Three European countries, France, Germany, and Spain have suffered embarrassing World Cup losses. The French team in particular has appeared to be in complete disarray. Their combined record to this point is just 2-3-1 (W-L-T). What do these three countries have in common? None of them have purchased translation rights for How to Teach Physics […]
Month: June 2010
Dropping Bose Condensates for Fun and Science
An experiment in Germany has generated a good deal of publicity by dropping their Bose-Einstein Cendensate (BEC) apparatus from a 146 meter tower. This wasn’t an act of frustration by an enraged graduate student (anybody who has worked with BEC has probably fantasized about throwing at least part of their apparatus down a deep hole), […]
The Glamorous Life of an Experimental Physicist
The Virtuosi has quickly become a staple of the daily Links Dumps here, but the recent series of posts on experimental physics deserve greater prominence, so here they are: Life as an Experimenter- Day One Life as an Experimenter- Day Two Life as an Experimenter- Day Three Life as an Experimenter- Reflections The individual day […]
Links for 2010-06-21
Lost Myths ” Lostmyths.net is a website featuring myths uncovered by writer Claude Lalumière (Tesseracts 12, Witpunk, Objects of Worship) and illustrator Rupert Bottenberg. As cryptomythologists, they study imaginary myths, just like cryptozoologists study imaginary creatures. […] The site features gods and deities from pantheons unsuspected until now and stories about some heretofore unknown players […]
Chateau SteelyKid
I’ve made a few oblique references to home improvement projects over the last week or so. These weren’t for our house, but for SteelyKid’s– Kate’s mom got her a playhouse for Christmas, which we finally got around to installing in the back yard. SteelyKid has taken right to home ownership: Don’t let her studied cool […]
Science Is More Like Sumo Than Soccer
There’s a blog post making the rounds of the science blogosphere titled If Sports Got Reported Like Science, which imagines the effect of applying the perceived restriction on scientific terminology to sports reporting: HOST: In sports news, Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti today heavily criticised a controversial offside decision which denied Didier Drogba a late equaliser, […]
World Cup Weekend
Friday’s games showcased everything that makes international soccer maddening for Americans to watch: dreadful officiating, lack of scoring, and annoyingly conservative strategy. The referee in the Germany-Serbia game handed out cards like it was a poker tournament, with the result that, in the second half, every time two players got within about a meter of […]
Links for 2010-06-20
Jason Sanford: Why science fiction predictions hold back the genre “In many ways, the idea that science fiction is about predicting the future is a remnant of the genre’s past. During the 1940s and ’50s, genre promoters pitched SF as a way to inspire and teach people about science and technology. And during the era […]
How to Teach Physics to Your Brazilian Dog
As I was heading out with SteelyKid to do some shopping, I noticed that the mail had arrived, including a large book mailer from my agent. I was a little puzzled as to what that could be, but left it for my return. Where I was pleased to open the envelope and find: That’s a […]
That’s Our Baby!
Friday was the last day of the school year hereabouts, so SteelyKid’s day care had an end-of-year ceremony for all the preschool classes, which included her group (“Waddlers,” which are between “Infants” and “Toddlers”). They gave certificates to all the kids, for a variety of different things. Here’s a picture of SteelyKid’s certificate: I have […]