I’ve toyed around in the past with ways to use the Amazon sales rank tracker to estimate the sales numbers for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It’s geeky fun, but not especially quantitative. Yesterday, though, I found a reason to re-visit the topic: calibration data!
Links for 2010-01-28
Resolving the Red Controversy? : Starts With A Bang “Earlier this week, I introduced you to the Red Controversy, the observations recorded around 2000 years ago in Europe asserting that the star, Sirius, appeared red. Now, taking a look at Sirius today, it is clearly not red: And, based on what we know about stars,… Continue reading Links for 2010-01-28
Upcoming Appearances: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Live
Two upcoming events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: This Saturday, January 30, I will be doing a signing at 2pm at the book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, on Western Ave. in Albany. I may or may not read something– I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do as part of… Continue reading Upcoming Appearances: How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Live
The Popular Science Writing Process
Via SFSignal’s daily links dump, Lilith Saintcrow has a terrific post about the relationship between authors and editors: YOUR EDITOR IS NOT THE ENEMY. I don’t lose sight of the fact that I am the content creator. For the characters, I know what’s best. It’s my job to tell the damn story and produce enough… Continue reading The Popular Science Writing Process
Theoretical Particle Physics Is Always in Crisis
Dennis Overbye is a terrific writer, but I have to say, I hate the way that he falls into the lazy shorthand of using “physics” to mean “theoretical particle physics” in this article about a recent conference built around debates about the state of particle physics. He’s got lots of great quotes from Lisa Randall… Continue reading Theoretical Particle Physics Is Always in Crisis
My Hugo Nomination Ballot
Cheryl Morgan has a post urging people to nominate for the Hugo Awards. While I don’t place the same priority she does on the gender distribution of who gets nominated, I applaud her for doing this now, while there’s a chance to influence the actual ballot, rather than waiting until April to complain about it.… Continue reading My Hugo Nomination Ballot
Hearts, Minds, and Health Care
This Timothy Burke post on the current political moment deserves better than to be buried in the Links Dump. He’s beginning to despair because it looks like “there are many things which could happen which would improve the lives of many Americans which are not going to happen and perhaps cannot happen.” Take health care,… Continue reading Hearts, Minds, and Health Care
Links for 2010-01-27
Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source “Along with Bunting’s remarks, the Science Channel issued a statement claiming that it currently airs more than 150 programming hours that are tangentially, and often laughably, related to science, and that staff members are unable to bring themselves… Continue reading Links for 2010-01-27
Playing With Graphs: People in Albany Don’t Own Kindles
A few days back, Matthew Beckler added the Kindle edition to his sales rank tracker for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. Given my well-known love for playing with graphs of data, it was inevitable that I would plot both of these in a variety of ways. So, what do we learn from this?… Continue reading Playing With Graphs: People in Albany Don’t Own Kindles
Laser Smackdown: The Most Amazing Use of a Laser?
Way back in the early days of ScienceBlogs, I ran a competition of sorts to determine the greatest physics experiment in history. I collected a bunch of nominations, wrote up a post about each of the top 11 entries, and then asked people to vote for their favorite. In honor of the 50th anniversary of… Continue reading Laser Smackdown: The Most Amazing Use of a Laser?