Over at the Book Publicity blog, Yen takes up the question of Internet publicity (via SF Signal): Yesterday I spoke at an AAR / Association of Authors’ Representatives panel together with Connor Raus (who runs digital advertising agency CRKWD) about understanding social media and how to use it effectively — as you know, a favorite… Continue reading The World Doesn’t Need More Promotional Blogs
Category: Pop Culture
“Subtle Is the Lord…” by Abraham Pais
The APS now gives out an Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics, which gives you some idea of how influential his work was, in particular “Subtle Is the Lord…” The Science and Life of Albert Einstein, which won prizes and sits in a prominent position on the bookshelves of many physicists. Like a lot… Continue reading “Subtle Is the Lord…” by Abraham Pais
Eat My Dust, Richard Dawkins
A college classmate sent me this picture of a library display in the Boston area: That’s How to Teach Physics to Your Dog prominently displayed on the top shelf. Just below it, you can see Physics for Future Presidents, and to the right, you can just make out Richard Dawkins’s book on evolution. Pretty good… Continue reading Eat My Dust, Richard Dawkins
The One Thing to Believe If You’re Only Going to Believe One Thing
Over in Twitter-land, S. C. Kavassalis notes a Googler who’s not afraid to ask the big questions: Weird Google search of the week: ‘the “one” scientific idea that we need to believe’. Uh um, I’m sure my blog couldn’t possibly answer that. It’s a good question, though, ad there are a couple of different ways… Continue reading The One Thing to Believe If You’re Only Going to Believe One Thing
Hawking on Aliens: Not as Silly as You’d Like to Think
I’m a little surprised at the vehemence of some of the negative reactions to Stephen Hawking’s comments about aliens. Not so much in blogdom– Ethan’s response is pretty reasonable, for example– but there was a flurry of Twitter traffic yesterday of the form “Where does Stephen Hawking get off pontificating about aliens?” which strikes me… Continue reading Hawking on Aliens: Not as Silly as You’d Like to Think
The Big Blah Theory
Dennis Overbye has a piece on “The Big Bang Theory” in today’s New York Times, taking the “Is this good or bad for science?” angle: Three years later some scientists still say that although the series, “The Big Bang Theory” (Monday nights on CBS), is funny and scientifically accurate, they are put off by it.… Continue reading The Big Blah Theory
Series I Like Disappoint Me
Jim Butcher’s Changes, the 12th Dresden Files novel, came out not too long ago, and there’s been a bunch of discussion of it in various places on the Internet. I seem to have a slightly less positive take on the book than a lot of other people, so I figured I’d put up a slightly… Continue reading Series I Like Disappoint Me
Silly Unconventional Love Songs
Via Kate, a call for love songs. I like most of the songs on Kate’s list, but as I tried to think of songs to add, I realized a couple of things: 1) I own more really good kiss-off songs than I do traditional love songs, and 2) even the songs that I like about… Continue reading Silly Unconventional Love Songs
Amazing Laser Application 8: Holography!
What’s the application? Holograms are images of objects that appear three-dimensional– if you move your head as you look at a hologram, you will see the usual parallax effects, unlike a normal photograph, which is fixed. So, if your hologram includes one object that is partly behind another object, you can see around the obstruction… Continue reading Amazing Laser Application 8: Holography!
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
The pace has slowed, but there are still occasional sightings of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog in my Google vanity searches: It turns up on library blogs with some regularity. This particular one, from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is nice because it’s not just a rewrite of the publicity copy I was really… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update