Category: Uncertainty

  • Problems of Translation

    Physicists speak math. When they want to communicate clearly with one another, it looks a lot like this: It’s tight. It’s clear. It’s unambiguous (as long as you know how to read the symbols). It’s also completely unlike how most people communicate. Much of the coursework in physics education programs involves simply learning to read…

  • Your Guru Won’t be Making Dinner for the Kids

    “Nobody is coming to live my life for me. It is the one thing that is mine entirely.” I crawled into bed the other night after reading a wonderful book about a young, female rabbi. She has such faith. I yearn for such faith. And then sometimes, she has such doubt. I know about such…

  • “Position Yourself,” He Said

    (This blog has a glossary. Or it will, someday.) When I was in grad school the second time, I signed up for a course taught by a radical queer theorist/anthropologist. Because that’s what all physics teachers need, you know? My very first assignment in this course was to summarize the readings (three full length academic…

  • Things I Don’t Know

    I cannot teach you to be rich. I cannot make you thin, or famous, or more popular with girls. I don’t know the date of the end of the world, or what happens after you die, or six ways to make sure that your next dinner party is a complete success. I can’t help you…

  • Giving Up on Truth Will Set You Free

    If you get nothing else from this website, please take away the possibility of this: The pursuit of Truth is a fool’s errand. Fool’s Errand 1: The Impossible Task We grow up in a world of competing stories. Call them culture, call them religion, call them beliefs; at heart, they are stories about the world,…

  • The Wonder of the Heavens

    My entire life would have been different if it weren’t for the constellation of Orion. It was the signpost that arose in my life saying, “Astronomy! Over here!” I don’t remember much in the years before I saw Orion (I was about 10 at the time), but from that point on, every birthday and Christmas…

  • Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner

    On Writing is a wonderful book. It is a fine piece of storytelling from a fine storyteller, and full of concrete and useful advice. But I think it steered me wrong in one respect. “Don’t,” Stephen King said, “put your desk in the middle of the room. Place it in the corner to remind yourself…