March 28, 2010
Lest you think that the previous couple of posts indicate that I'm just a cranky curmudgeon who doesn't like anything he reads, let me put in a plug for Elijah Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll. I read about half of this piecemeal over a couple of months, then finished it on the plane…
March 27, 2010
Spending less time reading blogs means that I have more time to spend reading fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction I've been reading has been letting me down. In particular, I'm very disappointed in the last two books I've (mostly) read.
For one of the books, N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand…
March 26, 2010
Somebody at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a really high opinion of this blog, as they not only sent me an Advance Reading Copy of Paul Davies's forthcoming book about SETI, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, they followed it up with a finished hardcover. I read the ARC…
March 25, 2010
Not as nice a day today as some recent days, but we ended up running around in the backyard all the same. It's still not really spring, no matter what the astronomers say, but there are a few hardy little weeds poking up flowers that haven't quite opened yet. SteelyKid already knows what to do with…
March 25, 2010
Been a little while since I've done an Obsessive Update, but a few noteworthy things have come up recently:
A very nice review at Pet Connection: "this brilliant and (relatively) simple book explains the basic premises of quantum physics in terms that dogs and most English majors can understand."…
March 25, 2010
I did one sketchy update from Portland last Tuesday, but never wrote up my impressions of the rest of the March Meeting-- when I got back, I was buried in grading, and then trying to put together Monday's presentation. And, for reasons that will become apparent, I was unable to write anything up…
March 24, 2010
Several people have sent me links to news stories about last week's Nature paper, "Quantum ground state and single-phonon control of a mechanical resonator." (It was also presented at the March Meeting, but I didn't go to that session). This is billed as the first observation of quantum phenomena…
March 23, 2010
The winners of the first Research Blogging Awards were announced today, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this blog was named the "Best Blog -- Chemistry, Physics, or Astronomy." I knew that I was nominated-- I was one of the judges, and while I abstained from voting on my own blog,…
March 22, 2010
I gave a talk today for a group of local home-school students and parents, on the essential elements of quantum physics. The idea was to give them a sense of what sets quantum mechanics apart from other theories of physics, and why it's a weird and wonderful thing.
The title is, of course, a…
March 18, 2010
Kate here, with some outdoor baby blogging:
I'd meant for this to be a comparison photo to this one from August. Unfortunately it's got neither Chad nor Appa for scale, and she's slouching, which diminishes the OMG HUGE effect—but not the killer cute.
One more outdoor picture and one indoor…
March 15, 2010
I'm terrible about taking notes on conference talks, especially when I'm jet-lagged and was sleep deprived even before I got on the plane. I do jot down the occasional paper reference, though, so here are the things I wrote down, and the talks they were associated with. This should give you some…
March 14, 2010
I'm en route to the March Meeting in Portland, which involves a three-hour layover in Chicago, between two flights on Southwest, my preferred airline. I'm always impressed by how much more efficient Southwest seems that the other major airlines.
One weird manifestation of that efficiency is the…
March 12, 2010
I think I've mentioned before that I'm on the local committee that selects nominees for the Watson Fellowship, which is one of the best committees to be on, because you get to interact with some of our best students doing things that they really love. This year, we're thrilled to have two of our…
March 11, 2010
SteelyKid says "You know what? Bacon tastes good!"
We've had a hard time convincing her that anything that isn't either 1) crunchy, or 2) goopy is food. Cooked vegetables, she'll pick up, look at, and toss aside laughing. Cooked meat is similarly rejected. This week, though, we discovered that she…
March 11, 2010
Lots of good suggestions as to Portland activities for my trip to the March Meeting next week. There's a second, related problem that I also need help with: What should I do at the meeting itself?
My usual conference is DAMOP, which I'll be going to in May, so while DAMOP is a participating…
March 10, 2010
Several items in the general category of charitable activity:
Kate is running the Con or Bust auction again this year, with proceeds going to support people of color interested in attending SFF cons, principally Wiscon. Bidding is open through Saturday at 11:59pm ET, and items up for bid include…
March 10, 2010
On this morning's walk, a woman stopped me and Emmy to say that she recognized us from a picture. Emmy was adopted from the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society shelter back in 2003, and when they heard about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, they contacted me about writing Emmy up as a…
March 9, 2010
I'm going to be attending the March Meeting of the American Physical Society next week, in Portland, OR. This will be held at the Oregon Convention Center, which is apparently on the opposite side of the river from every hotel in the city.
I have never been to Portland (or, indeed, anything in the…
March 5, 2010
Another dramatic reading of a chapter from How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, just because. This is Chapter 4, which is based on the original Many Worlds, Many Treats post that kick-started the whole thing:
I'm sitting at the computer typing, when Emmy bumps up against my legs. I look down, and she…
March 4, 2010
Here we see SteelyKid kickin' back in her babypod, sharing a meal of Cheerios and dried fruit with Appa:
SteelyKid says "You know, Daddy, if we traveled by sky bison, you wouldn't have to worry about the wiring in your car, and you wouldn't be faced with driving a giant rental pick-up truck to…
March 3, 2010
It's been an absurdly good hoops week at Chateau Steelypips-- Syracuse won a big one to take over the (admittedly meaningless) #1 spot in the polls, and now Maryland beat Duke in a tough game to move into a tie for the top spot in the (admittedly down) ACC. If both Duke (home to UNC) and Maryland (…
March 3, 2010
I've been buried in work, so I haven't had time to do any real blogging, but I do want to post a quick reminder of this week's signing:
-- This FRIDAY, March 5 (that is, the day after tomorrow), I will be signing books at the Vestal, NY Barnes and Noble at 7pm. I'm not entirely sure what they…
March 1, 2010
I've tried a couple of times to read China Mieville's highly praised Perdido Street Station, but found it so unpleasant that I stopped maybe a third of the way in. Some of the things he said about his theories of literature as the guest of honor at Readercon a few years ago also made me think that…
February 28, 2010
When I headed to work this morning, I made the turn onto Nott St., and all the error lights in my car lit up, and the speedometer and tachometer went dead. I know exactly what the cause is, because this has happened twice before: rodents of some sort are chewing on the wiring in my car, causing…
February 27, 2010
They pushed the curtain back a few feet at the Carrier Dome, opening up a few more seats so they could set a new record for largest on-campus crowd to see a college basketball game for Syracuse playing Villanova for a share of the Big East regular season title. This is the sort of atmosphere where…
February 26, 2010
A couple of upcomign events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog:
-- Next FRIDAY, March 5, I will be signing books at the Vestal, NY Barnes and Noble at 7pm. This is the big-box chain store closest to my hometown, and my parents report already getting calls about it, which is weird but cool…
February 26, 2010
Today is the Purim parade at the Schenectady JCC, so all the kids needed costumes to wear. This isn't that easy, especially for a little girl (Babysaurus had a couple of different sets of boys pajamas that were superhero uniforms, but nothing equivalent for girls), and was complicated by the fact…
February 25, 2010
One of the weird-but-cool things about being C-list famous on the Internet is that some publishers now send me unsolicited review copies of forthcoming books about science. These aren't always the books I would really like to get free copies of, but, hey, free books.
Among the books I've received…
February 23, 2010
What's the application? CD and DVD players use lasers to read (and in some cases write) digital information from convenient plastic disks.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do we store a large amount of digital information in a convenient and stable fashion?" 2) "How do we make…
February 23, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, I announced a contest to determine the Most Amazing Laser Application. What with one thing and another, this didn't get posted last week, but I don't intend to drop it completely, and will be finishing the series up in the next week or so. Here's the list of finalists, with…
