Category: Books

Assyrian Books and Quote Chasing

While reading bits of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Space Chronicles yesterday, I ran across this quote, attributed to “an Assyrian clay tablet from 2800 BC”: Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents;… Continue reading Assyrian Books and Quote Chasing

Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata

In comments to yesterday’s post, Andrew G asked: Speaking of writing, is there an errata list somewhere for “How to teach relativity to your dog“? No, but there probably should be. I believe there’s an error in one of Maxwell’s equations (an incorrect sign, though you should’ve seen the first typeset version…), but given the… Continue reading Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata

Science Fantastic, Sales by SteelyKid

I had a signing yesterday at the Barnes & Noble in Vestal, NY, which drew a smallish crowd mostly of friends and family. SteelyKid came, of course, and while she spent most of her time bopping about other parts of the store, she came over to the signing area while I was signing books for… Continue reading Science Fantastic, Sales by SteelyKid

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog On the Radio and in Vestal, NY

The quick publicity items for this weekend: 1) I will be on the Science Fantastic radio show either Saturday or Sunday, depending on when your local affiliate runs it (or when you choose to livestream it over the Internet). The interview has already been recorded, which leaves me free for: 2) I will be signing… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog On the Radio and in Vestal, NY

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?… Continue reading The Quantum Universe by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

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… Continue reading How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Publicity Update

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… Continue reading Are Books and Kindles Correlated?

Recent Genre Fiction Reading: Schroeder, Buckell, Cole

I’ve gotten out of the habit of booklogging recently, which is sort of a shame, because it means I’ve also gone back to the problem that led Kate and me to start booklogs in the first place: people ask what I’ve been reading recently, and I can’t remember… As a sort of corrective to this,… Continue reading Recent Genre Fiction Reading: Schroeder, Buckell, Cole

Calling London: Teaching Relativity to Your Dog on the Radio

The new book is out, which means it’s time for lots of promotional efforts and links to radio shows and news articles and that sort of thing. Such as this one: I’ll be talking about relativity and dog physics tomorrow night, Wednesday the 7th, on the Big Science radio program(me) at 9pm London time (in… Continue reading Calling London: Teaching Relativity to Your Dog on the Radio