We are just two weeks from #Turkenfunken, the awesome Cooley-Sekula holiday that coincidentally overlaps with US Thanksgiving. It is a day of merriment, munchies, and memes.

This year's theme, suggested by @sparky , is "Firefly"!

I am very excited to be back at work on my 'science series" of books again. Writers gotta #write, I guess.

The general audience text (vol. 1) for the second book is basically drafted, but I am revising it (I haven't touched it since 2021). Then it is on to the second volume, intended for hard-core university students to help them problem-solve and put high-concept material in the context of basic physics.

Below is some concept art for the #book cover based on a photo I took.

I am so happy to be curling again!

@roytoo I only wish I had done this a long time ago.

My act for this Remembrance Day is not directed toward someone who lost their life in combat, but who was shaped by it and by the deaths they witnessed. It is directed toward my mother’s father, or “Pop-Pop” as we called him. His real name is Jacob, and it’s from him I get my middle name.

Pop-Pop was writing a brief memoir when he died in 1990. He fought in WWII and helped topple German fascism. Today, I hand-copied his typed memoir from dot matrix printer paper, as an act of memory and love.

I am calming myself with experimental #science. There is nothing so satisfying as a properly calibrated instrument. Or, to be more accurate, one instrument calibrated against another that is assumed to be more accurate. In this case, it's a TEMPer USB thermometer (which appears very unreliable) compared to an external digital thermometer that (based on house temperatures) appears more accurate.

Science. It's more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking.

What an absolutely stunning morning. Perfect for working on a #writing project.

On what would have been Carl Sagan’s 90th birthday, I remember teaching our scientific method course using his book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”.

I remember the helpful bullshit detector he gave the world.

I remember his warnings about a society that embraces credulity and denies critical and scientific thinking.

I remember his grand view of the Cosmos and our place in it.

Let’s celebrate with music quoting from his last interview.

https://youtu.be/avSP7nflGXA?si=acU_Q5B8CBtZiYsD

It was a lovely dawn today.

I have been enjoying getting up early to write and then coming into @SNOLAB early to get a jump on preparing for an upcoming review of a project I am involved in.

I had a fantastic time at the medical science “Catalyst” event today, organized by Health Sciences North (HSN) Research Institute (HSNRI) and HSN itself. I learned a LOT, including about medical simulation and pathogen observatory work in #Sudbury.

I am grateful for the chance to listen, question, and learn.

#medicine #patients #science #learning

@erdanton I am still recovering from last time.

Hot 🥵 on the heels of "The Dark Matter Discoverer's Guidebook", I have resumed work on "The Friendly Physicist's Guide to..." series. I paused that work in 2021 to collaborate on the DMDG, but I am eager to keep on developing that series of books.

The next one is on the use of light to understand the dark players in the universe.

#Writing #Physics #DarkMatter

I started writing when I was a kid, when I thought I wanted only to be a fiction #author. I have only one self-published work, intended originally as an experiment to write (in real time over a few weeks) a Christmas horror novella. I published to gain experience using Amazon publishing tools. My young nephews did creepy artwork for it.

A researcher in Antarctica aids in the search for missing geologists and finds a horror long-hidden from history.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082H63QHT

#FediBookFair

@clacke @j12i Also, she was EXCELLENT in “Death Stranding”. I think she played my favourite characters in that game.

@evan @evanprodromou Count me as also very interested in a paper edition. I have a weakness for printed books.

Happy birthday to #GNU! I was excited to be able to share the wonder of GNU with new research students a few weeks ago, and extoll the benefits and virtues of the project.

https://fosstodon.org/@linuxmagazine/113209855472927531

I learned from @AkaSci that today is Emilie du Chatelet's birthday!

I was excited to include her work heavily in my introductory #physics course lecture material, as I was fascinated by her experiments with clay floors and dropped objects (to establish the mathematical description of #energy and motion). I also loved that her #translation, with additional notes and insights, of The Principia is still considered a gold standard French version.

https://media.cooleysekula.net/w/r5JXAMyHRGERsQxgSuFvbw

How it started. How it’s going. w/ @jodi

Some words from a biography of Werner Heisenberg that are just as relevant today as they were in 1933. From "Beyond Uncertainty" by David C. Cassidy.

Inoculation against demagoguery is, after all other guardrails have failed, one of the last checks against the total destruction of a democratic state by a singular individual.

I just wish I understood completely how to insure such inoculation at a societal level.

From HubbleTelescope on Twitter: This time-lapse of Hubble images, spanning 22 years, traces the ongoing aftermath of Supernova 1987A. Hubble shows a shockwave from the stellar explosion hitting a ring of material previously cast off by the dying star. Explore the scene: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2017/news-2017-08.html https://twitter.com/HubbleTelescope/status/1618985759314173952/video/1