On Basketball

While in the past, I’ve written a bunch about basketball here, I’ve been unusually silent on the subject this year, confining my commentary to the occasional Links Dump item from Grantland and other sites. This isn’t because the past season was not noteworthy– indeed, it was a rather eventful year for Syracuse basketball, with the… Continue reading On Basketball

Links for 2012-04-03

Science teacher: Why kids love science anyway… We grow beans and basil in class, edible stuff from the breath they exhale–at first they resist the idea, as any reasonable creature would, and I don’t give them any particular reason to believe it, but some do anyway. Kids like this. Many of the hypotheses generated in… Continue reading Links for 2012-04-03

Published
Categorized as Links Dump

A Confusing Light OPERA: How Does a Loose Fiber Optic Cable Cause a Signal Delay?

So, the infamous OPERA result for neutrino speeds seems to be conclusively disproven, traced to a problem with a timing signal. Matt Strassler has a very nice explanation of the test that shows that the whole thing can almost certainly be traced to a timing error that cropped up in 2008. This problem is generally… Continue reading A Confusing Light OPERA: How Does a Loose Fiber Optic Cable Cause a Signal Delay?

Links for 2012-04-02

MacRecipes | Fathom Have you ever wondered in how many different episodes MacGyver has made an arc welder (answer: 3 times in episodes 6, 52, and 87)? Or perhaps you forgot about your favorite episode (season 1, episode 12) when Mac escapes via a casket that transforms into a jetski. And how many times has… Continue reading Links for 2012-04-02

Published
Categorized as Links Dump

Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata

In comments to yesterday’s post, Andrew G asked: Speaking of writing, is there an errata list somewhere for “How to teach relativity to your dog“? No, but there probably should be. I believe there’s an error in one of Maxwell’s equations (an incorrect sign, though you should’ve seen the first typeset version…), but given the… Continue reading Tell My Dog What She Got Wrong: How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Errata