Two noteworthy things in the meta-blog category: 1) The 3 Quarks Daily science blogging prize nominations are up, and it’s a great list of sciencey bloggy goodness. If you’re looking for a way to procrastinate, you could kill several days reading all 171 entries. Once you’re done reading them, go vote for your favorite. The… Continue reading Three Quarks Voting, X-Change Files
Category: Books
What Happens When You Publish a Book
Over at the Inverse Square Blog, Tom Levenson is doing a series of blog posts walking through the steps involved in getting a book published. Unfortunately, there isn’t a compact way to link to the whole series, but the posts to date are: Part 0: Introduction to the Series Part 1.0: The Proposal (with an… Continue reading What Happens When You Publish a Book
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
I watched Jonah Lehrer on the Colbert Report a few months ago, and thought he did a really good job. So, when we were offered free copies of his new book, How We Decide, I asked for one, even though it’s not my usual sort of thing. The main point of the book is that… Continue reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
We Just Turned the Machine Off, and the Antimatter Went Away
I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen bloggers commenting on Tom Hanks’s appearance on The Daily Show, in which he talks about CERN: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M – Th 11p / 10c Tom Hanks thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor Everything he says is pretty much true, but… Continue reading We Just Turned the Machine Off, and the Antimatter Went Away
Fairy-Tale Physics 2: Spinning Gold
You might think that Monday’s discourse on thermodynamics in the Goldilocks story was the only children’s story in which physics plays a role, but that’s not true. Physics is everywhere in fairy tales. Take, for example, the story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a mysterious little man demands a terrible price for helping a miller’s daughter… Continue reading Fairy-Tale Physics 2: Spinning Gold
Good Science Books for Kids
The proprietor of Good Mom, Bad Mom emails to point out a post spinning off Monday’s Goldilocks post. A good thing she did, as Technorati has collapsed into utter uselessness, at least for finding people who link to my posts. Her post quotes an unnamed correspondent, who writes: My two daughters are both compulsive readers,… Continue reading Good Science Books for Kids
Pop-Science Past: The Collapsing Universe, by Isaac Asimov
Some time back, I was a little surprised to hear James Nicoll use Asimov as a touchstone for science popularizers. I only really knew his fiction, and can’t recall hearing his pop-science books cited by anybody who wasn’t also an SF fan. So, when I ran across one of his science books while we were… Continue reading Pop-Science Past: The Collapsing Universe, by Isaac Asimov
What An Editor Does, and Why It Matters
I’ve had the Quiche Moraine post on editing open in a browser tab for far too long, now, but it deserves a more prominent comment than just a link in the daily links dump. It really is an excellent presentation of the important role of editing: Editing requires the strange ability to stand in the… Continue reading What An Editor Does, and Why It Matters
The Art and Science of Naming Things
We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein’s Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts. One of the differences he mentioned was the… Continue reading The Art and Science of Naming Things
Strunk and White Is Not for You
I tagged Geoffrey Pullum’s rant against The Elements of Style for del.icio.us a few days back, because it struck me as interesting, but I didn’t have time to say more. In the subsequent days, I’ve seen a bunch of “Preach it, Brother Pullum!” responses, most recently from revere. I’ve also received the copyedited manuscript of… Continue reading Strunk and White Is Not for You