How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

Today’s miscellaneous information about How to Teach Physics to your Dog:

— Following on yesterday’s discussion about Barnes & Noble, which seems to have numerous in-store copies everywhere but New England, where I am, it’s not some system-wide issue– B&N stores have a healthy number of copies, and have sold a pretty reasonable number of them already. It’s probably just a matter of shelving/ distribution associated with the holidays.

— I couldn’t really be the only blogger to think of connecting dogs and physics, and, indeed, I’m not. A bloodhound in Manhattan named Wimsey offers his take on Newton’s Laws:

In fact, I have recently uncovered a new translation of Newton’s famous three laws compiled by my ancestor Euclid Wimsey:

Newton’s First Law: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

Translation of Newton’s First Law: When in a park a Hound tends to remain in a park unless dragged out baying furiously by several strong humans.

All three laws are discussed, along with an instructive example. and, as a bonus, you get some illuminating historical anecdots regarding the US Civil War.

— Current sales rank is hovering in the 2,000-3,000 range, which isn’t bad at all.

— The book was deemed “very funny by someone at the Examiner. Which is a little dangerous– at dinner one time, one of my sister’s friends said “You know, your brother is pretty funny.” “I know,” she replied. “The problem is, he knows it, too.”

And that’s what I’ve got today on the book front. SteelyKid is home with a fever, which probably means no more substantive blogging for me today. If you need something to read, though, I do have a suggestion…