{"id":4383,"date":"2010-01-01T11:23:48","date_gmt":"2010-01-01T11:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/01\/01\/how-to-teach-physics-to-your-d-10\/"},"modified":"2010-01-01T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-01T11:23:48","slug":"how-to-teach-physics-to-your-d-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/01\/01\/how-to-teach-physics-to-your-d-10\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update and Miscellany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dogphysics.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-1e8ca3d6f1057cdc4f9532702467bc29-sm_cover_draft_atom.jpg\" alt=\"i-1e8ca3d6f1057cdc4f9532702467bc29-sm_cover_draft_atom.jpg\" \/><\/a>There isn&#8217;t all that much news for a real obsessive update, so I&#8217;ll lump in a few writing-related items of possible interest to people who read books other than mine.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A real obsessive update item: <a href=\"http:\/\/delong.typepad.com\/sdj\/2009\/12\/i-am-not-optimistic.html\">BradDeLong doubts my book can help his dog<\/a>. <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/dogphysics.com\"><cite>How to Teach Physics to Your Dog<\/a> gets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timminspress.com\/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2241703\">four out of five stars<\/a> as part of a good books round-up in the Timmins Daily Press in Ontario. (Google News search is nifty).<\/li>\n<li>A fortuitous discovery thanks to, of all things, an ad in GMail: <a href=\"http:\/\/journeybystarlight.blogspot.com\/2007\/06\/quantum-mechanics-for-cat-lovers-newton.html\">QM for cat lovers<\/a>, part of an old blog of imaginary conversations with Einstein. I doubt this will change anybody&#8217;s mind about my half-serious proposal for <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/12\/paying_for_free_stuff_is_a_sol.php\">ads on the arxiv<\/a>, but it&#8217;s kind of cute.<\/li>\n<li>Nathan Rabin offers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/advice-for-aspiring-and-first-time-authors-or-what,36627\/\">excellent advice on the writing business<\/a>. I&#8217;m in kind of an odd position as far as book-writing goes, in that I am not relying on my writing to put food on the table. But my experience thus far pretty closely matches Rabin&#8217;s (also, we share a publisher. Small world.)<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m not the only one who <a href=\"http:\/\/jimhines.livejournal.com\/483619.html\">likes to play with sales-related graphs<\/a>. Of course, Jim is working with BookScan data, which track actual, honest-to-God sales of books, rather than the Amazon sales rank, which is more of a short-term, variable thing, probably in order to make it more crack-tastic for authors. I don&#8217;t have access to BookScan, which is expensive, so I have to be content to fiddle with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mbeckler.org\/dog_physics\/\">sales rank data<\/a>, but that&#8217;s plenty fun as it is.<\/li>\n<li>2,876, since you asked. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/How-Teach-Physics-Your-ebook\/dp\/B002ZJCQT2\/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&#038;m=AG56TWVU5XWC2\">Kindle edition<\/a> is 2,352. Barnes and Noble has the hardcover at 43,688, probably because they don&#8217;t have it in any east coast store from DC north into Massachusetts (not that I&#8217;m obsessive, or anything), and the <a href=\"http:\/\/search.barnesandnoble.com\/How-to-Teach-Physics-to-Your-Dog\/Chad-Orzel\/e\/9781416579014\">e-book version<\/a> at 34,385. I think their ranking is more strictly cumulative than Amazon&#8217;s more time-sensitive version, but I have new classes to prep for, and really can&#8217;t devote any time to comparing the two.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that&#8217;s where things stand at the start of 2010. Now, if I could just figure out a way to get self-reproducing alien monoliths to buy one copy each&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There isn&#8217;t all that much news for a real obsessive update, so I&#8217;ll lump in a few writing-related items of possible interest to people who read books other than mine. A real obsessive update item: BradDeLong doubts my book can help his dog. How to Teach Physics to Your Dog gets four out of five&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/01\/01\/how-to-teach-physics-to-your-d-10\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update and Miscellany<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,18,142,7,37,132,143,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book_writing","category-books","category-how-to-teach","category-physics","category-pop_culture","category-publicity","category-sales","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}