Pop Culture
drorzel | May 7, 2009You might think that Monday's discourse on thermodynamics in the Goldilocks story was the only children's story in which physics plays a role, but that's not true. Physics is everywhere in fairy tales.
Take, for example, the story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a mysterious little man demands a terrible price for helping a miller's daughter spin straw into gold. This raises the obvious question of exactly how one would go about extracting gold from straw.
The use of the term "spin" might suggest the use of rotational motion-- if the straw were ground up very fine, and mixed with water, it might…
drorzel | May 6, 2009The proprietor of Good Mom, Bad Mom emails to point out a post spinning off Monday's Goldilocks post. A good thing she did, as Technorati has collapsed into utter uselessness, at least for finding people who link to my posts.
Her post quotes an unnamed correspondent, who writes:
My two daughters are both compulsive readers, gobbling up everything in their path. As a result, they both have very large vocabularies are very well informed about a range of things. I love it--instead of watching TV and getting dumb, they're reading, and getting smart. Mostly they read novels, but it's amazing how…
drorzel | May 1, 2009Some time back, I was a little surprised to hear James Nicoll use Asimov as a touchstone for science popularizers. I only really knew his fiction, and can't recall hearing his pop-science books cited by anybody who wasn't also an SF fan.
So, when I ran across one of his science books while we were sorting through a bunch of old books left in the department after we cleared out Ralph Alpher's old office and some other old book collections, I grabbed it figuring I should check out some of his science writing. The book in question is The Collapsing Universe: The Story of Black Holes. It has a…
drorzel | April 29, 2009I've had the Quiche Moraine post on editing open in a browser tab for far too long, now, but it deserves a more prominent comment than just a link in the daily links dump. It really is an excellent presentation of the important role of editing:
Editing requires the strange ability to stand in the place of the audience and the author simultaneously. As an editor reads a piece, whether it be a story or a journal article, they have to understand what the author intended to say without losing track of not just what one individual reader will take away, but how the piece will come across to…
drorzel | April 23, 2009A little while ago, I was pointed to Jim Munger's blog, which is full of ranting about various topics. Not quite to the standards of alt.peeves, back in the day, but some of it is entertaining.
It also includes several mentions of his band, Better Than Abstinence. There seemed to be something wrong with the audio on the inevitable MySpace page, so I can't say whether they're any good, but if nothing else, it's a good name for a band.
Which, of course, is a nice, low-impact follow-up to yesterday's post about naming in science and art. Coming up with names for nonexistent bands is a common…
drorzel | April 23, 2009I'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…
drorzel | April 22, 2009We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein's Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts.
One of the differences he mentioned was the way the different disciplines handle names. He claimed that science is deeply concerned with naming things, because naming a thing in some sense defines it-- the word "electron" carries with it a whole host of properties that are shared by all electrons in the universe. In the arts, on…
drorzel | April 21, 2009I tagged Geoffrey Pullum's rant against The Elements of Style for del.icio.us a few days back, because it struck me as interesting, but I didn't have time to say more. In the subsequent days, I've seen a bunch of "Preach it, Brother Pullum!" responses, most recently from revere. I've also received the copyedited manuscript of the book-in-production, so I've been thinking a bit about grammar and style in my own writing.
Most of the pro-Pullum responses I've seen seem to me to be missing the point. Or, rather, they're criticizing the book because it's not very good as an absolute and…
drorzel | April 16, 2009The other day, I wanted to hear the seasonally-appropriate Hold Steady song "How a Resurrection Really Feels" ("She crashed into the Easter Mass, with her hair done up in broken glass, She was limping left on broken heels and she said 'Father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?'"), so I punched it up on iTunes by sorting the music library alphabetically by song title. Which meant that, after the song finished, I got to hear every song in my collection that starts with the word "How."
It occurred to me that this might be the basis for one of those Internet "meme"…
drorzel | April 11, 2009...what with his wife, Emily, giving birth to twins. It sounds like he's pretty happy with this state of affairs, though.
