CourtVision by Kirk Goldsberry Some shots are easier than other shots; that’s a basic tenet of basketball. Many factors influence the probability of a field goal attempt resulting in a made basket, but one factor in particular has been mostly overlooked in basketball analysis: location. The most common shooting metric in the NBA is field […]
Month: March 2012
Shedding Light on Quantum Gravity: “Probing Planck-scale physics with quantum optics”
It’s been a while since I did any ResearchBlogging posts, because it turns out that having an infant and a toddler really cuts into your blogging time. Who knew? I keep meaning to get back to it, though, and there was a flurry of excitement the other day about a Nature Physics paper proposing a […]
Links for 2012-03-21
Drug smuggler? Victim of scholar envy? UNC prof in Argentine jail – Crime/Safety – NewsObserver.com A 68-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill physics professor with three degrees from Oxford University is being held in an Argentine prison on charges of trying to smuggle two kilograms of cocaine. Paul H. Frampton, who holds the title Louis D. Rubin Jr. […]
The Quantum Universe by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw
So, this is the new book from the authors of Why Does E=mc2?, covering quantum mechanics in a roughly similar manner. This book, or, rather, Brian Cox talking about some material from this book, created a bit of controversy recently, as previously discussed. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? […]
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Publicity Update
A couple of cool items in the promotion of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: — A little while back, I spoke to Alan Boyle, who writes the Cosmic Log blog for MSNBC, who posted a very nice story about the book last night. Mainstream media, baby! It also uses this very cool picture […]
Links for 2012-03-20
Strange Quark Comics Mar 18, 2012 “Understanding doesn’t matter. You’ve got to show confidence or no one will believe you’re smarter than me.” Liberals Started the Culture War, and We Should Be Proud of Continuing It | Mother Jones We tend to mock conservatives for endlessly keeping the culture war alive, but the truth is […]
Are Books and Kindles Correlated?
I’m trying not to obsessively check and re-check the Dog Physics Sales Rank Tracker, with limited success. One thing that jumped out at me from the recent data, though, is the big gap between the book and Kindle rankings over the weekend. The book sales rank dropped (indicating increased sales, probably a result of the […]
Links for 2012-03-19
The Top Science Questions Facing America: 2012 Edition: New (71 ideas) – Customer Feedback for ScienceDebate.org What do YOU think are the top science questions the candidates for president should answer? We’ve posted the original 14 from 2008, preceded by their question numbers, and users have added others. Vote for those you feel are most […]
The Pip Takes the Conn
Captain’s Log, Stardate 031812 USS BabyPod Lieutenant Commander The Pip reporting: Hey, this space pod thing is pretty neat: Wait, what? You mean I get to be in charge of this. All by myself?
Dog Physics on the Radio
I’ve done a bunch of publicity stuff for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, some of which frustratingly continue to not appear yet, but one thing from this week has gone live: a podcast interview on the Matt Lewis Show, where I talk about why and how I explain physics to the dog, and […]