See my first post for a description of Nobel Conference and Tuesday’s speakers.

Wednesday morning began with a rare livestream session, this one from Steven Weinberg. He talked about the clues we have to the hidden world beyond the standard model: where do things get weird consistently, and what would it take to find out what’s going on there? I ( Read more... )

A couple weeks ago, I went down to my alma mater for an event they have annually: Nobel Conference. They get Nobel laureates and other cool scientists to come and give lectures around a particular theme for two days in early October. I used to love Nobel Conferences when I was a student, and they’re not just for students, not in the least. This ( Read more... )

I found this article about adjective order in English very interesting. It’s a topic that we mostly grasp intuitively-no teacher ever told me that saying “iron big skillet” was wrong because material is the type of adjective that belongs closest to the word and size goes further out, so we would say “big iron skillet.” But we would. I would ( Read more... )

On this day in 1988, Robert Heinlein died. I was ten; I hadn’t yet read any of his books or realized that the label “science fiction” was going to sort out a lot of the books I wanted to read. I’ve run into blog posts lately either claiming that Heinlein couldn’t win a Hugo today (apparently because of the bad bad liberal politics of the field?) ( Read more... )

Mary Alexandra Agner is doing a Kickstarter that has me all excited, possibly because of the Lego Millikan Oil Drop setup but mostly because it's Mary. It's a chapbook of linked stories about a girl scientist doing famous experiments. Today, for your reading pleasure, we have an in-character interview with Olivia. If you like her, support her in ( Read more... )

I read papersky's Tor.com post on How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Romance when it came out, and I went along with my life, humming and putting in the tiddly-poms as appropriate, but something kept nagging at me. It felt like a familiar experience that she was describing somehow, and yet I never did learn to love romance, so that clearly wasn't ( Read more... )

When my grandpa was in the hospital, my aunt Kathy gave me an over-the-counter eye gel that's supposed to be like super-duper-hyper-eyedrops for those who wear contact lenses. I've been using it this week with the birch pollen (...sigh), and it pointed out a perceptual/cognitive phenomenon that I am quite nerd enough to appreciate ( Read more... )

People thank all sorts of friends, family members, and colleagues for all sorts of things in the acknowledgements of their books ( Read more... )

Here's my latest Nature Futures story for your reading pleasure this Friday morning, Entanglement. Like all of the Futures stories in Nature, it's less than a thousand words--just a tiny bite. Enjoy!

Well, the holiday season is truly upon us: yesterday we celebrated Mikulas, and none of us was hauled away or eaten by Krampusz. Whew. Thursday is this year's Cookie Day, only this year we are having Cookie Day and Cookie Day 2: The Re-Cookenating. And this year Mikulas is in the middle of Hanukkah, so I hope that's fortuitous for those few of ( Read more... )