Category: Pop Culture

Songs vs. Performance Pieces

At dinner the other night, Kate mentioned this podcast, which excerpts a bit of a Jon Brion interview from 2006 where he makes a distinction between “songs” and “performance pieces.” As an example of the latter, he uses Led Zeppelin, saying that their recordings, as great as they are, are about those specific people in… Continue reading Songs vs. Performance Pieces

Arrival Thoughts

People have been raving about the new movie Arrival, which is an adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” which I did a guest lecture on for a colleague’s class on science fiction some year ago. It’s unusual enough to see a science fiction movie hailed for being smart that Kate and I actually… Continue reading Arrival Thoughts

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Roman Engineering, Water, and Baseball

It’s been a month since the last links dump of posts from Forbes, though, really, I took a couple of weeks off there, so it’s been less than that in terms of active blogging time. But I’ve put up a bunch of stuff in July, so here are some links: — The Physics Of Ancient… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Roman Engineering, Water, and Baseball

Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

Tourists taking photos of each other in the Forum.

When I was going through the huge collection of photos I have from the Forum in Rome, I kept running across pictures containing two young Asian women (neither of them Kate). This isn’t because I was stalking them, but because they were everywhere, stopping for long periods in front of virtually every significant ruin and… Continue reading Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

Big Media Me: Here and Now

The NPR program Here and Now has been running segments this week on Science in America, and one of these from yesterday featured me talking about science literacy. We had some technical difficulties getting this recorded– it was supposed to happen at a local radio studio last week, but they had some kind of glitch,… Continue reading Big Media Me: Here and Now

Lightning Bolt vs. Charge

A page from the Pip's book about Lightning Bolt.

The Pip is nuts about superheroes, so when he and his speech teacher made a book, naturally, it introduced a new super hero: Lightning Bolt. It’s only a couple of sheets of paper folded in half and stapled, and the text and illustrations were done by his teacher, but the contents are 100% our Little… Continue reading Lightning Bolt vs. Charge

Beyoncé and LIGO: Stochastic Awareness of Science Is Probably Okay

I’ve had this piece by Rick Borchelt on “science literacy” and this one by Paige Brown Jarreau on “echo chambers” open in tabs for… months. I keep them around because I have thoughts on the general subject, but I keep not writing them up because I suspect that what I want to say won’t be… Continue reading Beyoncé and LIGO: Stochastic Awareness of Science Is Probably Okay

Division of Labor Is a Good Thing for Science and Skepticism

Noted grouchy person John Horgan has found a new way to get people mad at him on the Internet, via a speech-turned-blog-post taking organized Skeptic groups to task for mostly going after “soft targets”. This has generated lots of angry blog posts in response, and a far greater number of people sighing heavily and saying… Continue reading Division of Labor Is a Good Thing for Science and Skepticism

Imaginary Syllabus: Science of Sports and Games

It’s one of those days where none of the stuff I probably ought to be writing seems even slightly appealing, so instead I’m going to do something frivolous and morale-boosting, namely think out loud about an imaginary course. Despite being on sabbatical, I do still check my work email, and have caught the edges of… Continue reading Imaginary Syllabus: Science of Sports and Games