Available for pre-order: Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics!

Posted on March 25, 2019 by skullsinthestars

Big news from about my upcoming book, Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics: we have a release date — October 22nd — and a cover!!!

Furthermore, and perhaps most important, the book is now available for pre-order! You can order it through Amazon at this link or, if you prefer, you can order it directly from Yale University Press at their website!

The official blurb is as follows:

The question of how falling cats land on their feet has intrigued humans since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. In this playful and eye-opening history, physicist and cat parent Gregory Gbur explores how attempts to understand the cat-righting reflex have provided crucial insights into puzzles in mathematics, geophysics, neuroscience, and human space exploration.

The result is an engaging tumble through physics, physiology, photography, and robotics to uncover, through scientific debate, the secret of the acrobatic performance known as cat-turning, the cat flip, and the cat twist. Readers learn the solution, but also discover that the finer details still inspire heated arguments. As with other cat behavior, the more we investigate, the more surprises we discover.

I’m really excited to share more information going forward! I would like to share the table of contents next, but I want to check with my publisher first to see if that’s okay. More to come!

And, of course, more blog posts to come!  The past two weeks I was quite busy working through the major editorial comments on the book draft. I’m mostly done with those, so I should have a bit more free time!

Posted in Animals, Personal, Physics | 2 Comments

Fake Book Titles Extravaganza #2!

Posted on March 16, 2019 by skullsinthestars

You may recall the big post I did back in December in which I shared a bunch of fake book titles that I had made and shared on twitter? Well, I’ve kept doing those fake titles regularly ever since then, and I thought it was a good time to do a second mega-post compiling everything new I’ve done to date! So, without further ado, here is Volume 2 of my Fake Book Titles Extravaganza!

Original title: A Collection of Stories. I’m quite proud of the work I put in to remove the old title.

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Posted in ... the Hell?, Silliness | 2 Comments

A visit to Orchids by Hausermann

Posted on March 15, 2019 by skullsinthestars

I haven’t written a blog post for over a month, so I thought I should stop in and do something!  I’ve had quite a few ups and downs in life over that month, as well as some travel and a lot of work to do — including reviewing the editor’s comments for my upcoming cat physics book! (I have mostly finished them now, thankfully!)

Two weekends ago, I ended up in Chicago for my sister’s 50th birthday party — oh, how time has flown! While I was there, I caught up on some of my favorite Chicago things, like the Field Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and a plate of White Castle cheeseburgers.

Yum!

The decision to visit White Castle was fortuitous.  On the way to the fast food restaurant, we passed by Orchids by Hausermann, a quite old and very prestigious greenhouse that specializes in orchids of unimaginable variety.  Carl Hausermann started growing plants in the 1920s, and his son turned the business into a nearly orchid-exclusive one in 1935. Since then, they’ve become a huge and influential seller of orchids both for professionals and casual hobbyists.  Since we were literally right around the corner, my mom, my roommate Sarah and I opted to go for a visit.

The entrance/exit to the Hausermann shop.

It turned out to be a very good weekend to do so! Hausermann’s was holding an open house, so visitors were able to explore pretty much the entirety of the operation, and see all sort of beautiful orchids of every size and color.  So, in this blog post, I thought I would simply share some photos of the highlights of the visit. Along the way, I’ll have a few comments, but mostly, this is a photo post!

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Posted in General science, Personal, Travel | 3 Comments

The Dragon Corps, by Natalie Grey

Posted on February 12, 2019 by skullsinthestars

One thing I really enjoy about being on twitter is meeting and learning about authors that I might otherwise not have encountered in my rather limited experience.  These experiences are pretty much always rewarding, and the same is true with my most recent read, Natalie Grey’s The Dragon Corps (2018).

Across all of the planets of the Alliance, no military organization is more feared than the Alliance’s Dragon Corps, elite teams of soldiers who handle the difficult missions in the remote reaches of space, where governments and people are lawless.  When the Dragon Corps comes for you, it is your doom.

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Posted in Science fiction | Leave a comment

Last night’s “Super Blood Moon”: a photo essay

Posted on January 21, 2019 by skullsinthestars

So last night was anopportunity for folks on the East Coast of the United States to see a relatively rare event: a lunar eclipse!  Hyped as a “Super Blood Moon” (we’ll get to that in a moment), it took place beginning late Sunday night and stretched into Monday morning.  At that time, the Moon was high in the sky, meaning that anyone could see the progress of the eclipse simply by looking up.

Why “Super Blood Moon”? Well, mostly hype. It’s “super” because the Moon is near its closest to the Earth, though this means that it appears roughly 10% larger than usual. It is called a “Blood Moon” because it takes on a reddish color during the totality of the eclipse, which arises because the only light hitting it is the red light deflected through the Earth’s atmosphere — it is being illuminated by all sunrises and sunsets around the world simultaneously!  More information can be found on the Bad Astronomy blog.

But “super” and “blood” are small details, as seeing any lunar eclipse is a cool thing. I must admit: I hadn’t really planned on staying up and photographing the eclipse, but the posts by all my science communication twitter friends got me excited for it.  I quickly grabbed my old Canon camera, a Powershot SX50 HS, and my camera tripod, and went out to take pictures.

