Pop Culture
drorzel | November 4, 2010I'm spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I'm avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don't want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here's a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid's continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon:
How does a cow jump over the moon?
The father of one of SteelyKid's classmates, who is not originally from the US, asked why there's a cow jumping over the moon in that (or, as SteelyKid puts it: "Cow jumping MOON!!"), and I don't have a good answer. I'm aware of the nursery rhyme and the Tolkien joke, but why…
drorzel | November 3, 2010In a case of poor communication between publicists, I have ended up with not one but two advance copies of Massive by Ian Sample, a forthcoming book about the Higgs Boson. As I barely have time to read one, I don't remotely need two; thus, I will dispose of one with a really simple contest:
I am thinking of an integer between 0 and 1000 (inclusive). The person who comes closest to guessing the number by midnight Eastern time Friday, November 5 wins a copy of Massive.
Leave your guess in the comments. One entry per commenter, please. In the event that two or more people choose the same…
drorzel | November 3, 2010I have nothing useful or interesting to say about electoral politics, but I suspect that's all people will want to read about today. So here's a book post that's been backlogged for quite a while.
Lisa Randall's Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions dates from 2005, and was, I think, part of the huge spate of string-theory-related books at that time (just before the String Theory Backlash books of 2006). It includes the usual survey of the Standard Model and the problems thereof, with an emphasis on the sort of extra-dimension theories that Randall and…
drorzel | October 30, 2010This week's Short Story Club entry is "My Father's Singularity" by Brenda Cooper. Who I keep having to remind myself is not the Brenda-with-a-surname-starting-with-C that I remember posting to rec.arts.sf.written back in the day (that was Brenda Clough).
This is set in the not-too-distant future in the Pacific Northwest, and is the first-person tale of a boy who grew up on a farm with his father telling him he'd go through the Singularity someday:
In my first memory of my father, we are sitting on the porch, shaded from the burning sun's assault on our struggling orchards. My father is…
drorzel | October 29, 2010Chateau Steelypips lost power this morning for unknown reasons, preventing me from putting up the post I planned to do with lots of cute toddler pictures. Thus, a quickie poll in honor of the crazy person a couple of blocks away who sometimes yells at me for dropping Emmy's bagged poop into her full trash cans while they're at the curb:
Somebody else dropping a bag of dog poop into your trash can when it's at the curb awaiting pickup is:online surveys
As noted a long time ago, this would be a great opening scene for an episode of CSI (Call me, CBS. We'll talk.), but beyond that, I'm kind of…
drorzel | October 29, 2010The New York Times has a video highlighting particularly clever campaign commercials in the New York area, which includes this spot from my uncle John Orzel's state senate campaign:
I'm not aware of any polling regarding the race, so I have no idea how things will turn out next Tuesday. The word from my parents is that spirits are high in the campaign (read: Uncle John is enjoying the process, and the friends and relatives making up the campaign staff are as well), so that's good, at least.
Anyway, if you're in the Binghamton area, vote for my uncle next week. If not, enjoy the award-worthy…
drorzel | October 28, 2010The Times Higher Education magazine in the UK, that is. They ran a review of my book a couple of weeks ago, which I've only just noticed:
The approach is quite entertaining. The tone of the book is chatty and contains some truly awful puns involving dogs, which, if you can stand them, make it an attractive and lively read. However, don't be fooled - Emmy is no ordinary dog. She can reason with the informed leaps one may expect from a physics undergraduate, despite peppering her conversation with "squirrel", "bunny" and "chase".
If you're in the UK, the edition the review refers to is on sale…
drorzel | October 28, 2010I finished Jennifer Ouellette's new book a few weeks ago, shortly after my trip to Alabama, but it's taken me a long time to get around to reviewing it due to a combination of too much work and being a Bad Person. There's finally a tiny break in the storm of work, though, so here's a slightly belated review.
The Calculus Diaries is not a book that will teach you how to do math. There aren't worked examples, detailed derivations, or homework problems in the main text. It might, however, teach you not to fear math, as it provides a witty and accessible explanation of the key concepts behind…
drorzel | October 26, 2010Last night's Giants-Cowboys game was not one of the finer displays of football you're ever see-- the score makes it seem like a close game, but the Giants turned the ball over five times and gave up a punt return for a touchdown, basically handing the Cowboys 28 points. Other than that, you know, they played really well.
This morning, the sports-radio people are all wondering why the Cowboys are so much worse than expected, and the Giants are looking better than expects. The answer to this is really simple: The offensive line. It's probably the least glamorous position on the field, but the…
drorzel | October 25, 2010I almost forgot something that I need to do today, so no lengthy and detailed blogging this morning. Instead, a quick poll regarding Neil Gaiman's suggestion of giving kids scary books for Halloween:
Neil Gaiman suggests giving kids scary books for Halloween. What do you think?online surveys
Halloween is a classic holiday, which means you're bound by classical rules, and can only choose one item, not a quantum superposition of multiple options.
