Over at Tor.com, Kate has a Lord of the Rings re-read post about the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, which includes a shout-out to me that I missed because I was driving to NYC: Ãomer is “scarely a mile” away when the standard unfurls and is clearly seen to bear the White Tree, Seven Stars,… Continue reading The Limits of Rohirrim Vision
Category: Pop Culture
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Festive Update
We missed the formal presentaion at the World Science Festival stargazing event last night, and it was cloudy enough to prevent actual stargazing, but the giant mock-up of the James Webb Space Telescope is giant and cool even in the dark. More importantly, Neil deGrasse Tyson is awesome. We got there around 9:30, and he… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Festive Update
Required Reading in Science
Over at Inside Higher Ed they have a news report on complaints about the content of required reading for students entering college. This comes from the National Association of Scholars, a group dedicated to complaining that multiculturalism is corrupting our precious bodily fluids pushing aside the shared heritage of Western civilization, so most of it… Continue reading Required Reading in Science
The Periodic Table Is Not a Crossword Puzzle
A number of SF-related sites have been talking about the “Periodic Table of Women in SF” put together by Sandra McDonald, presumably passed around at Wiscon. James Nicoll has a list of the authors, and SFSignal has a link to the table, which I will reproduce here to save you the annoyance of opening a… Continue reading The Periodic Table Is Not a Crossword Puzzle
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Upcoming Events
Two noteworthy events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in the next month: First, and most important, I’m going to be signing books at the Author’s Alley portion of the World Science Festival Street Fair. The fair itself is in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, though the name of the signing program… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Upcoming Events
What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics (2.0)
This is the presentation I gave to the International Baccalaureate class from Schenectady High School today. I tend to re-use talk titles a lot, but this is substantially different than the last talk with this title, as the previous group had read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog first. For this group, I spent… Continue reading What Every Dog Should Know About Quantum Physics (2.0)
Houston, We Have a Problem
The problem is “What should Chad do/ see in the evenings while he’s at DAMOP next week?” This is the major physics conference in my field, so my days will be pretty well booked up with talks and posters, but there’s not much after 6pm other than food and socializing. If there’s some not-to-be-missed Houston… Continue reading Houston, We Have a Problem
Precision Measurement Hits Cable
I didn’t see it live, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can see Tom O’Brian of NIST talking about measurement on the Rachel Maddow show last night: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Tom used to have an office not far from the lab I worked… Continue reading Precision Measurement Hits Cable
alt.sic.transit.gloria.mundi
Duke shut down its Usenet server yesterday, which is significant because Duke’s server was the original home of Usenet. I think this means that Usenet is now available only to about a dozen people with panix accounts. I note this here because Usenet was an important part of my life. I started reading the rec.arts.sf.*… Continue reading alt.sic.transit.gloria.mundi
Crikey, I’ve Been Anglicised!
I spent yesterday going over proposed copy edits to Anglicise How to Teach Physics to Your Dog for the forthcoming UK edition, which adds “Quantum” to the title, and will have all new cover art, etc. This means that clergy in the book are now permitted to marry, all book property belonging to the Catholic… Continue reading Crikey, I’ve Been Anglicised!