Chad Orzel

• Physics Blogging Round-Up: May June 20, 2017
  Much delayed, but this works out well because it’ll give you something to read while we’re away in Mexico on a family vacation. Here’s what I wrote for Forbes in the merry month of May: — In Science, Probability Is More Certain Than You Think: Some thoughts on the common mistake people make in saying…
• Kids Update, Programming Note June 19, 2017
  I’ve skipped a few weeks of cute-kid updates, largely because I was at DAMOP for a week, and then catching on stuff I missed while I was at DAMOP for a week. The principal activity during this stretch has been SteelyKid’s softball, with a mad flurry of games at the end of the season to…
• Nerd Parenting Update June 1, 2017
  We took a rare long weekend to go to a family party for Memorial Day at my parents’ (Kate and the kids always get the day off, but I usually have to teach; this year, I’m doing a team-taught class, and the other person was willing to cover my Monday spot), thus the lack of…
• Long-Overdue Photo-a-Day Wrap-Up May 25, 2017
  During my sabbatical last year, I decided to try to do a photo-a-day project, taking and sharing at least one good picture a day of something or another. The strict photo-a-day format fell victim to my general busy-ness and disorganization, but I did eventually complete the whole thing. In the final post of the series,…
• Kids and Construction Update May 21, 2017
  The big development of this week is that construction started on the Great Chateau Steelypips Renovation of 2017. We’re extending one part of the back of the house about ten feet to gain a bedroom on the second floor, and gut-renovating the kitchen, dining room, and mud room. This is a massive undertaking, with a…
• Kid Growth Update May 13, 2017
  At SteelyKid’s softball game today, the Pip provided an ideal cute-kid photo to use as a springboard to some SCIENCE! Or at least, a graph… Anyway, here’s the Little Dude showing off how tall he’s gotten: OK, really he’s hiding under Kate’s raincoat (after two beautiful sunny days in a row, we’re back to dreary…
• Kid Reading Update May 7, 2017
  For a long time now, I’ve had a Sunday routine with the kids, where we go to the Schenectady Greenmarket and then to the Open Door (which is right next to the outdoor market, and a couple blocks from the indoor location), then to lunch at Panera, and usually grocery shopping. We have a standing…
• The Inescapable Vagueness of Academic Hiring May 4, 2017
  Inside Higher Ed ran a piece yesterday from a Ph.D. student pleading for more useful data about job searching: What we need are professional studies, not just anecdotal advice columns, about how hiring committees separate the frogs from the tadpoles. What was the average publication count of tenure-track hires by discipline? How did two Ph.D.…
• Physics Blogging Round-Up: April May 2, 2017
  It’s the first week of May, which means we’re due to see flowers watered by all this damn rain soon, and also a recap of the various posts I wrote for Forbes during April: — Why Are There Too Many Papers In Theoretical Physics?: A look at the origins of “ambulance chasing” in high-energy theory,…
• Kid Writing Update April 30, 2017
  One of the things parents of multiple kids often talk about is how they don’t end up doing the same things with second children that they did with their first. For example, I carried the weekly Appa-for-scale photos on with SteelyKid for a couple of years, but didn’t last anywhere near that long with The…