A busy week, writing-wise, because schedule things shook out that way. Also a busy week of kid sports— The Pip’s baseball game this afternoon will be our third in four days, as they scramble to make up rainouts and postponements from earlier in the season. Monday night is supposed to end the regular season with a double-header, then it’s on to the playoffs…
Me on Substack:
— Recent Reading: Crazy Floridians and Space Miscellany: Brief reviews of books by Carl Hiaasen and James S. A. Corey.
— A Brief History of Punctuality: Looking at the long history of people wanting to be on time for things, spinning off a NYT piece quoting me (see below).
— Flipped Admissions and the Collusion We Need: Repeating my crazy idea that allowing formal collusion between groups of colleges would reduce the stress of elite admissions.
— The Superconducting Super Circular Argument: Time for another round of “Is particle physics too expensive?”, alas.
— The Physics of Stuck Bowls: Some possible explanations for the viral moment of the week, expanding on comments made to the Today show website (see below).
Me Elsewhere:
(Cheating a little here, because I didn’t write either of these, but it amuses me to be quoted like this. It was also novel enough to get a news item from our Communications office…)
— Punctuality is Having a Moment: The Paper of Record on the question of whether people are more on time since the pandemic.
— Woman finally gets her 2 ceramic bowls unstuck after epic Twitter saga: The Today show on a viral phenomenon.
Links Dump:
— The Best Smashing Pumpkins Songs, Ranked, by Steven Hyden: One of my favorite music writers remembers some guys.
— I Shall Celebrate Pride By Just Being Some Boring Straight Guy, by Jeff Maurer: Probably the right approach.
— Is ‘Huh?’ A Universal Word, by Nick Enfield: Maybe.
— Is Genre Defined by Content or Worldview? by Lincoln Michel: Some thoughts on what it means to be science fiction or fanasy.
— Bells, Drums, Cannons & Clocks: A Brief History of Timekeeping in Beijing, by Vincent Vinci: Google served this up to me through an alert for my book title, so I spent a while looking for my name in it…
— Long Covid, Long Other Things by Derek Lowe: The O.G. of pharmaceutical chemistry bloggers looks at persistent symptoms and ends up in about the same place I do.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
Really very little random about this selection, which is The Pip pitching on Thursday night. This particular game was at the one field where I could get a clear shot through the backstop behind home plate, so I have a bunch of photos like this of various kids pitching and batting.
(He pitched the maximum allowed two innings, striking out two and giving up one run. He did hit three batters in the second inning, though, but angrily insists that they were deliberately leaning into the pitches…)
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
A shaggy country rock song about an infamous basketball moment, from an album Steven Hyden has been pushing hard for a while now. I don’t like it quite as much as he seems to, but it’s pretty solid.
And that’s this week’s Big Bunch of Stuff. If you like this kind of thing and want it in your email, here’s a button:
And if you want to berate me for linking that Smashing Pumpkins list but not using a Smashing Pumpkins song for the pseudo-random selection, well, the comments will be open: