in "I love my family" news...

[flea]

We got into a discussion at dinner about what was the biggest bear (polar bear, or some kind of brown bear?) e decided to look on the internet and discovered that the consensus is polar bear, but some people root for the Kodiak bear (which is a subspecies of the brown bear, and is what mr. flea was plumping for.) We then looked up the biggest whale - casper said it was the blue whale, and Dillo was rooting for humpback. Casper was right, of course, but Dillo was still happy to hear about humpback whales, and the threatened meltdown when we told Casper we'd been whale watching once and SHE NEVER HAD didn't actually happen.

Dillo was full of exciting questions about planets on the drive home today - "Why does the earth move? Why do planets go around the sun? Is the moon a big planet?"

I do so hope they grw up to be scientists. I definitely should have been one (though a practical, non-quantum theory one - I am only into Chapter 2 of "How to Teach Physics To Your Dog" and I am worried I am not as smart as the dog.)

Comments

[mightyurchin.livejournal.com]

One of my regrets about college is that I didn't take college-level chemistry to see if I liked it. I did like high school chemistry, which is particularly impressive since my chemistry teacher and I did not like each other.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Yay, Science!

I need to order Chad's book. It was the only thing on my wish list that I didn't get for Christmas, and it's been sitting in my Amazon cart ever since, waiting for me to add something else to qualify for free shipping. His talks on Quantum Physics at Boskone are always a highlight for me.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

It's good. But the last physics I took was my freshman year in high school. I'm a little rusty on classical physics, never mind this quantum stuff. It was actually a gift for Michael, but of course I am reading it first.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I've read his blog posts that started the whole thing rolling (Bunnies made of cheese!), and he did the chapter on decoherence (complete with the dog voice) at the last Boskone, so I'm expecting good things.

I took courses on quantum mechanics both in college and grad school, but they were from a chemistry slant, which is almost totally focused on using it to figure out where that wascally electron is hiding in a specific atom or molecule rather than the neat stuff like alternate universes.