One final thought on the Big Science/ Space Chronicles stuff from last week. One of the things I found really frustrating about the book, and the whole argument that we ought to be sinking lots of money into manned space missions is that the terms of the argument are so nebulous. This is most obvious… Continue reading Exploring Space: Don’t Sell Robots Short
Category: Books
For Extra Credit, Estimate Your Chances of Winning: Ballparking Giveaway
Some time back, I reviewed a cool book about Fermi problems by Aaron Santos, then a post-doc at Michigan. In the interim, he’s taken a faculty job at Oberlin, written a second book on sports-related Fermi problems, and started a blog, none of which I had noticed until he emailed me. Shame on me. Anyway,… Continue reading For Extra Credit, Estimate Your Chances of Winning: Ballparking Giveaway
Dog Physics: Obsessive Update
A few more links that have turned up of people talking about either How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: Andrew Johnston has a review of the UK edition, praising it because “it’s bang up to date, and goes beyond the basic quantum concepts into more complex… Continue reading Dog Physics: Obsessive Update
Book Roundup: People Talking About Dog Physics
I’ve been falling down on the shameless self-promotion front, lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m not tracking How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog obsessively, just that I’m too busy to talk about it. Happily, other people have been nice enough to talk about it for me, in a variety of places: The most significant,… Continue reading Book Roundup: People Talking About Dog Physics
My New Favorite Review of How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog
My Google vanity search for my name and the book titles is really frustratingly spotty, often missing things in major news outlets that I later find by other means. For example, I didn’t get a notification about this awesome review in the Guardian, from their children’s book section: I am a ten year old who… Continue reading My New Favorite Review of How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog
EBooks and Agencies
The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the “agency model” of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting in higher prices for consumers. I already links dumped an article about the detailed charges,… Continue reading EBooks and Agencies
Why So Many Books About Quanta?
I’m re-instituting the quota system for the moment– no blogging until I make some substantive progress on the current work-in-progress– but I’ll throw out a quick post here to note a media appearance: Physics World has a podcast about books on quantum physics up today: Since its inception in the early part of the 20th… Continue reading Why So Many Books About Quanta?
The Electric Life of Michael Faraday by Alan Hirshfeld
A passing mention in last week’s post about impostors and underdogs got me thinking about Michael Faraday again, and I went looking for a good biography of him. The last time looked, I didn’t find any in electronic form, probably because the Sony Reader store has a lousy selection. I got a Nook for Christmas,… Continue reading The Electric Life of Michael Faraday by Alan Hirshfeld
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: A Review Is In
I’m trying not to be Neurotic Author Guy and obsessively check online reviews of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog every fifteen minutes. I’ve actually been pretty successful at it, so successful that I didn’t notice the first posted review at Amazon until my parents mentioned it to me. It’s a really good one,… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: A Review Is In
Impostors, Underdogs, and the Status of Science
Over in Scientopia, SciCurious has a nice post about suffering from Impostor Syndrome, the feeling that everyone else is smarter than you are, and you will soon be exposed as a total fraud. Which is nonsense, of course, but something that almost every scientist suffers at some point. The post ends on a more upbeat… Continue reading Impostors, Underdogs, and the Status of Science