There’s a Dennis Overbye article in the Times today with the Web headline “From Fermilab, a New Clue to Explain Human Existence?” which I like to think of as a back-handed tribute to the person who linked to an interview with Sean Carroll by calling him “The cosmologist, not the scientist.” This is the secret […]
Month: May 2010
Links for 2010-05-18
DLMF: NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions An Abromowitz and Stegun for the Internet age. (tags: math science software physics books internet) Blog U.: Is TED Making Us Stupid? – Technology and Learning – Inside Higher Ed “Pre-TED, I used to be able to sit through a boring lecture or presentation — diligently taking notes […]
Why I’d Never Make It as a Mathematician
Matt’s Sunday Function this week is a weird one, a series that is only conditionally convergent: So the sum of the infinite series, by inexorable logic, is both ln(2) and ln(2)/2. How is this possible? Of course it isn’t. The flaw in our logic is the assumption that the series has a definite sum – […]
Bath-Time Fluid Dynamics
SteelyKid’s every-so-often bath was last night, and as always, she was fascinated by scooping up water in a hexagonal cup thing that’s part of one of her bath toys, and watching it drain out. Which is completely understandable– not just because she’s a baby, but because there’s a bunch of physics at work, here. I […]
Links for 2010-05-17
Art – Lapham’s Quarterly It takes seven steps to get from Kevin Bacon to Mark Twain (tags: books literature history art music pictures movies culture silly) Shocking: Michael Faraday does biology! (1839) « Skulls in the Stars “These experiments are fascinating and paint an amusing picture: Faraday and up to three assistants sticking their hands […]
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update
A few upcoming events related to How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: The big one is that I’ll be aprt of the “Author’s Alley” portion of the World Science Festival Street Fair in New York City on Sunday, June 6th. The last couple of these have coincided with out-of-town trips for me, so I’m […]
Links for 2010-05-16
james_nicoll: Please plug the holes in my ignorance “China has its Four Great Classical Novels: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber. My impression, gained from minutes and minutes of research, is these are influential and the sort of thing any given Chinese person would […]
Bonus Baby Blogging
It’s a beautiful day here in Niskayuna, and we have family visiting. So here’s a bonus baby picture (also in use as my Facebook profile picture at the moment), in hopes that while you’re distracted by the cute, I can sneak outside with SteelyKid and enjoy the nice weather. Everybody say “Awwwwww….”
Links for 2010-05-15
News: Profs Turned Pols – Inside Higher Ed “From local school board races to Congressional campaigns, an effort is under way to push scientists out of the lab and onto the stump. Through a series of Web-based seminars and organizing efforts on university campuses, Scientists & Engineers for America (SEA) has been luring professors and […]
Bohemian Mechanical Rhapsody
Blame Bryan O’Sullivan for this– after his comment about misreading “Bohmian Mechanics” as “Bohemian Mechanics,” I couldn’t get this silly idea out of my head. And this is the result. I like to think that this was Brian May‘s first draft (he does have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, after all), before Freddie Mercury got hold […]