read because I'm not a subscriber, and I don't remember the password needed to access it via the library subscription. If anybody has access and would like to tell me what it says, that would be cool. (UPDATE: I've…
drorzel | February 7, 2010We're mere hours away from the start of the Super Bowl, the biggest football game of the year. Obviously, the question of who will win has been the subject of much debate over the last couple of weeks on sports media and in offices around the country. What these discussions have lacked, though, is Science!!! (with any number of exclamation points).
So, let's employ science to determine the winner in advance, with a totally accurate Internet poll:
Who will win the Super Bowl?(polls)
The game kicks off around 6:30pm ET, so make sure you vote before then, if you want your vote to have…
drorzel | February 6, 2010I want to like this book more than I do.
As a general matter, this is exactly the sort of science book we need more of. As you can probably guess from the title, Why Does E=mc2? sets out to explain Einstein's theory of relativity, and does an excellent job of it. It presents a clear and concise explanation of the theory for a non-scientific audience, using no math beyond the Pythagorean Theorem.
I picked this up partly as research of a sort-- if there is ever a How to Teach Physics to Your Dog 2: Canine Boogaloo, the most obvious topic for it would be relativity, which I mention a few times,…
drorzel | February 6, 2010A couple of things happening in the next week, for those who would like some How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.
On the radio side, I am scheduled for an interview at 6:30 this Tuesday, Feb. 9, on KSOO's Viewpoint University. If you don't happen to be in the Sioux Falls, SD area, they do have a "Listen Live" button on their web page.
On the live-action side of things, I will be at Boskone next weekend, and am scheduled to sign books at 1pm Saturday, and to do a reading at 9:30 am Sunday. I realize that's sort of early in con world, so to make it worth your while to get up that early, I plan to…
drorzel | February 5, 2010I'm safely back, well ahead of the Snowpocalypse!!! I'm kind of out of it, though-- yesterday was a very long day, and I find air travel draining at the best of times-- so in lieu of substantive blogging, I offer you this thematically appropriate poll:
Which of these travel-related songs is the best?(survey software)
(Strictly speaking, two of those are the same song, but the end results are different enough to list them separately.)
drorzel | February 3, 2010It's been a while since I've done a fun with graphs post about the Amazon sales rank of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, but that's not because I've stopped tracking it. It's getting to be enough data, though, that it's worthwhile to look on a slightly coarser scale, so here's the sales rank data binned by day:
This shows some clear structure, specifically two points with dramatic drops (that is, dramatic improvements in the Amazon rank-- smaller numbers are better), followed by slow climbs. The two big improvements correspond to the immediate post-publication blog boost, and the…
drorzel | February 1, 2010Two events in the next couple of weeks at which I will be appearing live and in person:
1) This Thursday, Feb. 4, I will be giving a talk at the University of Maryland, College Park at 3:30 pm in the Lecture Hall (room 1110) in the Kim Engineering Building. The title of the talk is "Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How Weblogs Can Help." Which reminds me, I need to tweak those slides...
Lest I get overly nostalgic about Our Nation's Capital, there's snow predicted for Friday and Saturday, just in time to potentially screw up my flight home.…
drorzel | January 31, 2010(I really loathe both the longstanding practice of marking a scandal by appending "-gate" to a name and the newer version "-fail." I don't have a better alternative, but I hate both of those. Somebody get to work on a better scandal signifier.)
So, the hot topic of the moment is the hissy-cow being thrown by Amazon and Macmillan over the pricing of e-books. A great many electrons have been expended in discussing this on the Internet, but Jim Henley's take is probably the one I like the best, and links to most of the others.
UPDATE: Jim's follow-up post today is even better. It attempts to use…
drorzel | January 31, 2010The Firedoglake Book Salon with Sean Carroll last night was a lot of fun. I was generally impressed with the level of the questions, and the tone of the discussion. We went through all of the questions I had typed out in advance (I type fairly slowly, and revise obsessively, so it's hard for me to do this stuff in real time), and got a decent range of questions from the audience.
The introductory post I wrote for the salon is more or less what I would put in a review post here:
ean Carroll's From Eternity to Here sets out to explain the nature of time, particularly what's known as the "arrow…
drorzel | January 30, 2010A few bits and pieces of news regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
We got and accepted an offer for the audio book rights from one of the biggest audio book publishers. Actually, I think there were two offers for the audio rights, which is amazing. I have no idea when it would be produced or who would read it, but the contract does say they'll consult with me about the reader, so I'll know at some point before it comes out...
Speaking of other editions, I'm getting emails from my publisher about the paperback edition already, which just seems weird. The hardcover's only been out for a…
drorzel | January 29, 2010We had a parent-teacher conference this morning with SteelyKid's teacher at day care, who confirmed that she is the cutest and cleverest baby in the universe. OK, not in those words, but that's how I interpreted them. In honor of that, here's a poll:
Fish?(poll)
There's probably another stanza worth of choices, but unlike my parents, I don't have this one memorized. This ought to do for now.
drorzel | January 29, 2010Hard to believe it's been a couple of days since I posted anything with this title... Anyway, there are a couple of small updates:
The vanity search turned up this mention on ScienceBase, in with a bunch of other recent science books that sound pretty good.
The Union student paper, the Concordiensis, has a story about the book. I exchanged emails with the author, so it has a couple of new quotes that haven't been in other papers.
Once again, if you're in New York's capital district tomorrow, I'm doing a signing at the Book House at 2pm. If you're not in the Albany area, I'll be the host for…
drorzel | January 28, 2010I have to go to the Happy Fun Meeting this afternoon, which will be both Happy! and Fun! To keep things lively while I'm there, here's a question that is dorky, but not in the usual way for this blog: What superpower would you most like to have to help you deal with annoying meetings?
The most useful meeting-related superpower to have would be:(survey software)
Bonus essay question: How does the Justice League/ Legion of Doom function when all the attendees at their regular meetings have superpowers? Wouldn't that get out of hand in a hurry?