Television

We don't have SteelyKid watching any kind of baby-oriented tv, because I'd rather be stabbed with a fork than have to listen to the Tellytubbies. We do frequently have the tv on while she's playing in the living room, though, as we try to catch up on DVR'ed programs. This has led directly to SteelyKid having a favorite show: That's right, our baby is part of the Colbert Nation. Whenever the credits sequence for the Report plays, she claps at the bit where the eagle swoops in. This is very repeatable (Kate re-played the opening a few times, and SteelyKid always clapped), and especially…
As previously noted, I will be on programming at the upcoming Worldcon in Montreal, including moderating a panel at 10am Saturday with the following title and description: The Philosophy of Science To what extent does SF explore the meaning of science for scientists and create the ideas that our culture has of science? Panelists: Greer Gilman, James Morrow, Jeff Warner, Richard Crownover, and DD Barant This is a little outside my normal range, so this post is a combination of thinking-out-loud and asking-for help as I try to figure out what sort of discussion ought to go with that panel…
I'm watching an episode of NOVA scienceNOW (eccentric capitalization makes it hip!), and Neil deGrasse Tyson is doing a segment on extrasolar planets. I'm only half listening, because I'm also trying to keep SteelyKid from trying to eat any of the furniture, but it's quite good. All of a sudden, Emmy's head snaps up. "Hey!" she says. "He owes me a cookie!" "What?" I ask. "Who owes you a cookie?" "The human on the tv. He was just explaining science using dogs. Inferior dogs. That's my job!" "Technically, it's my job. I'm the one who does all the writing, after all." I rewind the DVR a bit to…
If you're desperate for something to fill your Friday afternoon, and not the comment-leaving sort, you could do a lot worse than spending an hour and a half (give or take) with Chuck Klosternman and Bill Simmons in their two part ESPN podcast. It's nominally about sports, but they spend a good bit of time talking about Michael Jackson (in a sensible way, not a vapid-entertainment-reporter way), the effects of fame, the effect of writing for an audience, and a bunch of other interesting stuff. It's about a week old, but I only got around to it yesterday. It's worth a listen, though. It also…
Two noteworthy things in the meta-blog category: 1) The 3 Quarks Daily science blogging prize nominations are up, and it's a great list of sciencey bloggy goodness. If you're looking for a way to procrastinate, you could kill several days reading all 171 entries. Once you're done reading them, go vote for your favorite. The top 20 vote-getters will be the shortlist given to Steven Pinker to choose the winners from. 2) Not on the list yet, but sure to provide some quality entries next year is the brand new X-Change Files blog from the Science and Entertainment Exchange. They're providing…
I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen bloggers commenting on Tom Hanks's appearance on The Daily Show, in which he talks about CERN: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Tom Hanks thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor Everything he says is pretty much true, but garbled and exaggerated for comic effect. People at CERN have to be shaking their heads, though. Or maybe they don't bother watching the interview segments... At any rate, it's not nearly as good as their earlier segment with John Oliver at CERN The Daily Show…
I'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…
Arts & Letters Daily had a link to a City Journal article about religious symbolism in science fiction, which attempts to claim that there has been a recent swing toward Christian symbolism in the genre (at least, in movie and television SF-- the only books mentioned are forty-ish years old). There are a number of problems with it, but the most jarring has to be this paragraph: One reason that Disney finally made a movie out of C. S. Lewis's Christian allegory The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005 may be that popular fantasy has become increasingly religious at heart. Peter Jackson…
The nominees for this year's Hugo Awards were announced last night. The most important category is, as always, Best Novel: Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK) Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download Saturn's Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK) Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (Tor) Surprisingly, I've already read four of the five. This is either blind luck, or a sign that I'm better in tune with the tastes of SF fandom than ever before. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. The as-…
In an effort to wrest something positive from the smoking ruins of the fannish precincts of LiveJournal, a number of people (Kate included) have put together a community to raise money to provide financial assistance to fans of color who want to attend Wiscon or some other convention. They're auctioning off a lot of interesting stuff, from books to artwork to personal services. The community is Con or Bust, and information about how the thing works is also available. If you're interested in supporting this project, either by bidding or offering items for bid, head on over and check it out.