(I think he means giving scary books to kids you know or are related to, not handing them out to Trick-or-Treaters, but it's more amusing to picture…
drorzel | October 24, 2010Between my long-ago high-school French and Google Translate, I can tell that this is a good review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It does note, though, that reading the book requires knowledge of English to understand it, which is a problem. And, as far as I know, French translation rights haven't been sold yet... French publishers, je vous regarde.
In other foreign-edition news, we've sold German and Turkish rights, so there will be editions in those languages eventually. Emmy was very happy to hear that the book will be published in Turkey, though that was mostly a case of preposition…
drorzel | October 23, 2010This week's Short Story Club entry is a Tor.com story, "The Cage" by A. M. Dellamonica. This is a story about a general contractor and the Most Adorable Werewolf Pupppy Ever.
In the world of the story, supernatural monsters are "out," known to the general public (though I don't think it mentions anything other than werewolves directly), with varying reactions-- mostly hostile in the US, more ambivalent in Canada. The story is set in Vancouver, where a woman whose werewolf sister was shot by an American fortune-hunter hires the narrator to build her a soundproof and indestructible room on the…
drorzel | October 22, 2010On the way in to work, I heard yet another example of the deplorable trend of taking the vocal tracks of slow songs-- in this case, "The Kids Don't Stand a Chance" by Vampire Weekend-- and replacing the musical backing with a 120 beats-per-minute dance beat that sounds like it was generated by a high-end Casio keyboard. These turn up over and over, and every time it happens, it annoys me to no end.
But why should pop music be the only genre to get this treatment? Thus, a poll suggesting some other slow songs that ought(?) to receive this treatment:
What slow song is most in need of a dance-…
drorzel | October 18, 2010As you may or may not be aware, we are once again in the middle of a DonorsChoose fundraiser to support public school students and teachers. The good news is, the Uncertain Principles entry for the 2010 Challenge is in second place among ScienceBlogs blogs with $373 in donations thus far; the bad news it that more than half of that money is from the initial contribution I made when I set the challenge up.
We've done much better than this in the past, but I realize these are tough economic times, and people may not have as much disposable cash to give to charity. I was thinking, though, about…
drorzel | October 16, 2010This week's short story club entry is Carol Emshwiller's "No Time Like the Present," a sort of timeless time-travel story. It's narrated by a teenage girl in an unnamed town somewhere in the US whose town sees a sudden influx of tall blond people who behave very oddly. While it's pretty obvious to the reader that something science-fictional is going on, the narrator takes a while to get to that realization, and even when she does, it's mostly buried in typical teen concerns-- friends, parents, potential romantic relationships.
This story has a sort of timeless quality, partly because it's a…
drorzel | October 14, 2010Emmy and I are in Buffalo today, after a long drive last night, made longer by the NY Thruway authorities decidin to randomly sprinkle lane closures along the westbound portion of I-90. They also made the sadistic move of putting on the "tune to this radio station for information" flashers before the big back-up, and then playing only a recording saying that they were updating the messages on the information network. For at least an hour. Nice work, Thruway idiots. That was positively Pennsylvanian.
Anyway, we're here in scenic Buffalo, where it isn't snowing yet, so don't ask. Which means I…
drorzel | October 12, 2010SteelyKid is a big fan of the classic children's book Goodnight Moon, which, if you haven't spent the last sixty-odd years in a cave, you probably know features a bunny saying goodnight to a variety of objects in a great, green room. The attentive toddler will find a lot to look at in the pictures-- there's a mouse in every one that SteelyKid delights in pointing out-- but an inquiring adult might well ask "Just how long does it take this bunny to say goodnight to all this stuff, anyway?"
Well, we can answer this question with SCIENCE! You see, there are six pictures in the book showing the…
sa smith | October 11, 2010Today is National Coming Out Day.
Last week, a young man from Norman OK killed himself, a few days after listening to hours of hateful comments at a Norman City Council meeting.
Watch it.
Comments start at ~min 43.
I picked a time-point at random-- ~ 1 hour in. I got to see a comment by Fred Pope, a hateful, disgusting piece of shit.
Fred Pope said he and his family moved to Norman 15 years ago looking for a place that didn't necessarily embrace the GLBT community.
"We moved here so we could raise a family in a great location," Pope said. "And what this does tonight is begin to undermine…
drorzel | October 9, 2010I missed last week's installment of Short Story Club while traveling, but want to get caught up again with this week's story, "Miguel and the Viatura." I'm not sure this will be posted in time to get into the discussion post, but we'll see.
The title character, Miguel, lives in a future city that is not clearly identified, but based on the names is presumably in Brazil. The story opens as he is trailing behind his brother Joaõ on the way to see his father. His father, it turns out, has quite literally sold himself, allowing his body to be filled with magic nanotechnology, and inhabited by…
drorzel | October 9, 2010Via Sheril, Science Friday on NPR needs money:
We at SciFri are facing severe financial difficulties, i.e. raising money. NSF [National Science Foundation] has turned us down for continuing funding, saying they love what we do, we are sorely needed, but it's not their job to fund us. At the same time, NPR has said the same thing, telling us that if we want to stay on the air, etc, we now have to raise all our own money. Despite what listeners may think, NPR only gives us about 10 percent of our funding.
Emmy's suggested solution was "They should have me on to talk about physics. And bunnies…