Category: Pop Culture

The Bose Condensation Theory of Literature: “Why We Love Bad Writing” at Readercon

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

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]

The Inevitable Death of the Book, Aleph-Nought in a Series

A lot of pixels have been spilled lamenting the death of Borders books, a rather large fraction of them being used to say stupid things. Particularly in the “they killed off independent bookstores so good riddance to them” vein– it’s great that you lived in a place that had good indie bookstores and enough hipsters… Continue reading The Inevitable Death of the Book, Aleph-Nought in a Series

An Incomplete List of Pop-Culture References in How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog

I’ve been going through the manuscript for the book making up a list of glossary words (a frighteningly long list), and also noting miscellaneous pop-cultural references– quotes, direct mentions, paraphrases, etc. I’m sure I’ve missed a few– many of them occur in section titles, which my eyes tend to slide right over as I read… Continue reading An Incomplete List of Pop-Culture References in How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog

What This Panel Needs Is an Editor: “Book Inflation” at Readercon

This past weekend, Kate and I were at Readercon, a SF convention outside Boston. This particular con is, as the name suggests, very literary in nature, and features a lot of panels of a more academic inclination. Unfortunately, my feelings about the humanities side of academia are in the “Oh, please,” phase of their oscillation,… Continue reading What This Panel Needs Is an Editor: “Book Inflation” at Readercon

Quantitative Comparisons Between Disciplines

As many a thoughtless person has observed when learning what I do for a living, physics is really hard. But you may have wondered just how much harder is physics than other subjects? Well, now, we have a quantitative answer: This is a shelf of books at the Burlington, MA Barnes and Noble, clearly showing… Continue reading Quantitative Comparisons Between Disciplines

What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author

(Note: This was not prompted by any particular comment. Just a slow accumulation of stuff, that turned into a blog post on this morning’s dog walk.) It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve been working on writing and promoting How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I’ve had a lot of conversations… Continue reading What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author