Union Jobs

Two positions of possible interest to academic job seekers: — First, we’re hiring again in the Union college Department of Physics and Astronomy: We invite applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position starting in September 2016, with a preference for an experimental physicist working in either biophysics or soft condensed matter. We encourage applications from… Continue reading Union Jobs

Energy Dissipation in a Physics Toy

SteelyKid's toy Newton's cradle in mid-swing.

A little while back, I used a photo of SteelyKid’s toy Newton’s cradle as the photo of the day, with a bonus video: I mentioned that I was going to do some analysis of this at some point, but didn’t have time right then. I had a bit of time to poke at this yesterday,… Continue reading Energy Dissipation in a Physics Toy

065/366: Owie, Owie, Owie

SteelyKid’s Elite Team taekwondo practice on Tuesday night was a “game night” because they had a belt test last week. The kids opted to play capture-the-flag against the parents, which ended up a tie (the adults won the first two games, the kids the second two), but the adult victories came at a price: This… Continue reading 065/366: Owie, Owie, Owie

Published
Categorized as 366, Pictures

064/366: Evil Sunrise

Evil squirrel against a colorful sunrise.

Another delayed photo-of-the-day, another photobombing: I think this pretty much speaks for itself: I was getting a photo of the colorful sunrise, and an evil squirrel ran across the power line. Which was a clear and obvious photo of the day.

Published
Categorized as 366, Pictures

063/366: Photobomber

Airplane and bare tree in the early morning.

ScienceBlogs had some back-end Issues for a few days, which delayed the photo-a-day project. This one’s from two days ago, when I was taking a picture of the bare branches of a tree next door because I liked the way they looked against the sky. I ended up with a high-altitude photobomb, though: I ended… Continue reading 063/366: Photobomber

Published
Categorized as 366, Pictures

062/366: Fun-Size Candy Mountain

The Pip's Halloween candy.

Another busy day, so you get another kind of lazy shot. But, hey, everybody wants to know how the kids did trick-or-treating, right? So here’s The Pip’s share of the Halloween haul: I weighed both his plastic pumpkin full of candy and the Tupperware container that SteelyKid’s stuff is in, and they each came out… Continue reading 062/366: Fun-Size Candy Mountain

Ancillary Trilogy [Library of Babel]

The hot SF release of the fall is Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy, concluding the Imperial Radch trilogy. The first of these, Ancillary Justice won a Hugo two years ago, and the second, Ancillary Sword should’ve won this past year, because I really didn’t like the Three-Body Problem. The release of Ancillary Mercy generated a ton… Continue reading Ancillary Trilogy [Library of Babel]