Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

Tourists taking photos of each other in the Forum.

When I was going through the huge collection of photos I have from the Forum in Rome, I kept running across pictures containing two young Asian women (neither of them Kate). This isn’t because I was stalking them, but because they were everywhere, stopping for long periods in front of virtually every significant ruin and… Continue reading Instagram Culture and the Democratization of Pretension

290-299/366: Offbeat Rome

A part of the Aqua Claudia in the Parco degli Acquedotti.

Kate and I spent last week in Rome, to attend the wedding of a friend of mine from college, who was marrying an Italian woman. I’ve always wanted to see Rome, so this was a great excuse, and of course I took a lot of pictures– over 1,600 all told. This happens in part because… Continue reading 290-299/366: Offbeat Rome

Song of the Day

As of today, I can officially no longer claim to be in my “early 40’s,” so here’s a great song with a thematically appropriate title: (The lyrical content has no particular relevance to my life, I hasten to add…) I’m taking a bit of a social-media hiatus at the moment, but it is very nice… Continue reading Song of the Day

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Big Media Me: Here and Now

The NPR program Here and Now has been running segments this week on Science in America, and one of these from yesterday featured me talking about science literacy. We had some technical difficulties getting this recorded– it was supposed to happen at a local radio studio last week, but they had some kind of glitch,… Continue reading Big Media Me: Here and Now

284-289/366: Week in Nature Photos

The Pip shrugs expressively at Peebles Island.

Another week, another batch of photos. This is coming on Friday rather than the weekend because I’m going to be incommunicado for most of the next week, and have some free time now. 284/366: LIGO, Eat Your Heart Out Sure, LIGO detected gravitational waves from a second pair of merging black holes, but I found… Continue reading 284-289/366: Week in Nature Photos

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Mundane Space, Spectroscopy, Changing Constants, Rest Energy, Magnetic Sensing, Wiffle Balls, and Revolutions

Another few weeks of physics blogging at Forbes, collected here for your convenience. — Commercialization Of Space: Three Cheers For The Mundane: Some belated but brief comments on the SpaceApps conference I went to down in NYC. — How Studying Atoms On Earth Helps Us Learn About Other Planets: As a snobby grad student in… Continue reading Physics Blogging Round-Up: Mundane Space, Spectroscopy, Changing Constants, Rest Energy, Magnetic Sensing, Wiffle Balls, and Revolutions

Lightning Bolt vs. Charge

A page from the Pip's book about Lightning Bolt.

The Pip is nuts about superheroes, so when he and his speech teacher made a book, naturally, it introduced a new super hero: Lightning Bolt. It’s only a couple of sheets of paper folded in half and stapled, and the text and illustrations were done by his teacher, but the contents are 100% our Little… Continue reading Lightning Bolt vs. Charge

276-278/366: Fun With Editing

Some Appa-for-scale comparisons.

Last in a series of themed collections of pictures. These ones are showcasing my rudimentary GIMP skills, pasting together multiple pictures into composites. 276/366: Sky-Bison for Scale One of the earliest happenings in the three-week period I’m dumping photos from was SteelyKid getting strep throat again. She spent a Friday at home, and I took… Continue reading 276-278/366: Fun With Editing

268-275/366: Miscellaneous Photo Dump

The American Legion leads off the Memorial Day parade in Whitney Point.

This one, we’ll do sorta-kinda chronologically: 268/366: Niska-Parade One of the big temporal landmarks of the recent stretch without photo-blogging posts was “Niska-Day,” the annual community festival here. This kicks off with a parade, the route for which comes right to the end of our street. Here’s one of the first marching elements, the local… Continue reading 268-275/366: Miscellaneous Photo Dump