Late last year, Matthew Beckler was nice enough to make a sales rank tracker for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Changes in the Amazon page format made it stop working a while ago, though, and now Amazon reports roughly equivalent data via its AuthorCentral feature, with the added bonus of BookScan sales figures.… Continue reading Benford’s Law of Amazon Rankings
Month: December 2010
In Which I Join the Century of the Fruitbat
Lookit the shiny: That’s a new Droid X smartphone, and it’s mine. I got it yesterday after discovering the existence of a slightly cheaper “data only” plan that is so secret only about 10% of Verizon Wireless employees know it exists. As my previous phone was a freebie LG flip phone from about three years… Continue reading In Which I Join the Century of the Fruitbat
Links for 2010-12-31
Christopher Guest | Film | Gateways To Geekery | The A.V. Club “No comic filmmaker is more intimately associated with improvisation than Christopher Guest, an alum of The National Lampoon Radio Hour and Saturday Night Live who made his name as a filmmaker co-writing, directing, and co-starring in improvised films riffing loosely on show business… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-31
Thursday Toddler Blogging 123010
I nearly forgot to post tonight’s Toddler Blogging photos, which would’ve been a Bad Thing, as you can tell from this picture. Toddler Blogging is Serious Business: That’s not the best Appa-for-scale picture, but I love the intense look on her face. This was taken in our spiffy, newly refinished basement, which is the new… Continue reading Thursday Toddler Blogging 123010
Best Music of 2010
I’ve shifted the iTunes shuffle from the Christmas-music playlist over to the top-rated songs of the year playlist because, well, it’s the time of year when anybody with any pretension of writing about pop culture does some sort of Top N list to wrap up the year. And, since I’ve got “pop culture” right up… Continue reading Best Music of 2010
Links for 2010-12-30
slacktivist: Excruciating “The work of a senator doesn’t have to be so painful. If you find yourself complaining because you’re being forced to defend indefensible positions by voting on them, it might be that the problem doesn’t lie with those forcing you to cast a vote and take a stand. It seems more likely that… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-30
The Status of Simulations
Most of what would ordinarily be blogging time this morning got used up writing a response to a question at the Physics Stack Exchange. But having put all that effort in over there, I might as well put it to use here, too… The question comes from a person who did a poster on terminology… Continue reading The Status of Simulations
SteelyKid, Railroad Tycoon
I’m slowly sifting through the Christmas pictures, many of which were rendered blurry by SteelyKid’s constant motion, but there are some good shots in there: This one shows her playing with the wooden train set she got from Grandma and Grandpa (the same gauge as the Thomas branded ones they have set up at Barnes… Continue reading SteelyKid, Railroad Tycoon
Poll: Top Physics Story of 2010?
It’s the last week of the (calendar) year, which means it’s a good time to recap the previous twelve months worth of scientific news. Typically, publications like Physics World will publish a list of top ten physics stories of 2010, but we’re all Web 2.0 these days, so it seems more appropriate to put this… Continue reading Poll: Top Physics Story of 2010?
Links for 2010-12-28
Do dogs need sweaters when it’s cold? Plus: Is road salt edible? – By Brian Palmer – Slate Magazine “A major blizzard dropped 20 inches of snow on New York City on Sunday night as it made its way up the East Coast. Monday-morning dog-walkers had their animals decked out in sweaters and booties to… Continue reading Links for 2010-12-28