Still catching up on all the reading I’ve not been able to focus on for ages, and I finally got to read a book by one of my Twitter friends, Premee Mohamed, Beneath the Rising (2020)! Part thriller, part horror, … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Just a short note here to help bring attention to a GoFundMe for brilliant horror and thriller author Laird Barron, who has been hospitalized with a severe illness. I’ve talked about Barron’s work quite often on this blog, and have … Continue reading → | Continue reading
I’ve been rather quiet the past week as I’ve been enjoying — and enduring — the holidays with my family. But the end of the year is approaching, and I thought I should do some sort of year-end wrap up. … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Let’s recap four more old school Dungeons & Dragons threads that I’ve been posting to Twitter and Mastodon! No time to waste: Death’s Ride (1984), by Garry Spiegle. This is one of those books that I have owned since I … Continue reading → | Continue reading
One of the fun things about being a physicist is that occasionally you end up pondering some sort of everyday phenomenon that you’ve never thought about before and realize that you can explain it with some elementary physics! Some time … Continue reading → | Continue reading
As readers of this blog know, I’ve been doing #OldSchoolDungeonsAndDragons Twitter threads for several years now, but every once in a while I talk about an old product that is too significant to cover in a short tweet thread! Back … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Just a short note: my editor pointed out to me that my book made the “top ten” list of Spring 2023 science books at Publishers Weekly! Saving the relevant part of the page for my own personal record: This is … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Have you ever remembered a book that you read as a child that you were curious to read again but you can’t remember the name of the book or the author or even enough detail to track it down? That … Continue reading → | Continue reading
As I’ve said a number of times, the pandemic really destroyed my ability to read, and now that I’ve achieved some sense of mental stability again I’m working to catch up on a bunch of the books that I just … Continue reading → | Continue reading
It’s been a while since I did some Old School Dungeons & Dragons on Twitter, but I’ve finally gotten myself back into the rhythm! (I am now also posting the threads on Mastodon, given the instability of Twitter.) Hopefully I’ll … Continue reading → | Continue reading
So, for some reason, my ten year old video on the Barkhausen effect went viral on YouTube the past few weeks, and brought me quite a few new followers there. I thought I’d do a short video to say “thanks … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Now that I’m back in the book reading habit, I’m also back in the book impulse-buying habit. A few weeks back, I happened to see Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth (2021), on the shelf, and was intrigued. It is … Continue reading → | Continue reading
The destruction of Twitter at such a fast rate that you can pretty much watch it collapse in real time is a bit melancholy for me. Though I’m happy to see Billionaire Baby demonstrate clearly his level of actual competence, … Continue reading → | Continue reading
I first encountered the work of Attila Veres in the first volume of The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, which came out in late 2020. The series, now on volume 2, collects the best works of foreign horror authors … Continue reading → | Continue reading
It’s been a while since I compiled my fake book title posts from Twitter, so it’s time to do so again! You can see compilation 1, compilation 2, compilation 3, compilation 4 and compilation 5 at the links. For those who don’t recall, this is … Continue reading → | Continue reading
“So your favorite social media site has been taken over by a bumbling fascist-friendly narcissist.” Mine, too. With Twitter under new management that leaves me very pessimistic about its future as a viable communications site, I’ve been taking a look … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Ramsey Campbell remains my favorite horror author and, in my opinion, one of the greatest writers of all time, period. So any time a new Campbell novel appears, I snap it up without hesitation. The most recent is Fellstones, which … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Ever since I started my blog back in 2007, I’ve been doing a yearly compilation of classic horror stories that can be freely read on the internet! (Search “Halloween Treats” on my blog to see earlier editions!) I see no … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Hunter Shea’s novel Ghost Mine came out in 2019, but somehow it only came to my attention recently, when he posted about it on Twitter. My immediate reaction? “You had me at ‘ghost mine.'” Really, what else do you need … Continue reading → | Continue reading
The existence of game distributors like Steam and the Epic Store have led to a bit of a Renaissance in short form horror video games. Small teams of developers, even single people, have crafted a variety of games that make … Continue reading → | Continue reading
This week, I attended my first in-person scientific conference since 2019. I went to Optica’s Frontiers in Optics in Rochester, NY, a city near and dear to my heart, since I did my PhD there, as well. I had a … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Of course, my publisher never tells me these things, but the cover for my next popular science book, on the history and physics of invisibility, has been made public and the book has a release date! It was a challenge … Continue reading → | Continue reading
It’s time for me to get back into blogging about weird fiction! I really fell off in my reading over the past few years, due to the stress of political turmoil, the pandemic, and life in general. Fortunately, I’ve been … Continue reading → | Continue reading
This past Monday turned out to be a rather rare event for skywatchers: the planet Jupiter’s closest point of approach to the Earth since 1963! This was the coincidence of two situations. The first is the planet being in opposition … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Keeping up my epic long-running series looking at classic Dungeons and Dragons of the TSR era! The Complete Book of Necromancers (1995), by Steve Kurtz. This one is a rarity, and relatively pricey! I finally sucked it up and ordered … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Well, it turns out I missed a big anniversary for my blog — again! August 14th marks 15 years of me blogging, which is pretty amazing considering this was really just going to be a minor thing that I experimented … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Time for more old school Dungeons & Dragons, compiled from the threads I post on twitter! Without further ado, let us begin: Lords of Darkness, by Ed Greenwood et al. (1988). This is another one of those reference books that … Continue reading → | Continue reading
So when writing my book Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics, on the history and science of how cats land on my feet, I attempted to track down the oldest explanation in print that attempted to explain why cats seem to … Continue reading → | Continue reading
My apologies for my relative quietness on the blog lately — I’ve been quite busy with work, which has left me little energy for detailed blogging! However, I rediscovered a small story about cats that amused me, and that I … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Time for the next installment of old school D&D! I have been buoyed by a visit to Games Plus in Mount Prospect outside of Chicago, which has a massive collection of new and used game stuff! (So expect posts to … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Today, May 16, is the 2022 International Day of Light, designated by UNESCO to recognize the role of light in science, art, and education. You can read more also at the optical society Optica’s webpage. I’m out of town for … Continue reading → | Continue reading
Another post inspired by my book on Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics! I talk about geometric phases in the book in the context of falling cats, but here I focus on the polarization of light.… | Continue reading
This blog post is based on some early experimental writing that was done for my Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics book that was cut from the final draft! As you will see, it was much too long… | Continue reading