My parents are in the Caribbean at the moment, and threatened to send me cell-phone pictures of white beaches and blue water. They were thwarted in this by the fact that I still have a cheap LG flip phone with no camera. Our calls from home are exclusively made using a landline phone. You can… Continue reading Why I Don’t Have a Smart Phone
Month: August 2010
Crazy and Dishonest Physics Update
The problem with writing about fake physics is that once you start, it’s hard to stop. And there’s always something new and disreputable to find, such as this hideous bit of scammery. As I said in How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, if quantum physics really allowed you to amass vast wealth just by… Continue reading Crazy and Dishonest Physics Update
What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 2: Lasers and Optics
Following on yesterday’s discussion of the vacuum hardware needed for cooling atoms, let’s talk about the other main component of the apparatus: the optical system. The primary technique used for making cold atoms is laser cooling, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise that this requires lasers, and where there are lasers, there… Continue reading What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 2: Lasers and Optics
Links for 2010-08-12
If Physical Books Are Dead in Five Years, How Do the Poor Find Books? Whither (or Wither?) the Library? : Mike the Mad Biologist “The great promise of our libraries is that, if you can physically get there (and for some services, even that isn’t required), you have access to the materials, rich or poor.… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-12
What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 1: Vacuum Hardware
Over in the reader request thread, Richard asks for experimental details: I’d be interested in (probably a series) of posts on how people practically actually do cold atoms experiments because I don’t really know. I needed to take some new publicity photos of the lab anyway, so this is a good excuse to bust out… Continue reading What Do You Need to Make Cold Atoms? Part 1: Vacuum Hardware
Two Americas in Recovery
First Matt Yglesias and then Kevin Drum nail the current source of my occasional spasms of liberal guilt, namely the unequal distribution of the current economic troubles. They both note that the unemployment rate for college graduates is less than half that for folks without college degrees (Matt looks at total unemployment, Kevin at long-term… Continue reading Two Americas in Recovery
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, Sideways
A Japanese physicist who I worked with as a post-doc spotted the Japanese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the wild, and picked up a copy. He sent along a scan of a couple of pages of the text, one of which I reproduce here: I had totally forgotten that Japanese… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, Sideways
Links for 2010-08-11
Crowd Sourcing Loses Steam – Newsweek “There’s no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature: most people… Continue reading Links for 2010-08-11
It’s Not Nerd Parenting Without Graphs
SteelyKid had her two-year checkup this morning, which means we got new weight and length measurements for her. It’s been a while since I did anything really dorky with her data, so here are a couple of graphs tracking her growth: (Yes, they’re in English units, not SI. Deal with it.)
Technology, Entertainment, and Quantum Kookiness
A reader emails to ask about a new-to-me theory of physics, called “Quantum Space Theory” being promoted by a fellow named Thad Roberts. I wouldn’t usually bother with this, but Roberts was one of the speakers at TEDx Boulder. this is disappointing, to put it mildly– TED is a respected organization, and I don’t like… Continue reading Technology, Entertainment, and Quantum Kookiness