silliness
drorzel | May 20, 2009I made it to Charlottesville, and am all checked in to the Econo Lodge, which is a little more Econo than I was expecting. It's an old-school motel, with rooms that open right into the parking lot, the sort of place where the towels are tiny and scratchy, the pillows and mattresses are thin, and the tap water tastes like cigarette smoke. Still, it's not like I'm going to be doing much more than sleeping here.
I promised some entertainment in my absence, so this seems like a good time for a Dorky Poll. I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few days listening to talks about the…
drorzel | May 17, 2009This has nothing to do with the substance of Steve Benen's post about conservative preparations for judicial confirmation hearings, but the quote he used from a New York Times article is the proximate cause for this Grammar Nerd Poll:
What is the plural of "memorandum"?
A) "Memorandums"
B) "Memoranda"
C) "More than one memorandum"
D) Some other option I will explain in the comments
Leave your answer in the comments. Bonus nerd points for spotting the egregious grammar error in the text of the post.
(I don't know what the egregious grammar error in the post is, but by the Iron Laws of the…
drorzel | May 7, 2009You might think that Monday's discourse on thermodynamics in the Goldilocks story was the only children's story in which physics plays a role, but that's not true. Physics is everywhere in fairy tales.
Take, for example, the story of Rumpelstiltskin, in which a mysterious little man demands a terrible price for helping a miller's daughter spin straw into gold. This raises the obvious question of exactly how one would go about extracting gold from straw.
The use of the term "spin" might suggest the use of rotational motion-- if the straw were ground up very fine, and mixed with water, it might…
drorzel | May 4, 2009SteelyKid is not yet at the stage where I can usefully read to her-- she likes sitting on my lap while I read just fine, but she's more interested in trying to eat the pages than listening to the story. I was reminded this morning, though, that when she gets to bedtime-story age, I'm going to face some real dilemmas. Some of the classic stories teach dangerously wrong lessons about physics.
Take, for example, the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (referred to at the end of the previous post). In the usual telling, Goldilocks comes upon the Bears' house and finds three bowls of porridge…
drorzel | April 30, 2009I have two labs today, and a lunch meeting, so no time for detailed blogging about science. It's been a while since I did a Dorky Poll, though, so here's one to keep people entertained while I'm working:
What's your favorite color?
"What's dorky about that?" you ask. You need to give your answer in wavelength units. For extra bonus dorky points, specify an atomic transition of approximately that wavelength.
Personally, I'm kind of partial to the blue-green lines in helium, right around 501 nm. That's a nice color. The violet line in the hydrogen spectrum, around 435 nm, is also pretty good.…
drorzel | April 19, 2009The dog comes into the office looking disgusted. "Well, you've really done it now, dude."
"What? What did I do?"
"You had to go and put a bird feeder in the front window, didn't you?"
"What about it?" We put a thistle-seed feeder in front of the bay window in the living room, and I added a small regular feeder on impulse. They give SteelyKid something to look at outside.
"It's attracted ninja squirrels."
"Oh, come on." I say. "That's nothing compared to the ninja squirrel that was on YouTube a couple of years ago."
"Not yet, it isn't. But you've opened the door. Soon, they'll be climbing…
drorzel | April 18, 2009SteelyKid is fascinated by the John Archibald Wheeler tribute issue of Physics Today:
"I find his popular writings much more digestible than the Big Book of Gravity," she says. "Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler is much too big to put in my mouth."
grrlscientist | April 11, 2009tags: Astropeep, peeponaut, easter, space, streaming video
I posted this last year, but I think it is worth repeating .. this streaming video lacks music, but it shows you the adventures of a special peep, an astropeep (or a peeponaut, depending upon which name you prefer) who traveled to the edge of space .. thanks to the Adler Planetarium's "Far Horizons 12" high altitude balloon mission, which rose to nearly to 97,000 feet [3:00]
drorzel | March 29, 2009I'm putting the finishing touches on Monday's lecture notes when the dog comes into the library, looking concerned.
"Shouldn't I be doing something to promote the book?" she asks.
"Since it won't be out for another nine months, I don't think it's that urgent."
"But aren't there more Internetty things I could be doing?"
"Well, you make regular appearances on the blog, and you've got plenty of friends on Facebook. I suppose you could Twitter."
She draws herself up very haughtily. "I am a dog. I do not twitter."
"Beg pardon?"
"I'm not some stupid bird, fluttering around twittering all the time…
drorzel | March 24, 2009One of the NCAA pools I'm in has a copy of Obama's bracket entered, and the last I checked, I'm a couple of games up on him. This means I'm as qualified as anyone else to offer a plan to fix the financial crisis, and I have just the plan we need.
On the question of the AIG bonuses, I'm pretty much in agreement with the people who say that it's not worth making too much fuss over less than a tenth of a percent of the total bailout funding they're received. Passing laws to punish specific individuals is a lousy precedent, and it's not worth corrupting our principles for such a pittance. Let the…
drorzel | March 16, 2009The NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket was announced yesterday, which has kicked off the usual round of people "predicting" the outcomes based on totally silly criteria like the Academic Progress Rate of the schools in question.
