silliness
drorzel | January 7, 2013Kate and I went down to New York City (sans kids, as my parents were good enough to take SteelyKid and The Pip for the weekend) this weekend, because Kate had a case to argue this morning, and I needed a getaway before the start of classes today. We hit the Rubin Museum of Art, which is just about the right size for the few hours we had, got some excellent Caribbean food at Negril Village, then saw The Old Man and the Old Moon in a church basement at NYU (the show was charming, the space was stiflingly hot by the end). All in all, a good weekend.
I drove back Sunday afternoon, and was…
drorzel | October 25, 2012For various reasons I can't talk about, I'm not in a good mental place for deep and thoughtful blogging just at the moment. But prompted by yesterday's Surviving the World, I'll revisit a past post topic, and suggest some abstract ideas you could dress as for Halloween, if you're so inclined.
The Doppler Effect: Wear an outfit that's blue in the front and red on the back. Answer questions from people in front of you in a high-pitched voice, questions from people behind you in a deep voice. Bonus points if you carry small bottles of helium and sulfur hexafluoride to inhale for the appropriate…
drorzel | October 2, 2012This one's for Matthew Francis, whose tweet from yesterday lodged this in my head until I broke down and typed it out. With apologies to Stealer's Wheel and their Dylanesque pop bubblegum classic:
Still Stuck in Paragraph Two
Well, I don't know why I came here tonight, I brought the laptop but still just can't write. I try and try but the words just aren't there, and it makes me want to pull out my hair.
Nouns to the left of me, verbs off to my right and I'm still stuck in paragraph two.
Yes, I'm still stuck in paragraph two, how to go on, I haven't a clue. It's so hard for me to find the…
drorzel | September 27, 2012SCENE: The library at Chateau Steelypips. DADDY is typing on the computer, while THE PIP plays on the floor. Enter STEELYKID.
STEELYKID: I'm already four years old.
DADDY: Yes, yes you are.
THE PIP: Thbbbbbbbpppt!
STEELYKID: How old is The Pip?
DADDY: Eleven months. Not quite one year.
STEELYKID: When The Pip is four, how old will I be?
DADDY: You'll be seven.
STEELYKID: And when he's seven, how old will I be?
DADDY: You'll be ten.
THE PIP: (pulls himself to a standing position) GA BA DA BA Phbbbbt! (falls down)
STEELYKID: Daddy, how old are you?
DADDY: I'm forty-one.
STEELYKID: And when I'm…
drorzel | June 14, 2012Last night, as I was flying in to San Francisco, Matt Cain pitched the first perfect game in Giants history. Now, a casual observer might think these events were unrelated, but to ancient alien theorists, the connection between them could not be more obvious. Thus, you should come to Kepler's Books in Menlo Park this evening at 7pm, to see what amazing events will happen next.
Well, OK, the most that will probably happen is that I might read a bit from the How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog in a silly voice. But you don't know that I won't use my awesome ancient alien magic to transmute lead…
drorzel | June 3, 2012In which we look at the very latest in amphibian science.
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The embedded video shows one Prof. S. Kid describing her latest observations in detail. It's a very comprehensive study.
drorzel | May 25, 2012The blog is recovering from the transition to WordPress, but I'm still not fully confident in it. So We'll turn to another corner of the social media universe for my procrastinatory needs this morning: Having Emmy answer physics questions on Twitter.
The same deal as when we've done this before: If you've got a physics question you'd like my dog to answer, post it to Twitter with the hashtag #dogphysics (or leave it in a comment, or email it to me), and Emmy will answer via Twitter, where she's @queen_emmy.
drorzel | April 29, 2012SteelyKid: Daddy, would you like to go to visit Jake and the Never Land Pirates?
Me:: In principle, sure. But it's a cartoon. We can't go there, it's not a real place.
SteelyKid: Yes it is. Never Land is real, we can go there.
Me: Well, look, if you find some pixies dust that we can use to make us fly, we can try to fly to Never Land. Let me know if you find any.
SteelyKid: No, Daddy, we don't need to find pixie dust. We just need to go to the store and buy some pixie dust.
Me: I'm pretty sure they don't have pixie dust at the stores around here. Though, there are persistent rumors that they'…
drorzel | April 6, 2012I'm killing time waiting for something I can't talk about yet, so here's a silly poll to pass the time, brought to you by a couple of songs served up on the radio this morning while I was running errands:
Which of these awkward song lyrics is the worst lyrical crime against English grammar?
I thought about including "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight," but since it's a deliberate spoof, I don't think it should count.
drorzel | April 6, 2012I want a story. The story about one little pig, and the wolf.
I'll need you to help me with it, OK?
