Course Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 01
As mentioned a few times previously, the class I’m teaching this term is a “Scholars Research Seminar” on time and timekeeping. As this is an entirely new course, and will be consuming a lot of my...
View ArticleCourse Report: A Brief History of Timekeeping 02
I reported on the start of this class last week, and sinc ethen, we’ve had three more class meetings. Since this whole thing is an experiment, I’ll keep reporting on it from time to time (heh). First,...
View ArticleCritical Pronunciation Poll
I’m using Dava Sobel’s Longitude this week in my timekeeping class. The villain of the piece, as it were, is the Reverend Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, who promoted an astronomical method for finding longitude,...
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Thursday Eratosthenes Blogging: Measuring Latitude and Longitude with a Sundial
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...
View ArticleRandom Note That Wouldn’t Bother Normal People
In a book that I read recently (either The Cloud Roads or The Serpent Sea– I finished the first and immediately started the second), as some characters are traveling from one place to another, there’s...
View ArticleA Musical Interlude
Yesterday was a really grueling day, and I’m home with The Pip today, so no substantive blogging. But here’s a song about the universe, written and performed by one of my colleagues: If this becomes...
View ArticleAssyrian Books and Quote Chasing
While reading bits of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Space Chronicles yesterday, I ran across this quote, attributed to “an Assyrian clay tablet from 2800 BC”: Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there...
View ArticleOutland It’s Not: Billionaires Plan Asteroid Mining
I’m about a week late talking about this, but I’ve mostly resigned myself to not doing really topical blogging these days. Anyway, there was a lot of excitement last week over the announcement that an...
View ArticleSpace Chronicles by Neil deGrasse Tyson
I was tremendously disappointed and frustrated by this book. This is largely my own fault, because I went into it expecting it to be something it’s not. Had I read the description more carefully, I...
View ArticleExploring Space: Don’t Sell Robots Short
One final thought on the Big Science/ Space Chronicles stuff from last week. One of the things I found really frustrating about the book, and the whole argument that we ought to be sinking lots of...
View ArticleGravity’s Engines by Caleb Scharf
The last week or so of silence on the blog has been due to my trip to Ohio (which was very enjoyable), and a lack of child care for the early part of this week. A day and a half home with both kids was...
View ArticleNeil de Grasse Tyson Is John Harrison
Over at Galileo’s Pendulum, Matthew Francis expresses an opinion that’s sure to get him in trouble with the Inquisition and placed under house arrest: Carl Sagan’s Cosmos isn’t all that: However, even...
View ArticleFinding That There’s Nothing to Find
In 1967, a team of scientists hauled a big pile of gear– electronics, particle detectors, a giant slab of iron– into the burial chamber at the base of one of the pyramids at Giza. This sounds like a...
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The Ultimate Alien Message
In January of 1990, a friend and I designed the ultimate message to an alien civilization. Okay, admittedly, this wan’t a recognized scientific accomplishment. After all, in January of 1990, I was a...
View ArticleVisiting Faculty Position at Union College
My trip into the office today was for the express purpose of posting this job ad: We invite applications for Visiting Assistant Professor starting in September 2014. This position is available for up...
View ArticleWork-Life Juggling, Then and Now
A couple of Mondays ago, I was at work and got the dreaded phone call from day care. “[The Pip]‘s got conjunctivitis again. It’s really bad, and he needs to go home right away.” Admittedly, this isn’t...
View ArticleFive Billion Years of Solitude by Lee Billings
It’s taken me a disgracefully long time to finish the review copy of Lee Billings’s Five Billion Years of Solitude I was sent back in the fall, mostly because I didn’t read anything not immediately...
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SteelyKid and the Big Telescope
SteelyKid’s class at her after-school day care has been learning about space for the last month or two (the program is very flexible– the teachers ask the kids what they want to learn about, and then...
View ArticleObligatory Cosmos Commentary
It says here in the fine print that my blogging license could be revoked if I fail to offer a public opinion on the Cosmos reboot, which premiered last night. I missed the first couple of minutes– I...
View ArticleThe Most Important Cosmos Review You’ll Read This Week
“So, that’s the science show with space pictures. What did you think of it, honey?” “Science. Space pictures. Awesome!” Our umpteenth winter storm of the season delayed school two hours this morning,...
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