Go leave him a congratulatory comment. Or, better yet, go buy one of his books-- they're great fun for you to read, and will help keep Toby supplied with the vast number of diapers he'll need in the next several months...
drorzel | April 9, 2009I spent most of yesterday huddled under a pile of blankets on the couch-- being feverish and light-headed is great if you're in a Pink Floyd song, but not so much if you're trying to be a functioning adult. It seems to be the Thing That's Going Around this term, though, and while I'm feeling better today, I have a lot of catch-up to do.
So, no Deep Thoughts today, but here's a pop-culture topic to pass the time: I recently found myself buying the Radio Edit for "Toe Jam" by "The Brighton Port Authority," a Fatboy Slim side project. It's a bouncy little song with silly lyrics ("A boy looks at…
drorzel | April 4, 2009The monthly Sigma Xi email newsletter for April included a link to Magic World Media, a new company producing children's books about science:
Magic World Media was founded in 2008 by scientists in order to offer children a view into the mysterious ways of life and the universe through books and other forms of media. Our goal is to nurture the imagination and wonder of young children by introducing them to the world that exists beyond the limitations of our senses and, importantly, exposing them to the vastness of what is still unknown. Our books generally place the child at the center of a…
drorzel | April 1, 2009Everything I've read about the Hold Steady says that they're a great bar band, which always seems a little improbable. I mean, the songs are complicated, with tons of words and odd subject matter ("I dig those awkward silences, 'cause I grew up in denial, and I went to school in Massachusetts"), and Craig Finn looks like a middle school teacher. It's hard to imagine him as a charismatic front man.
Hard as it is to believe, though, it's true. He came on stage in a plaid button-down shirt, enhancing the middle-school teacher look, and he does the dorkiest lead-singer dance I've ever seen, but…
drorzel | March 29, 2009I was rather surprised when Friday's quick post about Tolkien spawned a lengthy comment thread full of people arguing against the suggestion that The Lord of the Rings is affected by Tolkien's Catholic faith. I'm no Tolkien scholar, but my impression of the field is that this is simply not a controversial statement, that there is ample material in the reams of letters, early drafts, and other background material showing that this is the case.
On reflection, it seems that there are two things going on here. One is that some people seem to think that a book cannot be said to contain Christian…
drorzel | March 27, 2009Arts & 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…
drorzel | March 20, 2009The 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-…
jstemwedel | March 18, 2009
The younger Free-Ride offspring's admiration for and appreciation of the work of Jonathan Coulton continues unabated.
In fact, JoCo songs have become the subject of painstaking drawings that the younger Free-Ride hopes Mr. Coulton might encounter while Googling himself (as one does).
The latest offering is the younger Free-Ride offspring's conception of Skullcrusher Mountain (lyrics here):
The level of detail is impressive. Maybe even a little disturbing. But I will admit to being quite taken with the half-pony, half-monkey monster:
For those who didn't already know:
I made this half-…
drorzel | March 18, 2009In 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.
jstemwedel | March 14, 2009We've been watching some episodes of Blue Planet here, marveling at the beautiful cinematography, as well as at how emotionally gripping they can be.
Especially in the Frozen Seas episode, I found myself feeling almost wrung out by the dramatic roller-coaster. This is definitely nature red in tooth and claw (and blood-soaked maw), although as my better half points out, there's actually rather less on-camera carnage than you might expect from the narration.*
I think part of the dramatic tension comes from the fact that most of the animals featured in this episode are fairly charismatic mid-…
drorzel | March 14, 2009One of last year's highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say "weirdly" because it wasn't much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea.
It's that time of year again, and Tom's back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don't have much to add, but one of Tom's items:
We physicists quantify relationships -- something that is complicated is "nonlinear," or even "highly nonlinear." Opposites are "inversely proportional"
reminded me of a great literary reference, from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life":
"So they can read a word with equal ease…