Yeah.
OK, once upon a time, there was one little pig, and he... What did he do?
He built a house out of straw.
Right. He was a little bit silly, so he built himself a house out of straw. Which is a terrible material to build a house out of.
So, then, one day, a big wolf came along, and said [scary wolf voice] "Little pig, little pig, let me in!"
But he was a NICE wolf.
Right, so he said [scary wolf voice] "Little pig, little pig, let me in! I'm a nice wolf, but I sound like this because this…
drorzel | March 27, 2012Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses...
No, Daddy, it was three little pigs.
This is a completely different story, honey.
Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses, who lived together in a river in Africa.
They lived in a house.
Well, hippos spend most of their time in the water, so they really lived in the river.
But they had a house on the bank of the river, which was very nice.
OK.
And one day, something happened, which was...?
A big bad wolf came to their house!
No, honey, hippos live in Africa. They don't have big bad wolves in Africa.
Oh. Ummm... A…
drorzel | March 26, 2012The title says it all: an animated video of Heisenberg singing about the Uncertainty Principle:
So, you know, there's that. It's pretty good, but he's no Feynman:
And that's your silly musical break for the day.
drorzel | February 6, 2012So, my Giants edged out Kate's Patriots again in the Chateau Steelypips Bowl, in a game that was certainly not without its drama. I'm not going to gloat about it, because a couple of different bounces here or there easily could've changed the outcome. Also, I didn't see the third quarter at all, really, because it was SteelyKid's bedtime, and I was upstairs reading her stories.
But as good as the game was, we now have to turn toward the future, and specifically what wacky thing will go wrong to prevent the Giants from doing anything significant next year. "What do you mean?" you ask. Well,…
drorzel | February 5, 2012Proving that you can find physics in everything, Sean Carroll points to a strange anomaly in the Super Bowl coin toss: the NFC has won 14 coin tosses in a row. The odds of this happening seem to be vanishingly small, making this a 3.8-sigma effect, almost enough to claim the detection of a new particle, and certainly enough to justify the generation of a press release.
Of course, there are two problems with Sean's analysis, one classical and one quantum. The classical objection is that what we have a record of is one team winning the toss every time, which does not mean that the coin is doing…
drorzel | February 5, 2012Like many Americans, I'm going to be hugely preoccupied today. Thus, a poll for your blog-like entertainment needs:
The Super Bowl is today. Who's going to win?
If you choose the last option, please arrange to have contacted me in the past to tell me who to have laid a significant bet on so I will have won a large sum of money.
drorzel | January 4, 2012It's the first day of class today (for me, anyway-- classes technically started yesterday, but I don't teach on Tuesdays this term). This, of course, means that something will go horribly wrong. The question is, what?
What will go wrong on the first day of class today?
This is a class for first-year students, so quantum superpositions of multiple answers are not allowed.
drorzel | December 31, 2011A while back, a reader from Bulgaria sent me a photo of a highly topical bottle of local spirits:
You can either know where you are, or how much you've drunk, but not both...
Having spent my last day of 2011 taking SteelyKid to the mall for bouncy-bounce and midway games, and then having her help me bake apple pie (which she demanded to do out of nowhere, and wouldn't stop talking about), I could really use a shot of quantum liquor. Or even some classical beer.
Sadly, I'm fighting a wretched cold, so booze is out of the question. But if you're in a partying state, have a drink for me. And…
drorzel | December 13, 2011And what happened then?
Well, in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch's small heart
Grew three sizes that day.
And then the true meaning
Of Christmas came through
And the Grinch found the strength
Of ten Grinches, plus two
-- Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas
It's nearly Christmas, so SteelyKid keeps demanding to watch the two classic Christmas specials we have recorded, Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Watching these over and over again, my thoughts naturally turn to physics, and what sort of physics you could do with these shows.
The…
drorzel | October 26, 2011
"I work around the clock-- 1043 Planck times per second-- providing the gravitational attraction to hold this galaxy cluster together. And some baryonic cosmologist wants to explain me away as a modification of Newtonian gravity?
"I have been silent for 13.7 billion years, but no more.
"I AM THE 96%"
(Original Pandora Cluster image from NASA)
drorzel | September 4, 2011Twinkle, twinkle
Have you any wool?
H I J K
L-M-N-O-P
Up above the world so high
One for the little boy who lives down the lane
Now I know my A-B-C's
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full
Baa, baa black sheep
E F G
How I wonder what you are
Q R S
One for the dame
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
Next time won't you sing with me?
A B C D
Little star
Yes sir, yes sir,three bags full
One for the master
T U V W X Y and Z
Baa, baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?
How I wonder what you are.