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Posted in Personal, Physics | 2 Comments

The City and the Stars, by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted on January 14, 2019 by skullsinthestars

I have such a big backlog of books to blog about — even though I’ve been struggling to focus on reading for fun!  But there are so many good books that I’ve read, from a variety of eras and writers, that I am determined to get through some commentary on each of them.

One of those is another classic that I picked up as part of the SF Masterworks series, Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 novel The City and the Stars.

As I’ve noted before, I have been playing “catch-up” with science fiction, as horror is my usual area of interest, so I am not extremely familiar with the great works of a lot of the classic authors.  As far as Arthur C. Clarke is concerned, I had read his novels Childhood’s End and the sublime Rendezvous with Rama, as well as many of his short stories, and of course I had seen the film versions of 2001 and 2010. But I had not read any of his other novels, so The City and the Stars seemed like a great opportunity to remedy this.

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Posted in Science fiction | 1 Comment

Fake Book Titles Extravaganza!

Posted on December 30, 2018 by skullsinthestars

I blame my twitter friend Bhaal_Spawn.  One Friday, a couple of months ago, she joined into a #FakeBookTitleFriday hashtag, in which one Photoshops new (and silly) titles onto covers of old books that are otherwise suggestive. Her thread can be seen here.

Of course, the concept of making fake book titles is not new, as Paperback Paradise has been posting hilarious covers for quite a while now, but I hadn’t felt the urge to try my hand at them myself.  But I was suddenly inspired (and probably looking for approval from Bhaal_Spawn, who is totally cool), and I started my own rapid-fire set of Fake Book Titles.

And I’m still doing them!  I must admit that I’m a bit addicted at this point. It is not only a way for me to exercise my funny bone, so to speak, but also to get some practice at Photoshop, so it’s a win-win for me.  But not everyone who follows the blog follows me on twitter, so I thought I’d share the massive collection of titles I’ve made so far over here, for your entertainment!  (I also wanted to collect them all in one place.)

Here they are, in order of my tweeting them!  Note that many of them use foul language, and a couple have partial nudity, so if this offends you, you might want to steer clear!

So without further ado, here are my Fake Book Titles!

Original title: Nurse In Training.

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Posted in ... the Hell?, Silliness | 6 Comments

History of the Conservation of Energy: Booms, Blood, and Beer (Part 2)

Posted on December 28, 2018 by skullsinthestars

Part 2 of a trilogy of posts describing the history of the discovery of conservation of energy, inspired by my research on “Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics.” Part 1 can be read here.

In 1798, Count Rumford presented the first significant challenge to the caloric theory of heat, arguing that the seemingly endless amount of heat that could be generated by boring cannons was inconsistent with the idea that heat is a fluid that lies latent in all materials — and can therefore be exhausted.  Rumford subscribed to the alternative, and it turns out correct, theory: that heat is the observable effect of random motion of particles.

But Rumford did not significantly shift the scientific consensus. In the view of most researchers, the evidence still strongly favored the caloric theory, and Rumford’s results were viewed by some as actually bolstering that theory.

It would be a number of years before the next true milestone in the idea of conservation of energy, and it would also come from an unlikely source: a physician, serving as a doctor on a ship sailing to the Dutch East Indies.  Julius Robert Mayer would introduce the first formal statement of what we now know as the conservation of energy — by making an amazingly astute observation about blood.  His discovery, however, would cost him dearly in the long run.

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Posted in History of science, Physics | 2 Comments

Dreadnought, by April Daniels

Posted on December 18, 2018 by skullsinthestars

A young girl, who is alienated from her friends and family because she feels she must hide who she truly is, witnesses a battle between the world’s greatest superhero, Dreadnought, and a mysterious powerful new enemy.  In the end, Dreadnought falls. Before he dies, however, he passes on the power of Dreadnought to Danny, who must now decide what to do with this incredible gift.

It is, in its broad strokes, a familiar story.  But in April Daniels’ 2017 novel Dreadnought, Danny is a trans girl, born into a male body. The power of Dreadnought transforms Danny’s body into the form that she knew it always should be — but this comes with its own challenges, which pile on top of the burden of having inherited the mantle.

Though, as I said, the origin story of Dreadnought here is a broadly familiar one, April Daniels spins it into a fun, fast-paced, and enjoyable tale, with an impressive amount of world-building and interesting twists.

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Posted in Adventure fiction, Science fiction | Leave a comment

Way of the Worm, by Ramsey Campbell

Posted on December 17, 2018 by skullsinthestars

Over the summer, I blogged about the first two books in the “Three Births of Daoloth” trilogy by Ramsey Campbell, an ambitious work of cosmic horror that spans decades and follows the struggles of Dominic Sheldon against a family that threatens to destroy not only his family and life but the very world.

This October, the third book in the trilogy, The Way of the Worm, was released, and I wasted no time in reading it.

In my humble opinion: Ramsey Campbell has accomplished a rare and impressive feat: the creation of a compelling, intriguing, and haunting trilogy of horror.  As I noted in my previous post, it is relatively rare to see trilogies in horror that are a single, complete story arc.

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Posted in Horror | 1 Comment