Publicity
drorzel | August 13, 2014Kate and I had a very nice time doing touristy things in Bath yesterday during the day-- old church, very old hot spring, Georgian architecture-- then went on to Bristol where I gave a talk on the forthcoming book, as you can see in the picture above. I would ordinarily include a SlideShare link to the slides I used for the talk, but the talk is so image-heavy and the hotel wi-fi so grindingly slow that I'm not even going to attempt uploading it.
The first bit, as you might guess from the photo above, was basically the same as my TED@NYC talk last fall, making an analogy between the…
drorzel | August 12, 2014I figured I probably ought to post something to let the wider world know we made it safely to London, and have been engaging in tourism. So, please take the above photo of St. Paul's with a backdrop of the ominous dark clouds that have been chasing us around the city as proof of our location.
We also dropped by the offices of Oneworld Publications, the nice folks who published the UK edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. While there, I took these:
Covers for the UK editions of my first book and Sean Carroll's second, displayed in the publisher's offices.
Good company to be in...…
drorzel | August 9, 2014...of the Atlantic. After a few stress-inducing bits the less said about which the better, preparations are basically complete, and we're heading out for London tonight. In the highly unlikely event that I haven't done enough plugging of my appearances, here's a compact list of where you'll be able to find me if you happen to be in Europe the next couple of weeks:
-- I'm giving a talk about the material in the new book on Wednesday the 13th at 6:30pm in Bristol, at the Institute of Physics. I'm doing this one TED-style, with no words on the slides, so it's both exciting and terrifying.…
drorzel | August 1, 2014I took a short nap yesterday, and of course as soon as I lay down on the bed, Emmy erupted in the furious barking that signals the arrival of a package. When I went out to get it, I found shiny new bound galley proofs of Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist:
The just-arrived galley proof for my forthcoming book. Laptop included for scale.
I knew these were coming, but didn't expect them so quickly. I asked for several to take to the UK, on the off chance that we're seated next to somebody really famous on the flight to London, who says "Gosh, I've always wanted to blurb a book about…
drorzel | June 19, 2014As noted earlier, I was a guest on the Read Science! hangout on G+ earlier today. If you weren't able to watch it live, the video is available at that link, and I'll embed it here:
There were some feedback problems with the audio for a little while-- annoyingly, it only got bad once the hangout went live-- there was a tiny echo when we were talking about logistics beforehand, but not enough to justify screwing around with earbuds. then when we started the actual event, it suddenly got completely awful for a while. It does get better, though-- I have no idea why, but later on, the echo is…
drorzel | June 19, 2014Rhett and I haven't done Uncertain Dots for a couple of weeks due to scheduling issues, but that doesn't mean I'm neglecting the multimedia side of things. In fact, I'll be doing a hangout today, as a guest on the Read Science! hangout hosted by Joanne Manaster and Jeff Shaumeyer. The event page is here.
I've also got four summer research students to supervise this year, who quite reasonably expect a fair bit of my time (thus the blog silence this week), and thus I'll be doing this from my office on campus, which means Emmy isn't going to be joining in. Alas. Odds are good that I'll have to…
drorzel | May 2, 2014My Thursday presentation here in Houston went well, though it was a pretty small crowd. I'll be doing it again today before running to the airport to get home. I didn't really have an opportunity to do shameless self-promotion regarding the new book, but I did get a copy of the official cover for it, which you'll see above if you're looking at this on the blog, or below if you're reading via RSS.
I don't have a very detailed schedule for the rest of the process, but the target on-sale date is in early January 2015. Which probably dashes my dream of getting on the Colbert Report, but I'll…
drorzel | September 26, 2013As I alluded to a while back, I've been accepted to speak at TED@NYC, which serves as a "talent search" for TED-- the top talks from the event a week from Monday in The City will get a spot talking at the 2014 TED conference in Vancouver. I've got six minutes to wow them with a story about quantum physics and crossword puzzles.
I submitted my original application in response to a blog post back in July, more or less as a lark. I didn't notice at that time that the image they had with that post was a talk at a previous talent search event by John McWhorter-- I only spotted that this week, when…
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 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 | June 14, 2012Last night, as I was flying in to San Francisco, Matt Cain pitched the first perfect game in Giants history. Now, a casual observer might think these events were unrelated, but to ancient alien theorists, the connection between them could not be more obvious. Thus, you should come to Kepler's Books in Menlo Park this evening at 7pm, to see what amazing events will happen next.
