Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, happy Wednesday if you don’t. That’s about all there is to say, isn’t it?
Month: December 2013
Journalism of the Gaps
I’ve seen a bunch of links to this interview with Peter Aldhous, mostly focusing on this quote: I think for most science journalists, their model of journalism is explanatory. It’s taking the arcane world of the high priests and priestesses of science and translating what they do into language the ordinary mortal can understand. And… Continue reading Journalism of the Gaps
Winter Break Physics Contest
While we were in Florida last weekend, we got a bunch of snow at home, so we came home to the proverbial winter wonderland. It’s warmed up quite a bit since, though, and stuff is now melting. When I got home this morning after doing a bunch of revisions to the book-in-progress, I looked out… Continue reading Winter Break Physics Contest
How Fast Should I Drive?
We spent this past weekend in Florida, visiting Kate’s mom and her husband, who moved down there in October. This was a huge hit with the kids, who were very excited to fly on an airplane (four of them, actually, as we changed planes in Baltimore both ways). They also got a big kick out… Continue reading How Fast Should I Drive?
Cute Kid Composite
I’m giving my talk about blogs as a tool for science outreach again on Monday, and need an updated version of the cute-kid picture screenshot I use in that. So here’s a composite of the two kid pictures I posted a week or two ago, because it should all fit on screen, even on my… Continue reading Cute Kid Composite
Keeping BEC Cold
I know I said there weren’t going to be physics posts for a while, but yesterday our Communications office passed along a media request about this paper on feedback cooling of BEC, from some sort of communications-person mailing list. I’d seen it talked up elsewhere– here, for example, so I banged out an email to… Continue reading Keeping BEC Cold
Programming Note: Book-Related Silence
I got some feedback from my editor about draft chapters of the book-in-progress a while ago, and while it was generally pretty positive, there’s a lot of work to be done. Shortly after that, I realized there was a big and awkward gap in the material I had, which involved a lot of frantic research… Continue reading Programming Note: Book-Related Silence