A little more tab clearance, here, this time a few recent stories dealing with those elusive little buggers, neutrinos. In roughly chronological order:< /p> The Daya Bay experiment in China has measured a key parameter for neutrino oscillation (arxiv paper), the phenomenon where neutrinos of one of the three observed types slowly evolve into one […]
Month: March 2012
Story by SteelyKid
While I was editing and posting the pictures for last night’s family blogging, SteelyKid came in and said “Daddy, we watched [indistinct name] today, and they created their own story on the show. But I don’t know how to do that.” “Sure you do, honey,” I said. “You create stories all the time. You were […]
Links for 2012-03-16
[1203.1895] Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard We prove NP-hardness results for five of Nintendo’s largest video game franchises: Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. Our results apply to Super Mario Bros. 1, 3, Lost Levels, and Super Mario World; Donkey Kong Country 1-3; all Legend of Zelda games except Zelda II: The […]
Thursday Family Blogging 031512
Yesterday was “Pi Day” (3-14, in the American style of writing dates), and while I personally find it kind of silly, The Pip took it to heart, using it as the occasion for his first rotation of π radians about his long axis. That is, he rolled from his back onto his stomach. Which is […]
This Week in the Journal of Previously Solved Problems
Over at the Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson complains about the uselessness of comments on journals: Comments in online scientific journals have been notoriously poor — either too much material of uneven quality or too little discussion to amount to a hill of beans. All too often, commenting has to be shut down because internecine and […]
It’s Not Finished, It’s Just Done
There was a nice piece at Inside Higher Ed yesterday on the myth of more time: A lack of confidence in one’s abilities as a writer, researcher, speaker, etc. is at the root of the myth of more time. When a deadline looms, we become acutely aware of the imminent reception of our work by […]
Links for 2012-03-15
Ask Moxie: Welcome to Moxie Madness! Welcome to Moxie Madness 2012: Misery Poker Tournament! 64 mothering calamities go mano-a-mano in a single elimination tournament like you’ve never seen before. Only one mothering problem can be the champion… Vote for which problem is worse in a series of shoot-from-the-hip head-to-head matchups that will leave you breathless. […]
Entanglement Is Not That Magic
One of the things that made me very leery of the whole Brian Cox electron business was the way that he seemed to be justifying dramatic claims through dramatic handwaving: “Moving an electron here changes the state of a very distant electron instantaneously because LOOK! THE WINGED VICTORY OF SAMOTHRACE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PAPER!” On closer inspection, […]
Links for 2012-03-14
Top Five March Madness Predictions – Grantland There are so many things you can count on every year that the tournament has lost almost all of its renegade charm. It’s a product now. As such, it is required to be safe and reliable, the way we want all our products to be. You make peace […]
Pundits Are Not a Conserved Quantity
The thoroughly loathesome Rush Limbaugh is reaping the whirlwind from his latest gaffe (defined, of course, as any instance where a political figure shares his actual opinion with the public), with advertisers fleeing in droves. This has led to a good deal of chortling among the liberal types in my social media universe, but Kevin […]