The great Presidential book-reading race!

Posted on June 3, 2009 by skullsinthestars

At times I’m simply dumbfounded by the idiotic stories the big news organizations can come up with.  In a short article titled, “Obama keeping up with Bush’s reading pace?”, CNN’s Political Ticker reported, on June 2,

It appears President Obama has to step up his reading pace if he wants to beat his predecessor in one particular measure: how many books a president can polish off a year.

…

If Obama is close to finishing the novel, that puts him on less than a 10 book-a-year pace, far less than the close to 100 books President Bush was reportedly able to finish in the same amount of time.

According to former top Bush aide Karl Rove, he and the former president engaged in a friendly wager every year to see who could read more books.

…

While Obama may have had to put aside “Netherland” last month in favor of pages of court briefs with a Supreme Court vacancy to fill, it nevertheless appears the president has some summer reading to do.

Let’s put aside the fact that maybe it isn’t a virtue for the “leader of the free world” to have lots of spare time to read two books a week, and also take Karl Rove at his word (ha ha) that Bush actually read that amount of books.

Reading isn’t a horse race — it’s not just about how fast you read a book, it’s about how well you understand and retain the information you’ve read.  I was immediately reminded of an anecdote from Al Franken’s Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them):

In an early Republican presidential debate, Bush was asked what book he was reading.  A biography of Dean Acheson (Truman’s secretary of State), he answered.  Twelve days later, in the next debate, moderator Judy Woodruff asked him what he had learned from the biography.  Bush couldn’t think of anything directly related to the life or work of Dean Acheson and went directly into his stump speech about how we have to be strong to keep the peace.  When John McCain fielded his next question, he answered it quickly and used the rest of his time to talk in great detail about Acheson’s role in the creation of NATO and the Marshall Plan.

Or, to put it more succinctly, as others have before,

Posted in ... the Hell?, Politics | Leave a comment

“The X-Change Files” is up and running!

Posted on June 2, 2009 by skullsinthestars

There’s a new science blog out there: The X-Change Files, which is the official blog for the Science & Entertainment Exchange.  What, you may ask, is the Science & Entertainment Exchange?  From their website,

The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that provides entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines.

If I understand this correctly,their purpose is to:  (a) help scientists present an accurate picture of what science is all about through the entertainment industry, and  (b) help filmmakers develop science-themed stories that are entertaining and for the most part accurate.  (And maybe a little less like this all the time.)

The blog will cover news related to science and the entertainment industry, and will feature contributions from  many distinguished folks, including Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics and Twisted Physics and Janet and Jerry Zucker of Zucker Productions!

This will be one to keep an eye on, I would say!

(Thanks to Jennifer for letting me know about it!)

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3quarks daily prize — vote for me! (please?)

Posted on June 2, 2009 by skullsinthestars

There’s a new scienceblog prize being sponsored by 3quarksdaily.  I have a number of posts submitted for voting, and the prize is $1000, a not insignificant amount.

Like most blogging prizes, the first round amounts to a popularity contest — the six top-voted posts will then be judged.  You don’t have to, of course, but please consider voting for one of my posts — my “gallery of failed atomic models” just made it within the contest window.

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

A happy birthday to Brian Cox!

Posted on June 1, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I couldn’t let June 1 go by without acknowledging the birthday of one of the coolest character actors around: Brian Cox!

Brian has had  a remarkable career and done many roles, including but not limited to: Agamemnon in Troy, the mean mutant-hating William Stryker in X-Men 2, the sleazy spy in the Bourne Identity, and the cantankerous Captain O’Hagan in Super Troopers.  Even when the movie itself isn’t great (cough, cough — Troy — cough, cough), Brian manages to make it worth watching.

One of my favorite of his roles, however, is also one of his earliest: he was the first actor to play Hannibal Lector, in the 1986 Michael Mann film Manhunter!  I still prefer Cox’s subtle, almost bored Lector to Anthony Hopkins’ over-the-top performance!

Anyway, happy birthday to Brian Cox, and here’s hoping for many more great performances from him!

Posted in Entertainment | 6 Comments

Invisibility physics: can charged particles self-oscillate?

Posted on May 31, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Time to return to my long-delayed series of posts on the history of invisibility physics!  The first two posts were:

  • Acceleration without radiation (1910), describing Ehrenfest’s arguments suggesting acceleration without radiation could be possible,
  • Schott’s radiationless orbits (1933), describing G.A. Schott’s analytical demonstration that a charged spherical shell could move in a periodic orbit without producing radiation.

Our next stop in the study of invisibility physics is a pair of results, one by G.A. Schott in 1937 and another by D. Bohm and M. Weinstein in 1948, in both of which it is suggested that under the right circumstances, not only can an extended charged particle oscillate without radiating, but that it can also oscillate under the influence of its own electromagnetic field, without the application of an external force!

