Michelle Sagara’s rant about convention panelist behavior reminded me that I never did get around to writing up the other panel from this year’s Readercon that I wanted to say something about, namely “Why We Love Bad Writing” James D. Macdonald, Anil Menon, Resa Nelson, Eric M. Van, Harold Torger Vedeler (leader). In the Guardian,… Continue reading The Bose Condensation Theory of Literature: “Why We Love Bad Writing” at Readercon
Author: Chad Orzel
The Physics of Frustration: “Quantum Simulation of Frustrated Classical Magnetism in Triangular Optical Lattices”
One of the benefits of having joined AAAS in order to get a reduced registration fee at their meeting is that I now have online access to Science at home. Including the Science Express advance online papers, which I don’t usually get on campus. Which means that I get the chance to talk about the… Continue reading The Physics of Frustration: “Quantum Simulation of Frustrated Classical Magnetism in Triangular Optical Lattices”
Revenge of the Morning People: What to Do with 8am Classes?
The Dean Dad asks a question on the minds of lots of faculty: how do you handle early-morning classes? Wise and worldly readers, have you had good experiences with 8 a.m. classes? Does anybody know of any useful empirical studies done at the college level of the effects of 8 a.m. classes? Is this basically… Continue reading Revenge of the Morning People: What to Do with 8am Classes?
Links for 2011-07-26
A Bedtime Story | Easily Distracted “Now this is a new thing in my lifetime, I grant you: a Congressman who is going to run on the argument that it’s time for America to take its place among the poor and struggling nations of the world. I don’t have to study go to Zimbabwe any… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-26
A Very Significant Picture
Here is a very significant picture: “What’s significant about that?” you ask. “It’s slightly out of focus and oddly framed. Why should I care?” You should care because of the photographer: That’s right, SteelyKid has a camera now– we gave her my old Canon A95. She was playing with Kate’s smaller point-and-shoot camera (I forget… Continue reading A Very Significant Picture
Quantitative Analysis of Bullshit in Physics Abstracts
Via Bee, we have the BlaBlaMeter, a website that purports to “unmask without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text.” Like Bee, I couldn’t resist throwing it some scientific text, but rather than pulling stuff off the arxiv, I went with the abstracts of the papers I published as a grad student, which I… Continue reading Quantitative Analysis of Bullshit in Physics Abstracts
Daddy’s Little Physicist
I’ve got a ton of stuff to do this morning that will keep me from more substantive blogging, so here’s a cute toddler picture: This is SteelyKid playing with the giant magnet in the MRI exhibit at the Schenectady Museum, trying to see how big a tower she could make out of steel washers and… Continue reading Daddy’s Little Physicist
Links for 2011-07-25
nanoscale views: Einstein, thermodynamics, and elegance “Recently, in the course of other writing I’ve been doing, I again came to the topic of what are called Einstein A and B coefficients, and it struck me again that this has to be one of the most elegant, clever physics arguments ever made. It’s also conceptually simple… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-25
Links for 2011-07-24
Katie Baker on the New York Times wedding section – Grantland “This renewed series will attempt, through a rigorous quantitative method detailed below, to determine the following: Which couple best exemplifies both the unique spirit and impossible standards of everything the New York Times “Weddings/Celebration” section stands for? Back in the day I used a… Continue reading Links for 2011-07-24
George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons [Library of Babel]
Contrary to Jo Walton’s prediction, I didn’t love this book. In fact, I didn’t even like it very much. Much has been made over the long wait for this latest installment in the Song of Ice and Fire series, building it up to the point where actually reading and reviewing it feels a little like… Continue reading George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons [Library of Babel]