Book Report: What to Tell Your Dog About Einstein
Oddly enough, it turns out that writing a book with a rambunctious toddler in the house is a much slower process than writing a book pre-toddler. Imagine that. Anyway, as I did during the writing...
View ArticleHow to Teach Physics to Your Dog Around the World
Between my long-ago high-school French and Google Translate, I can tell that this is a good review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It does note, though, that reading the book requires knowledge of...
View ArticleWriting Relativity vs. Writing Quantum
Fall term classes ended yesterday, officially– my last class was Friday– so I’m shifting over to spend more time working on the sequel to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which involves talking to...
View ArticleProgress Report: No Proposal Outline Survives Contact with the Writing Process
Blogging will continue to be minimal, as I’m buried in grading, and feeling significant time pressure regarding the book-in-progress. I thought I’d pop up briefly, though, to provide a look at the...
View ArticleAdvancing by Subtracting
I’ve got draft versions of all the chapters of the book-in-progress now, which is great. Of course, when you add up all the words in those chapters, it comes to 92,000, when the contract calls for...
View ArticleWhat to Tell Your Dog About Einstein
Regular blogging has been interrupted this week not only because I jetted off to southern MD but because this week was the due date for the manuscript of the book-in-progress. It’s now been sent off to...
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Emmy in Ink and Pixels
“Hey, Dude, what’cha doin’?” “I’m checking out the dog drawings I commissioned for the book-in-progress. Here, take a look:” “Hey, wait just one minute. That looks like me!” “That’s the idea. Since...
View ArticleAn Incomplete List of Pop-Culture References in How to Teach Relativity to...
I’ve been going through the manuscript for the book making up a list of glossary words (a frighteningly long list), and also noting miscellaneous pop-cultural references– quotes, direct mentions,...
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How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog: The Cover
I’m looking at an email from my editor when Emmy wanders by the computer, sniffing around just in case a crumb of food has fallen on the floor in the last five minutes. “Hey,” I say, “Come here and...
View ArticleAlways Write the Introduction Last
Here are some excerpts from the introductory sections of the very first drafts of some book chapters: [BLAH, BLAH, BLAHBITTY BLAH] and [Introductory blather goes here] and Blah, blah, stuff, blather....
View ArticleHow to Think Like a Scientist: Taking Stock
For the last several months, I’ve been poking along on the book-in-progress in a very constrained manner– basically, I get to work on it in three-hour chunks on Tuesdays when I don’t have class (and...
View ArticleScience Is Not Solitary
There was another round of the “who counts as a scientist?” debate recently, on Twitter and then on the Physics Focus blog. In between those, probably coincidentally (he doesn’t mention anything...
View ArticleOn the Interconnectedness of Science
I’ve finished a first pass through all the regular chapters of the book-in-progress (in addition to those in in this progress report, there’s one more in Section 1 about antiques, and three more in...
View Article“Eureka!” and the Problems Thereof
I’m not talking about the tv show Eureka here, which was mostly silly fluff but not especially problematic. I’m talking about the famous anecdote about Archimedes of Syracuse, who supposedly realized...
View ArticleProgramming Note: Book-Related Silence
I got some feedback from my editor about draft chapters of the book-in-progress a while ago, and while it was generally pretty positive, there’s a lot of work to be done. Shortly after that, I realized...
View ArticleEureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist
I sent off the complete draft of the book-in-progress yesterday, somewhere between 12 and 36 hours ahead of my contractual deadline. Which I suppose makes it a book-in-process now, maybe. That process...
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Cover for Eureka! Discovering Your Inner Scientist
My Thursday presentation here in Houston went well, though it was a pretty small crowd. I’ll be doing it again today before running to the airport to get home. I didn’t really have an opportunity to do...
View ArticleRead Science! on Dog Physics
As noted earlier, I was a guest on the Read Science! hangout on G+ earlier today. If you weren’t able to watch it live, the video is available at that link, and I’ll embed it here: There were some...
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