I’ve been playing around with the spiffy sales rank tracker Matthew Beckler wrote, because I’m a great big dork, and enjoy playing with graphs. Here’s a graph of the sales rank vs. time through 2pm EST today (plotted in Excel from the data table at the bottom of the page): As I noted in my […]
Month: December 2009
Great Moments in Vanity Searching -or- The Hotness of Physics
I was Googling for “How to Teach Physics to Your Dog” last night, to check whether a review of said book that I know is coming has been posted yet (side question: Does anybody know a good way to exclude the umpty-zillion versions of Amazon and other sellers from this sort of search? Most of […]
Links for 2009-12-20
Upper Mismanagement | The New Republic “Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that’s the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh […]
Physics for Math Students
I gave a talk last night to the Albany Area Math Circle, a group of high-schoolers who are interested in science and math, and enter and do very well in national math competitions. I think there were 48 kids there last night, which was pretty impressive. I gave basically the same talk I gave at […]
Links for 2009-12-19
The Mighty Power of Blogosaurus? | The Loom | Discover Magazine “I’ve heard this sort of story many times before, and this is where it usually ends. Blogosaurus slinks back to his office and sulks. But today the story has another ending. Wedel now reports that someone from the Discovery Channel called him up and […]
Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 4: Lasers
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is now listed as “In Stock” at Amazon, so it’s the perfect time to order a dozen or so copies for your last-minute holiday gift needs. “But, wait,” you say, “why do I want to teach my dog physics? Particularly quantum physics– why does anyone need to know […]
The British Accountants’ War On Science
I’ve been dimly aware that physics in the UK was being hit hard by a financial crisis for a while now. It seemed to be a bit deeper than what people in other countries complain about, but I hadn’t given it much thought until I read this Physics World story on the latest cuts, which […]
Musical Poll: Improbable Dylan
I continue to be boggled by the Bob Dylan Christmas album. Thus, a deeply silly poll: Having recorded a Christmas album, what should Bob Dylan’s next project be?(polls) Happy Holidays!
Still in the Dark
As a physicist with a blog, I am contractually obligated to do a post on the CDMS almost-a-result. This is that post. The short version: they expected at most 0.8 events (that’s total events, not events per day, or anything– this is a whole community built on detecting nothing at all), and got 2, with […]
Links for 2009-12-18
Creating Citizen Scientists § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM “A few days ago, sitting in my office, I contributed to peer-reviewed scientific research in biology, astronomy, and psychology. Even though I don’t hold degrees in any of these fields, my contributions will help advance science: I was doing real investigative work, not the prosaic replications of classic experiments that […]