Over at Dot Physics (which might be the best physics blog in the world at the moment), Rhett Allain has a pair of posts exploring the physics of Fantastic Contraption. The posts don’t really lend themselves to excerpting, so you need to go over there and read them, but I think they’re brilliant, and deserve… Continue reading Think Like a Videogame Physicist
Category: Pop Culture
Weird Windows by Various Authors
I tagged Ethan Zuckerman’s post abpout video “windows” to other places in a links dump recently. The idea is to put big video screens and cameras in fast-food restaurants around the world, and provide virtual “windows” into other restaurants in other countries. In talking about the idea, Ethan threw out a great aside: (If I… Continue reading Weird Windows by Various Authors
DonorsChoose Payoff: “Favorite” Book
Another question from a generous donor, in this case Natalie, who asks: As for my question, how about “who is your favorite author, and why?” or, if you’d rather, “what’s your favorite book, and why?” This is a difficult question, because it’s subject to a sort of quantum projection noise. That is, my “favorite book”… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: “Favorite” Book
Hoedown Throwdown
It’s been a frustrating and annoying week here at Chateau Steelypips, so I was probably in the perfect mood for Mike Hoye’s subway busker story: After a relatively crappy day, I got off the subway, and there’s a couple of buskers playing a fiddle and a banjo at the station. And they’re really going at… Continue reading Hoedown Throwdown
Longitude by Dava Sobel
Jennifer Ouellette’s pop-science book project post and the discussionaround it reminded me that I’m really shockingly ill-read in this area. If I’m going to be writing pop-science books, I ought to have read more of them, so I’ve been trying to correct that. Hence, Longitude, which I actually read a few weeks ago at the… Continue reading Longitude by Dava Sobel
Who Is the Third?
Time for everybody’s favorite morbid pop-culture game: as we all know, it’s a standard joke that celebrity deaths come in threes. So, who completes this week’s triad: David Foster Wallace, Richard Wright, and …?
We Have a Gene for That
Via Brian and John, John Cleese’s take on genetic determinism: All the best social commentary comes from comedians, these days.
Colbert, Atheists, and Hermaphrodites
Comedy Central is re-playing Friday’s episodes of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which includes Stephen Colbert’s interview with Lori Lippman Brown of the Secular Coalition for America. It’s interesting to see that she doesn’t really fare any better than any of the religious nutjobs he’s had on in his various interview segments, in… Continue reading Colbert, Atheists, and Hermaphrodites
Science Outreach Through Fiction
Over at Tor.com, David Levine describes a really cool event he went to just before Worldcon: a crash course in modern astronomy for SF writers: The idea behind Launch Pad is Gernsbackian: getting good science into popular fiction as a form of public education and outreach for NASA. SF writer and University of Wyoming astronomy… Continue reading Science Outreach Through Fiction
Butcher-esque Books?
I’ve been on a big Jim Butcher kick recently, re-reading most of the Dresden Files books. This is largely because holding a regular book is still uncomfortable with my bad thumb, and I have electronic copies of the Dresden books that I can read on my Palm (well, Kate’s old Palm, which I just use… Continue reading Butcher-esque Books?