Prompted by this and this, among other things, one of the critical questions of the modern age: Harry Potter is a: Magic is a classical phenomenon, no matter what you may have heard, so you can choose one and only one option.
Month: July 2011
Belated Paparazzi Blogging 071511
Yesterday’s foray into procrastination by mathematical modeling forced me to shift some actual work into the evening hours, which meant that I completely forgot about Toddler Blogging. Which is fine, because lately SteelyKid has been reacting to cameras in approximately the same way as the reclusive celebrity of your choice, so all my pictures of… Continue reading Belated Paparazzi Blogging 071511
Links for 2011-07-15
Guest Blog: Why Is Quantum Gravity So Hard? And Why Did Stalin Execute the Man Who Pioneered the Subject? In fact, the field of quantum gravity was born in 1916, even before physicists had properly explained the other fundamental forces, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. Twenty years later, a young Russian physicist by the name… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-15
Roller Slide Physics Simulated
I really ought to be doing other things, but this roller slide business kept nagging at me, and I eventually realized I could mock up a crude simulation of the results. This led to the production of this graph: This looks pretty similar to the Tracker Video data from the previous post, which I’ll reproduce… Continue reading Roller Slide Physics Simulated
Roller Slide Physics Explained
On Monday, I posted a short video and asked about the underlying physics. Here’s the clip again, showing SteelyKid and then me going down a slide made up of a whole bunch of rollers at a local playground: The notable thing about this is that SteelyKid takes a much, much longer time to get down… Continue reading Roller Slide Physics Explained
Tribes, Classes, and Networking
Via Jessa Crispin on Twitter, there’s a really excellent article in the Paris Review about Harvard and Class: When I applied, I thought it would be great because I would get to meet lots of smart people. Those were the kinds of people I liked to be friends with, and I thought there would be… Continue reading Tribes, Classes, and Networking
Links for 2011-07-14
Jamie Leigh Jones verdict: Jury trials aren’t always satisfying, but they’re better than angry mobs. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine As Alan Dershowitz explained last week: “A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty. That’s because only one person is… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-14
Poll: Blogging
Last week Doug Natelson noted a drop-off in active physics blogs. This had not gone unnoticed hereabouts, though I couldn’t immediately think of what to say about that. Yesterday, though, former ScienceBlogs wrangler Christopher Mims provided a possible answer: Google+ has destroyed blogging completely. I would’ve liked to find a way to tie all this… Continue reading Poll: Blogging
Robert Charles Wilson, Vortex [Library of Babel]
Like a lot of people in SF/ Fantasy circles, I stayed up late reading last night. Unlike most of those people, though, what I was reading was not A Dance with Dragons from George R. R. Martin, but Vortex by Robert Charles Wilson, the sequel to Spin and Axis, concluding a series that he said… Continue reading Robert Charles Wilson, Vortex [Library of Babel]
Links for 2011-07-13
Counting Crows’ Recovering The Satellites | Music | We’re No. 1 | The A.V. Club “Recovering The Satellites is easily my favorite Counting Crows album, precisely because it’s the record where Duritz went from wanting to be a big star (or so he sang in “Mr. Jones”) to equating his celebrity with slow-motion drowning. This… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-13