This is, of course, completely frivolous. What you really need is solid, relevant information. Like predictions based on the ranking of physics graduate programs:
(Click for a slightly larger image.)
The algorithm used to fill this in was simple:
The school with the higher-ranked physics program wins
Schools with no physics program ranking lose to schools with…
drorzel | March 14, 2009One of last year's highest-traffic posts was, weirdly, Talk Like a Physicist. I say "weirdly" because it wasn't much more than a link to Tom at Swans On Tea.
It's that time of year again, and Tom's back with an updated list of vocabulary for your physicist-talking needs. I don't have much to add, but one of Tom's items:
We physicists quantify relationships -- something that is complicated is "nonlinear," or even "highly nonlinear." Opposites are "inversely proportional"
reminded me of a great literary reference, from Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life":
"So they can read a word with equal ease…
drorzel | March 12, 2009Inside Higher Ed has an article on grade inflation this morning, which reminds me of my improbable research theory.
Academic scolds are always talking about grade inflation, saying that the average grade years ago used to be lower than it is now. Medical scolds are always talking about the obesity epidemic, saying that average weights used to be lower than they are now.
Has anyone ever considered that the two might be related? That is, might it be that the grade points per pound has remained constant over the years?
Using some government reports on weight, and totally bias free GPA trends…
drorzel | March 11, 2009"OK, here's your profile.""
"You used the good picture of me, right?"
"Of course. Look here."
"Oooh. I like that one. I look regal."
"Yeah, I guess. So what do you want to add?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can add applications, and become a fan of various things. Here, I'll make you a fan of Physics."
"OK, but isn't there better stuff. How about steak? I like steak! Make me a fan of steak!"
"Ummm... Well, there are over 500 results for 'steak.' Which do you want?"
"All of them! Click them all!"
"Why am I the one doing this again?"
"Because I can't work the mouse."
"All right, look, I'm…
drorzel | March 10, 2009The book is now starting through the production process, and people at Scribner are thinking about publicity. I got email asking whether I could set up a Facebook page for Emmy as a promotion.
I'm not sure whether that meant a fan page for the dog, or a Facebook profile for her, as if she were a user of the site. I'm also not sure whether setting up a Facebook account for my dog is acceptable within the normal Facebook operating parameters. Still, it's amusing to consider what she would have on her Facebook profile.
I mean, obviously, she's looking for random play, and her interests include…
drorzel | March 4, 2009I spent a few hours Sunday afternoon interviewing students for positions in the Minerva House program, a student life initiative that I'm involved with. The interviews were don by a panel-- me and four students-- and we tried to mix in a few oddball interview questions with the serious stuff.
The most successful of these was "What are five things you can do with a straw?" One of the students kept trying to ask "If you could be any Pokemon, which would you be, and why?" but we're apparently not drawing from a nerdy enough pool of students, because most of them couldn't think of anything.
I…
amillikan | February 24, 2009
When considering the virality of internet memes—that is, the likelihood that a given item of web goodness will be passed from one person to another as fast as you can press Control+C, Control+V and send—there are many theories as to what causes these explosions of web transference. But examining pieces of Internet phenomena from the early days of the dancing baby to the more modern use of Rick-rolling, it's clear the logic of virality has yet to be uncovered through the scientific method.
Here at Seed, we couldn't help but notice the abundance of cute-themed videos showing up on the…
drorzel | February 8, 2009Williams has long held a dominant position in a number of categories of blogging: Dan Drezner on economics and politics, Marc Lynch on the Middle East, Ethan Zuckerman on the developing world and really cool conferences, Derek Catsam on history and Red Sox fandom, yours truly on canine physics. And I'm sure I'm forgetting several people.
The number of blogging fields with prominent Eph contributions has increased this week, with the entire Williams math department making the jump into blogging. It's a bold move, but math blogging has always been more respectable than other types.
At this…
amillikan | February 2, 2009It's become something of a tradition here at ScienceBlogs to write series of posts that are published on Fridays. For example, Janet from Adventures in Ethics and Science writes Friday Sprog Blogging, a tribute to her inquisitive offspring, and Abel from Terra Sigillata has been known to author a Friday Fermentable series about his explorations into fine wine—he even brought the column to life during ScienceOnline'09. So we here at Seed thought it time to pay tribute to the efforts of these dedicated bloggers, as we too salute this glorious day.
drorzel | February 2, 2009In Friday's installment of his ongoing examination of Left Behind: The Movie, Fred Clark points out some gaps in the movie-Antichrist's plan, where it departs from the loopy prophetic cosmology of the Left Behind books. He then notes how they could've done better:
If Team Nicolae had really done their homework, they'd have consulted with groups like the Canaan Land Restoration of Israel, Inc., to make sure they had all their ducks in a row before trying to launch their apocalypse. The frustrating thing for Nicolae at this point has to be that it's already too late for him to get in touch with…