I bought the Witmark Demos a week or so ago, because I could always use another 50 Bob Dylan songs, and listening to them on shuffle play has managed to earworm me with one song in particular, “I Shall Be Free”, which it occurs to me has great current relevance: Well, my telephone rang it… Continue reading The Bob Dylan Plan for Economic Growth
Category: Silliness
The Unexpected Leaping Ability of Bovines
I’m spending the day trying to get some work done on the book-in-progress, so I’m avoiding both work- and blog-related stuff. I don’t want to leave the site completely quiet, though, so here’s a question to ponder, relating to SteelyKid’s continuing fascination with Goodnight Moon: How does a cow jump over the moon? The father… Continue reading The Unexpected Leaping Ability of Bovines
Conceptual Physics Costumes for Halloween
It’s late October, which means that the thoughts of small children and adults who have never quite grown up turn to selecting appropriate costumes for Halloween. In the spirit of these literary suggestions and these abstract concept suggestions, I thought it would be useful to offer some suggestions for physics-themed costumes, for those who want… Continue reading Conceptual Physics Costumes for Halloween
Poll: Halloween Books
I almost forgot something that I need to do today, so no lengthy and detailed blogging this morning. Instead, a quick poll regarding Neil Gaiman’s suggestion of giving kids scary books for Halloween: Neil Gaiman suggests giving kids scary books for Halloween. What do you think?online surveys Halloween is a classic holiday, which means you’re… Continue reading Poll: Halloween Books
Poll: The Peter Threshold
As a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s post asking about incompetent teachers, a poll on what you might call the “Peter Threshold,” after the Peter Principle. Exactly how many incompetent members can an organization tolerate? The acceptable level of incompetence in any organization (that is, the fraction of employees who can’t do their jobs) is:Market… Continue reading Poll: The Peter Threshold
Poll: Religious Beliefs of Scientists and Science Blog Readers
A big and important argument about religion and science has flared up again on Twittter. It occurs to me, though, that nobody has taken the obvious step of polling people about their actual beliefs, so let’s see if we can’t settle this question with (social) SCIENCE!: I would prefer to be a member of:Market Research… Continue reading Poll: Religious Beliefs of Scientists and Science Blog Readers
Chromatic Poll: Resistors
Standing around in the cold for a few hours yesterday, then driving for almost five hours has given the cold SteelyKid had a week or so ago the opening it needed to infect me, so I’m all hoarse and achy this morning. Which means you get silly blogging, such as this poll inspired by some… Continue reading Chromatic Poll: Resistors
The Astrophysics of Bedtime Stories
SteelyKid is a big fan of the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon, which, if you haven’t spent the last sixty-odd years in a cave, you probably know features a bunny saying goodnight to a variety of objects in a great, green room. The attentive toddler will find a lot to look at in the pictures–… Continue reading The Astrophysics of Bedtime Stories
The Physics Bus
SteelyKid, like most toddlers, knows a few songs, and likes to sing them over and over. Her repertoire is limited to “ABCDEFG” (the alphabet song, but that’s how she requests it), “Twinkle, Twinkle,” “Some man” (“This Old Man,” which I only figured out this weekend), and “Round and Round” (“The Wheels on the Bus”). I… Continue reading The Physics Bus
Quantum Statistical Poll: Favorite Boson?
A fairly straightforward question: quantum physicists divide the world into two categories of things, fermions and bosons. What’s your favorite object having integer spin? What’s your favorite boson?online survey Superpositions of answers, while allowed in properly symmetrized wavefunctions, are not valid responses to this poll.