I get a fair number of books to review, but I’m often pretty bad about writing them up in a timely manner. Of course, most of them are well over 70 pages long, which is why I’ve managed to turn around Roberto Trotta’s The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the… Continue reading The Edge of the Sky by Roberto Trotta
Author: Chad Orzel
Entrance Music
The AV Club had a Q&A last week asking “What would be your entrance music?” As a music fan and a sports junkie this is, of course, a nearly irresistable question, though a lot of other things got in the way before I could get around to typing up an answer. I’ve always kind of… Continue reading Entrance Music
The Pleasure of Working Things Through
My bedtime reading for the past week or so has been Steven Gould’s Exo (excerpt at Tor). This is the fourth book in the Jumper series (not counting the movie tie-in novel), and ordinarily wouldn’t be worth much of a review, because if you haven’t read the first three, this book won’t make a lick… Continue reading The Pleasure of Working Things Through
Uncertain Dots 22
After a long absence due to travel (some of which is discussed), Uncertain dots returns! Rhett and I talk about recent travels, how people going into internet-based physics outreach these days would probably do better to make videos than blog, physics in science fiction, celestial navigation, and as always, our current courses. Some links: —… Continue reading Uncertain Dots 22
Cash and Respect
The London School of Economics has a report on a study of academic refereeing (PDF) that looked at the effect of incentives on referee behavior. They found that both a “social incentive” (posting the time a given referee took to turn around the papers they reviewed on a web site) and a cash incentive ($100… Continue reading Cash and Respect
Bad Graphics, STEM Diversity Edition
There was a article in Scientific American about diversity in STEM collecting together the best demographic data available about the science and engineering workforce. It’s a useful collection of references, and comes with some very pretty graphics, particularly this one, showing the demographic breakdown of the US population compared to the science and engineering fields:… Continue reading Bad Graphics, STEM Diversity Edition
TED-Ed Lesson: What Is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
The second one of the TED-Ed lessons I wrote about quantum physics has now been published: What Is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This is, again, very similar to stuff I’ve written before, specifically this old blog post and the relevant chapter of How to Teach [Quantum] Physics to Your Dog. As usual, I tried but… Continue reading TED-Ed Lesson: What Is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
TED-Ed Lesson: The Central Mystery of Quantum Physics
My TED@NYC adventure last fall didn’t turn into an invite to the big TED meeting, but it did lead to a cool opportunity that is another of the very cool developments I’ve been teasing for a while now: I’ve written some scripts for lessons to be posted with TED-Ed. The first of these, on particle-wave… Continue reading TED-Ed Lesson: The Central Mystery of Quantum Physics
Intelligence vs. Priorities
Steven Pinker has a piece at the New Republic arguing that Ivy League schools ought to weight standardized test scores more heavily in admissions. this has prompted a bunch of tongue-clucking about the failures of the Ivy League from the usual suspects, and a rather heated concurrence from Scott Aaronson. That last finally got me… Continue reading Intelligence vs. Priorities
On Academic Scandals
Two very brief notes about high-profile scandals in academia: 1) While it involves one of my faculty colleagues, I have no special insight to offer into the case of Valerie Barr’s firing by the NSF over long-ago political activity. I know and like Valerie as a colleague, and she did some really good stuff as… Continue reading On Academic Scandals