Science: Notable at Last
The New York Times list of "Notable Books for 2009" has been released, which means it's time for my annual rant about how they've slighted science books. So, how did they do this year? Here are the science books on this year's list: The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn By LOUISA GILDER The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the B

Links for 2009-11-28
Colliding Galaxies For Fun and For Science! : Starts With A Bang "Galaxy Zoo has developed an outstanding game where you can help astronomers by doing something that humans easily defeat computers at: visually matching galaxies to simulations!" (tags: science astronomy computing

Spoken Like Somebody Who's Never Read Slush
Windows is pleading to be allowed to install updates, so I'm going through closing browser tabs that I opened foolishly thinking I might write about them. In that list is yet another blog post on how electronic books will kill traditional publishing. This one is fundamentally an economic argument, claiming that it will soon be more profitable for authors to self-publish on the Kindle than to go through a traditional publisher. I'm a little dubious about this, but it's at least an attempt at a quantitative foundation, rather than the usual boundless techno-optimism. The first comment to the post has the essential rejoinder t

51 Best Physics Blogs
A few other people got the same email I did, promoting a list of the 50 Best Physics Blogs put together by Accredited Online Colleges Dot Org. It's a fine list, with one glaring problem: They didn't include Matt Springer's Built On Facts. As you can probably tell from its frequent tagging for the daily links dump, I'm a big fan, and think Matt's got one of the best physics blogs going. I could probably come up with a blog or two that I'd drop off the existing list, but that would be impo

The Rich Inner Life of a Toddler
Windows MovieMaker has inexplicably decided to work again, today. Maybe it can only produce useful output on odd-numbered Fridays. Whatever the reason, I was finally able to edit down and paste together a couple of really cute video clips of SteelyKid playing in her babypod: We can (and do) watch this sort of thing for hours. She very clearly has something she's trying to do, even if we can't quite tell what it is. It's fascinating to see the wheels turning, though, and I can't wait until she can explain what she thinks is going on. whatever it is, she obviously thinks it's pretty