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… Continue reading How Do I Kill the Squirrels Who Are Eating My Car?
Month: February 2010
Syracuse-Villanova
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… Continue reading Syracuse-Villanova
Upcoming Appearances for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
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… Continue reading Upcoming Appearances for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
Belated Baby Blogging 022610
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 that SteelyKid had yet… Continue reading Belated Baby Blogging 022610
The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy
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 in the last year or… Continue reading The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy
Amazing Laser Application 5: Optical Data Storage!
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 everybody buy the White… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 5: Optical Data Storage!
Laser Smackdown Update
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… Continue reading Laser Smackdown Update
Thursday Baby Blogging 021810
Look out, it’s a Giant Monster Baby! OK, she’s not really gigantic, but she does tower over Appa these days. And she’s strong enough to lift Appa one-handed, while drinking juice with the other:
Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts [Library of Babel]
While Adam Roberts was kind of an ass regarding last year’s Hugo ballot, the summary of his latest, Yellow Blue Tibia, sounded pretty entertaining to me, and it was on the Locus Recommended Reading list, so I got it out of the library. The book is presented as the memoir of Konstantin Skvorecky, a Soviet… Continue reading Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts [Library of Babel]
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
A couple of reviews, an offer, and a mystery regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: The reviews: A review at suite101 that went up a while ago, but I somehow missed in the vanity search. It’s a nice, detailed review, and if I had to pick a pull quote it would probably be:… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update