Uncertain Principles Archive
Physics, Politics, Pop Culture; formerly on ScienceBlogs
Both SteelyKid’s kindergarten and the snow-day day-care program that the kids go to were closed today, which kind of threw a wrench in things. But it’s also kind of fun, as I got to spend some time playing outside with SteelyKid on her play set in the snow. The “featured image” above is a cell-phone […]
In which we look at how the Brave New Publishing World makes it really hard to find something good to read. ———— In a recent links dump, I included a link to this post about the current state of publishing, which is a follow-up to an earlier post about the current state of publishing. Elsewhere […]
The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the “agency model” of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting in higher prices for consumers. I already links dumped an article about the detailed charges, […]
My timekeeping course this term is a “Scholars Research Seminar,” which means it’s supposed to emphasize research and writing skills. Lots of these will include some sort of poster session at the end of the term, but I decided I preferred the idea of doing in-class oral presentations. Having assigned that, of course, I felt […]
As I keep saying in various posts, I’m teaching a class on timekeeping this term, which has included discussion of really primitive timekeeping devices like sundials, as well as a discussion of the importance of timekeeping for navigation. To give students an idea of how this works, I arranged an experimental demonstration, coordinated with Rhett […]
It’s apparently a good day for asking questions of the readership, so here’s another one: as SteelyKid has gotten older and more active, she’s become a real drain on productivity, especially at bedtime. Bedtime is now a process rather like a certain spoof book, extending well over an hour, and involving repeated requests to come […]
So, back when How to Teach Physics to Your Dog was coming out, I did a few “dramatic readings” of bits of the book, such as this one on the Quantum Zeno Effect: This was made with Windows Movie Maker, because it was free (came with the computer) and dead simple. However, Movie Maker on […]
It’s a sign of how good computers have gotten that I’m faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It’s only when the vanity search […]
The water heater for Chateau Steelypips is significantly older than the usual useful life for such devices, and it’s really started to show. I’m getting pretty sick of lukewarm showers, so we probably need to replace it. As a good squishy liberal type, I of course want to replace it with something more efficient, and […]
I sent in the page proofs for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog this week, and by way of celebration, I went out and helped boost the economy by buying some consumer electronics: Yes, I now have an iPad. Just one with wi-fi, not the 3G version, because we already send Verizon enough money, […]