Well, OK, the most that will probably happen is that I might read a bit from the How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in a silly voice. But you don't know that I won't use my awesome ancient alien magic to transmute lead…
drorzel | June 11, 2012Two How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog items:
First and foremost, I'll be appearing at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, CA, this Thursday, June 14 at 7:00pm. I'll probably read a bit of the book, so if you've ever wanted to hear me do the silly dog voice live, here's your chance. Provided, of course, that you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, or will be this Thursday night.
This will be my second trip to California in as many weeks, because all last week I was at DAMOP in Anaheim (the Chain-Restaurant-est Place on Earth). I spent a fair bit of time there explaining the whole talking-to-the-dog…
drorzel | May 25, 2012The blog is recovering from the transition to WordPress, but I'm still not fully confident in it. So We'll turn to another corner of the social media universe for my procrastinatory needs this morning: Having Emmy answer physics questions on Twitter.
The same deal as when we've done this before: If you've got a physics question you'd like my dog to answer, post it to Twitter with the hashtag #dogphysics (or leave it in a comment, or email it to me), and Emmy will answer via Twitter, where she's @queen_emmy.
drorzel | May 21, 2012I was going to post something noting that the great WordPress transition will begin at 7pm tonight, and comments after that time will be lost like Roy Batty's tears. However, I have much happier news: tomorrow's Science Times (available on the Web already) will include a review of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog!
I considered reading this book aloud to my dog, even though I doubted he would understand relativity, even as explained by the witty and clear-thinking Chad Orzel. Maxwell does seem to show some interest in Newton's first law: A body at rest tends to remain at rest, and a body in…
drorzel | May 18, 2012So, you find yourself living in the San Francisco Bay area, and you maybe have a dog who would like to know something about relativity, or you maybe want to someday have a dog who will want to know something about relativity, or you maybe want to know something more about relativity yourself, in case you ever find yourself cornered in a dark alley by a Rhodesian ridgeback who snarls "Explain time dilation to me, or I'll eat your face!" Well, in that case, you definitely want to be at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park on the evening of June 14th, when I'll be doing a book promotion thing for How to…
drorzel | May 3, 2012A few more links that have turned up of people talking about either How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog:
Andrew Johnston has a review of the UK edition, praising it because "it's bang up to date, and goes beyond the basic quantum concepts into more complex areas like decoherence, entanglement and quantum teleportation," which I like to see because that's one of the things I especially wanted to do.
Natasha Zaleski, a grad student, has a review of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, which is good but not great, because it hit the usual failure mode: the…
drorzel | April 26, 2012I've been falling down on the shameless self-promotion front, lately, but that doesn't mean I'm not tracking How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog obsessively, just that I'm too busy to talk about it. Happily, other people have been nice enough to talk about it for me, in a variety of places:
The most significant, in terms of probable impact on sales, is this excerpt at BoingBoing, which is the text for the dog dialogue from Chapter 8. This is the same dialogue that became the "Looking for the Bacon Boson" video, and, indeed, they were nice enough to include the video in the post, too. Woo-hoo…
drorzel | April 16, 2012My Google vanity search for my name and the book titles is really frustratingly spotty, often missing things in major news outlets that I later find by other means. For example, I didn't get a notification about this awesome review in the Guardian, from their children's book section:
I am a ten year old who likes Physics. What is Physics, you might ask! Well, Physics is the science of pretty much everything around you. It asks big questions like where did we come from? How long ago was the Big Bang? Quantum Physics is the part of physics which talks about atomic and sub atomic particles,…
drorzel | April 9, 2012 I'm trying not to be Neurotic Author Guy and obsessively check online reviews of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog every fifteen minutes. I've actually been pretty successful at it, so successful that I didn't notice the first posted review at Amazon until my parents mentioned it to me. It's a really good one, though:
I'm at the point know where I could answer some of the most basic questions that his dog has, but I remember a time when I couldn't and when the questions the dog asks would've been exactly the questions that I would have had. Pretty much every time a statement by the author…
drorzel | April 1, 2012In comments to yesterday's post, Andrew G asked:
Speaking of writing, is there an errata list somewhere for "How to teach relativity to your dog"?
No, but there probably should be. I believe there's an error in one of Maxwell's equations (an incorrect sign, though you should've seen the first typeset version...), but given the length and complexity of the book, there are almost certainly other mistakes. So, if you've spotted an error, in physics, grammar, or anything else, leave a comment here, and I'll compile a list of things to fix if we ever get the chance.