nanoscale views: Public funding of science, and access to information “While this is an interesting topic, I’d rather discuss a related issue: How much public funding triggers the need to make something publicly available? For example, suppose I used NSF funding to buy a coaxial cable for $5 as part of project A. Then, later… Continue reading Links for 2011-04-24
Author: Chad Orzel
How Many Books Is That?: Modeling Amazon Sales Rank
A few months ago– just before the paperback release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog— Amazon started providing not only their Sales Rank data, but also sales data from Nielsen BookScan. Of course, the BookScan data is very limited, giving you only four weeks, and the Sales Rank data, while available over the… Continue reading How Many Books Is That?: Modeling Amazon Sales Rank
More Fun With Fracking
I intended to do a big book-sales post today, but our DSL modem may be dead, so there was no Internet in Chateau Steelypips this morning, and I forgot to copy the relevant files onto a thumb drive, so it will have to wait. Maybe this afternoon. In lieu of that, here’s some other stuff… Continue reading More Fun With Fracking
Links for 2011-04-22
Top Facts – Gauss Facts “Gauss has an Erdos number of -1.” (tags: math silly internet) Making Light: Yog’s Law “Self-publishing is the part of the map where the author is the publisher and hires the editor, hires the cover artist, the typesetter, the proofreader, contracts the printer, buys the ISBN, arranges distribution, promotion, marketing,… Continue reading Links for 2011-04-22
Thursday Royalty Blogging 042111
I’m sitting on the couch reading when Emmy trots in looking excited. “Hey, dude, I’ve got a great idea!” she says cheerily. “You know how your puppy is away for the week?” “Yeah.” “Well, I think this is the perfect opportunity to class up your blog a little. I mean, you always post pictures of… Continue reading Thursday Royalty Blogging 042111
Bouncing Neutrons for Fun and Science: “Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique”
Several people blogged about a new measurement of gravitational states of neutrons done by physicists using ultracold neutrons from the Institut Laue-Langevin in France. I had to resort to Twitter to get access to the paper (we don’t get Nature Physics here, and it’s way faster than Inter-Library Loan), but this is a nice topic… Continue reading Bouncing Neutrons for Fun and Science: “Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique”
On Multitasking
After chasing a bunch of kids with cell phones off of his lawn, Kevin Drum has kicked off a discussion of “multitasking”, specifically about whether it’s merely a threat, or a positive menace. He points to an interview with Clifford Nass, a researcher who says his experiments show that nobody is any good at doing… Continue reading On Multitasking
Links for 2011-04-21
How to be South Asian on American TV « North Philly Notes “Recently, a student presented on Outsourced, providing an overview of the TV show, clips, and some background information, including that Outsourced is the longest running show to date that has multiple South Asians as major characters. With over two million South Asians (from… Continue reading Links for 2011-04-21
(Sub)Genre Is a Marketing Convention
(Alternate Title: “Epic Fantasy Is What We Point to When We Look Down on Epic Fantasy.”) I’ve been on a bit of an epic fantasy kick lately, evidently due to the thousand-ish pages of The Crippled God not being enough. This means that I was in a weirdly appropriate mental space to catch the recent… Continue reading (Sub)Genre Is a Marketing Convention
Links for 2011-04-20
Bill III’s Blog » Have you ever printed a boarding pass? “Well this little feat has been a long time coming. For those of you who have worked with me in Unalakleet you probably have heard about my aspiration of using the poster printer to print my boarding pass. Well two days ago my dream… Continue reading Links for 2011-04-20