I made a run to the library last week on one of the days I was home with SteelyKid, as an excuse to get out of the house for a little while. I picked up three books: Counterknowledge, The Devil’s Eye by Jack McDevitt (an Antiquities Dealers Innnnn Spaaaaaace novel, and a good example of… Continue reading The Age of Entanglement by Louisa Gilder
Category: Science
Publishers Weekly Snubs Science
Carl Zimmer sent me a message via Facebook, which made me think I might owe the New York Times an apology for last week’s ranting. Publishers Weekly has come out with their list of the best books of the year, and they do even worse than the Times: not one of the 27 books in… Continue reading Publishers Weekly Snubs Science
Photoelectric Follies
I spent most of yesterday helping out with an on-campus workshop for high school teachers and students. Seven high school physics teachers and seventeen high school students spent the day doing a half-dozen experiments to measure various physical constants. I was in charge of having them measure Plack’s constant using the photoelectric effect. The actual… Continue reading Photoelectric Follies
Shouting Heads of Science?
One of the links in the previous post was to Josh’s thoughts on the CNN science shutdown. Toward the end, he had an interesting note on why science doesn’t get more play: This is especially bad for CNN, since so much of their airtime is taken up by talking heads yelling at one another. Science… Continue reading Shouting Heads of Science?
Science Is Interested in You
A few days ago, I complained again about the relative lack of science books in the New York Times “Notable Books of 2008” list. Yesterday, one of the big stories was CNN axing its entire science unit, such as it was, which drew comments from lots of blogs (and more whose links I can’t be… Continue reading Science Is Interested in You
Science: 3.8% Notable
Last year, around this time, I posted a rant about the lack of science books in the New York Times‘s “Notable Books of 2007.” While I was out of town last week, they posted this year’s list. So, have things improved? Yes and no. They do, in fact, have two books that are unquestionably science… Continue reading Science: 3.8% Notable
Zeilinger on Physics
I got email last week from the Institute of Physics pointing me to a pair of video interviews with Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna. Zeilinger has built an impressive career out of doing fundamental tests of quantum mechanics– he’s not only got the accent and the hair to be a brilliant physicist, he’s… Continue reading Zeilinger on Physics
Ask a ScienceBlogger: Science Fiction Promotes Science?
The Corporate Masters have decreed a new question Ask a ScienceBlogger question, and this one’s right up my alley: What do you see as science fiction’s role in promoting science, if any? If you look over in the left sidebar, you’ll see a SF category, which is all about, well, science fiction stuff. I read… Continue reading Ask a ScienceBlogger: Science Fiction Promotes Science?
Many-Worlds and Decoherence: There Are No Other Universes
I seem to have been sucked into a universe in which I’m talking about the Many-Worlds Interpretation all the time, and Neil B keeps dropping subtle hints, so let me return to the whole question of decoherence and Many-Worlds. The following explanation is a recap of the argument of Chapter 4 of the book-in-progress, which… Continue reading Many-Worlds and Decoherence: There Are No Other Universes
Parallel Universes and Morality
A little while back, when I complained about the treatment of the multiverse in Anathem, a number of people commented to say that it wasn’t all that bad. And, indeed, they were right. Compared to last night’s History Channel program on “Parallel Universes,” Stephenson’s book is a miracle of subtle nuance, teasing out the crucial… Continue reading Parallel Universes and Morality