A while back, a reader from Bulgaria sent me a photo of a highly topical bottle of local spirits: You can either know where you are, or how much you’ve drunk, but not both… Having spent my last day of 2011 taking SteelyKid to the mall for bouncy-bounce and midway games, and then having her… Continue reading It May or May Not be 2012 Somewhere
Month: December 2011
Links for 2011-12-31
Determining the ultimate champion from the year that was – Grantland It wasn’t until I attempted to fill a draw of 64, and got stuck at 7, did I realize what a huge year this was for losers. If you weren’t getting financially screwed over, you were probably getting divorced, locked up, or pepper sprayed.… Continue reading Links for 2011-12-31
End of Year Self-Promotion
I will eventually do a “Year in Blog” post with a bunch of links to top posts and so on, but not until the year is actually over. At the moment, I’m too busy prepping next term’s class to do all the link chasing. That doesn’t mean I can’t engage in a little self-promotion, though.… Continue reading End of Year Self-Promotion
Links for 2011-12-29
Tests Cast Doubt on F.A.A. Restrictions on Kindle and iPad – NYTimes.com The Federal Aviation Administration has its reasons for preventing passengers from reading from their Kindles and iPads during takeoff and landing. But they just don’t add up. Since I wrote a column last month asking why these rules exist, I’ve spoken with the… Continue reading Links for 2011-12-29
Links for 2011-12-28
Armageddon Rock by Alan Smale | Lightspeed Magazine The Doomsday Asteroid is coming. An immense boulder with our name on it is cruising through the Solar System, and we all know what will happen when it arrives. Innumeracy on the Faculty! | Blog I’m convinced that the Standards for Mathematical Practice are doomed to fail… Continue reading Links for 2011-12-28
Baby Formulae
One of The Pip’s Christmas presents simply demands to be shown off here: This is a baby blanket knitted by his awesome Aunt Anastasia, with three physics equations on it. They’re subtle, but if you look closely, you can read them: E=mc2, V=IR, and F=ma. All the other babies will be jealous of his knowledge… Continue reading Baby Formulae
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Eponym
As we started the last week of the advent calendar, I was trying to map out the final days, and was coming up one equation short. I was running through various possibilities– the Dirac equation, Feynman’s path integrals, the Standard Model Lagrangian, when I realized that the answer was staring me right in the face:… Continue reading The Advent Calendar of Physics: Eponym
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Einstein’s Gravity
A week and a half ago, when the advent calendar reached Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, I said that it was the first equation we had seen that wasn’t completely correct. Having done our quick swing through quantum physics, the time has come to correct that equation: If you say “Einstein equation” to a random… Continue reading The Advent Calendar of Physics: Einstein’s Gravity
The Advent Calendar of Physics: Schrödinger
Newton’s birthday (in the Julian calendar) is Sunday, so we’re in the final days of the advent calendar. Which means it’s time for the equations that are least like anything Newton did, such as today’s: This is the Schrödinger equation from non-relativistic quantum mechanics. If you want to determine the quantum state of an object… Continue reading The Advent Calendar of Physics: Schrödinger
Links for 2011-12-22
Reminder: Tis the Season Not to Be an Ass Ä°Ë⬔ Whatever But — but — what about all those horrible atheists taking over holiday displays with crucified Santa skeletons? Surely that’s evidence of a war! Well, no, it’s evidence of some non-believers taking a page out of the PETA playbook, i.e., being dicks to get… Continue reading Links for 2011-12-22