It's March now, which means that we're at the absolute peak of the college basketball season. Small conferences have already started their tournaments, playing for the one shot those teams have of getting into the NCAA's. Big conference tournaments start next week, with the Big Dance the week after. So, of course, ESPN and all its variants are devoting all of their energy to... speculating about Terrell Owens and Alex Rodriguez. Because, apparently, those two have signed-in-blood contracts with Satan ensuring that not one week passes without one or the other being the lead story on…
The winners of the American Physical Society's Science Writing Awards for 2008 were announced today: Ann Finkbeiner won in the Journalist category for The Jasons, her book about a secretive groups of scientists who work on classified problems for the US government. Gino Segre won in the Scientist category, for Faust in Copenhagen, about the early days of quantum mechanics. Julia Cort won in the Broadcast category for the NOVA ScienceNow episode Asteroid, about whether a giant asteroid will kill us all in 2036. Alexandra Siy and Dennis Kunkel have won in the Children's category, for their…
On Saturday at Boskone, I gave a talk on the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM. This was held up a bit by waiting for the projector to arrive (I was busy enough with other stuff that I didn't notice that I hadn't received confirmation of my request for a projector until late Thursday night, so this was entirely my fault). They were able to come up with a projector, sparing people the need to squint at my tiny tablet PC screen, but it took some time off the beginning of the talk. The talk consisted of me reading the dog dialogue from Chapter 4 (not to different from the original post), then…
Boskone, the Boston-area SF convention that Kate and I go to every year, is the weekend after next. Once again, I'll be doing a few panels and one talk. For those who might be attending, or who care about this for some reason, here's my preliminary schedule: Saturday10am Physics: What We Don't Understand Geoffrey A. Landis Mark L. Olson Chad Orzel Karl Schroeder Ian Tregillis In 1999 John Cramer wrote a column in Analog describing seven big unsolved problems in physics (including the nature of dark matter, the origin of ultra-high…
I realize it's been several years now since the World Wildlife Federation won their lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation, forcing Vince McMahon to re-brand his whole preposterous enterprise. Still, when I see a press release with the headline: WWF seeks innovative solutions to bycatch through worldwide competition I expect the "competition" to be settled by somebody getting smacked in the back with a folding chair while the referee's back is turned. And, you know, as long as it's a dolphin swinging the chair, I'm good with that.
Fannish regions of the Internet are all abuzz today, with the introduction of Matt Smith as the next actor to play the lead role in Doctor Who. Sadly, this is not the Matt Smith I went to college with (who would've been a really unusual choice for the part...)-- he's still comfortably obscure to anyone not receiving fundraising letters from the Class of '93. This is probably as good an occasion as any to make an admission/ provocative statement: I don't get Doctor Who. Probably to an even greater extent than I don't get Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've watched it on occasion since the days when…
One of the links in the previous post was to Josh's thoughts on the CNN science shutdown. Toward the end, he had an interesting note on why science doesn't get more play: This is especially bad for CNN, since so much of their airtime is taken up by talking heads yelling at one another. Science doesn't work like that, and scientists fare poorly in a setting where rhetorical speed is valued over empirical evidence and fact-checking. This means that science is less likely to be covered at all, and when it is covered, it will be covered poorly. He's right about CNN, but I wonder about the…
A little while back, when I complained about the treatment of the multiverse in Anathem, a number of people commented to say that it wasn't all that bad. And, indeed, they were right. Compared to last night's History Channel program on "Parallel Universes," Stephenson's book is a miracle of subtle nuance, teasing out the crucial distinctions between different theories, and making them clear to the reader. Yeesh. That was so actively irritating that I don't know where to start. So I won't-- you can read what I wrote in the earlier post, and apply it to the History Channel, ten times over.…
The History Channel ran a two-hour program on Einstein last night. I had meant to plug this in advance, but got distracted by the Screamy Baby Fun-Time Hour yesterday, and didn't have time to post. The show restricted itself more or less to the period from 1900, just before his "miracle year" in 1905, to 1922 or so, when Einstein received his Nobel Prize. This was his most fertile period, scientifically, and they did a fairly comprehensive job of covering his life during this time, including his struggles for acceptance and his complicated personal life. There were, of course, some…
When I'm in the right mood, I'm a sucker for really awful sci-fi movies. For example, Saturday night I stayed up far too late to watch the end of the tv-movie version of The Andromeda Strain, based on the book by the prolific and recently deceased Luddite Fiction writer Michael Crichton. It's been twenty-plus years since I read the book, but I recall it being a whole lot better than this piece of garbage. Crichton's original novel about a crack research team dealing with a disease of alien origin is remarkable for being somewhat understated. The action focusses on the scientists attempting to…