A couple of cell-phone pictures from last weekend, on an early-evening run to one of the local playgrounds. The sun was pretty well down when SteelyKid decided she wanted to climb on the giant rope climbing structure they have. she’s gone on this before, but it’s never lasted long, so we figured, why not? (It’s […]
Month: October 2011
Because 4% of the Energy Controls 100% of the Photons
“I work around the clock– 1043 Planck times per second– providing the gravitational attraction to hold this galaxy cluster together. And some baryonic cosmologist wants to explain me away as a modification of Newtonian gravity? “I have been silent for 13.7 billion years, but no more. “I AM THE 96%” (Original Pandora Cluster image from […]
Strongly Correlated Physics in a Superposition State
It’s been a while since I posted anything science-y, and I’ve got some time between flipping pancakes, so here’s an odd thing from the last few weeks of science news. Last week, there was an article in Nature about the wonders of string theory applied to condensed matter physics. This uses the “AdS/CFT” relationship, by […]
Thursday Toddler Blogging 102011
SteelyKid was in an exceptionally happy mood the other night, and so I not only got the silly face shot from the previous post, but also this more traditional Toddler Blogging picture, with Appa, no less: All together now: Awwwwwww…. Appa, you may or may not recall, has served as our standard length reference for […]
Donors Choose Fundraiser: Double Your Impact
I’ve been too busy to really work on the DonorsChoose fundraiser this year, but it’s worth taking a little time to mention this opportunity: Starting today and running through Saturday midnight, the DonorsChoose board will match donations to the Science Bloggers for Students fundraiser. thus, a $5 donation becomes $10, $10 becomes $20, and, well, […]
Experimentalists Aren’t Idiots: The Neutrino Saga Continues
In a lot of ways, the OPERA fast-neutrino business has been less a story about science than a story about the perils of the new media landscape. We went through another stage of this a day or two ago, with all sorts of people Twittering, resharing, and repeating in other ways a story that the […]
SteelyKid the Builder
Because it’s been a while since I posted a cute toddler picture, and because SteelyKid actually let me shoot some pictures of her yesterday for the first time in a while. Here she is, playing with Legos: Of course, building giant towers is only half the fun of playing with Legos:
Active Learning Experiment: The Halfway Point
Tuesday was the last day of the fifth week of classes (out of ten; for reasons that passeth all understanding, we started on Wednesday, so all the week-based deadlines fall on Tuesday). Accordingly, it seems like a decent time for an update on the active learning stuff I’ve been doing in my classes. Each class […]
Physicists Are Cheap
Alternate title: I Have an Overdeveloped Sense of Responsibility, Which Is Going to Get Me in Trouble Someday. So, it’s October, which means the annual DonorsChoose fundraising challenge is upon us. I really don’t have time to do a good job of this, but having raised a whole bunch of money for them in the […]
End of an Era, Countdown to a New Era
This is primarily of note to a handful of family members, but it’s the end of an era at Chateau Steelypips: Well, two eras, I suppose, for the two items of furniture. The dresser dates from around 2002, and was bought when I first moved to Schenectady, so Kate would have a place for her […]