Continue reading →

Posted in Invisibility, Physics | 5 Comments

Valancourt takes a stand against Proposition 8!

Posted on May 29, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Valancourt Books, once again justifying why they’re one of my favorite small publishers, issued a press release in support of gay marriage following the California Supreme Court’s  disappointing ruling upholding Prop. 8:

To that end, from now until the end 0f 2009, 50% of all our profits from our gay-themed titles will be donated to Lambda Legal, a not-for-profit legal advocacy group devoted to protecting the rights of gays and lesbians.  Despite the setback in California, Lambda Legal has had remarkable success in safeguarding the rights of gay people, including, most recently, the unanimous decision in Varnum v. Brien, giving same-sex couples the right to marry in Iowa.

Here’s an opportunity to support an excellent publisher and a great civil liberties cause at the same time!  The list of eligible books are included in the full press release linked to above.

And congrats in advance to James for his upcoming wedding!

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

“Sherlock Holmes” is a real film? Really?

Posted on May 27, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I’ve known for a while that a new version of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson, has been in the works.  Via The Little Professor, I finally got to see the trailer:

WTF?  Is this for real?  End of the world plots?  Martial arts battles?  Supernatural stuff?  Daredevil stunts and explosions?  Hookers?  Does any of this sound anything like Sherlock Holmes??!!

Mind you, I’m not really complaining.  Sherlock Holmes is a strong character, and his image and stories will survive any oddball interpretations.  Anyway, I’ve enjoyed other interpretations of Holmes, in particular the collection Shadows Over Baker Street in which he battles Lovecraftian horrors.

It’s just that, if I were to make a really ridiculous parody of modern action films and their “dumbening“, I would make a film exactly like Sherlock Holmes!  I’ll still almost certainly go see it, but I’ll have this latter clip in my mind the whole time:

Posted in ... the Hell?, Entertainment | 11 Comments

Henry Kuttner’s Thunder Jim Wade

Posted on May 26, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Any time I see a book with Henry Kuttner‘s name on it, I pay attention —  Kuttner was a masterful author who wrote some true classics of science fiction and fantasy, including one of my favorite stories of all time, the science fiction mystery story “Private Eye”, written jointly with C.L. Moore.  Others are more familiar with his classic “Mimsy Were the Borogroves“.

Kuttner was a true literary chameleon: he could and would write in any pulp market which was paying for stories.  I’ve written before about his excellent Elak of Atlantis stories, which were written to fill in a need for sword-and-sorcery after the untimely demise of Robert E. Howard.  By the early 1940s, the pulps were in trouble: comic books had become immensely popular.  Heroes with incredible powers and even more incredible outfits such as Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel were drawing readers and revenue from the pulps, and they wanted to introduce their own heroes to compete.

Henry Kuttner to the rescue!  Writing under the pseudonym Charles Stoddard, Kuttner described the adventures of a new hero for the pulps, Thunder Jim Wade:

thunderjimwade

Five TJW stories appeared in the pages of Thrilling Adventures in 1941.  Those stories were collected together in one nice volume last year by Altus Press.  Let’s take a look…

Continue reading →

Posted in Adventure fiction, Robert E. Howard | 2 Comments

The National Naval Aviation Museum and a cute optical illusion

Posted on May 25, 2009 by skullsinthestars

Bleah!  I’m back from my trip to the Flora-bama area, but didn’t make any jumps — we were essentially weathered out Friday and Saturday, and by Sunday I’d had enough.  Most of my jump friends had already bailed, and though the weather looked like it might be better, I missed my wife and couldn’t stand to sit around another day without jumping.  If they did jump Sunday, it would be quite ironic, because the complete 10-hour drive once we left the beach was nothing but low clouds and rain.

On Saturday, once it was clear we wouldn’t be jumping earlier in the day, we hit the nearby National Naval Aviation Museum.  It was a pretty neat place, and it also contained one interesting (intentional) optical illusion.  Some pictures and description below…

Continue reading →

Posted in Optics, Travel | Leave a comment

Another short hiatus!

Posted on May 20, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I hate to have to do this so soon after my honeymoon break, but I’ll likely be going silent for a few days over the Memorial Day weekend:  if the weather is good, I’ll be skydiving at the Florida/Alabama border and landing on the beach!  This has become a yearly tradition for me.  This year I was thinking of skipping it, but my friends nearly demanded that I attend!

Hopefully I’ll post some thoughts while I’m out of town, but no guarantees — internet access is spotty down there.  Heck, we’ve found out that even cell phone access is spotty there!

After this trip, I should be back at into a semi-regular routine.  I’m going to bring some papers along to blog about in case of a rain day or wind day.

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