Category: Links Dump

slacktivist: L’affaire Waltke “This is a story about control. It is about, in the unintentionally candid terms of one of the main actors, “absolute authority” and the desire to wield that authority over a text so that the text, in turn, may be used to wield absolute authority over others. It is a story, in… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-14

Michelson and the President (1869) « Skulls in the Stars “I’m currently working my way through the book The Master of Light: a Biography of Albert A. Michelson (1973), written by one of his daughters, Dorothy Michelson Livingston. I typically find the beginnings of biographies to be rather slow-moving, with some sort of statement like,… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-13

Mightygodking.com » Post Topic » The Accidental Trilogy: Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, and The Omega Man “The problem is, Lucas made [Star Wars] so immersive that nobody noticed the allegory, and the effects so beautiful that everyone judged all subsequent films by the standards he set. From now on, an important aspect of all science-fiction… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-11

Neil Fraser: Hardware: Lava Lamp Centrifuge “Would a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Would the wax still rise to the surface? Would the blobs be smaller and faster? With broad disagreement on the answers, I built a large centrifuge to find out.” (tags: physics gravity experiment science video planets astronomy… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-10

Physics Buzz: 490 billion nanometers tall “There are seven SI base units: meter (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd). The other SI units are derived from these seven: acceleration is m/s^2, density is kg/m^3, magnetic field strength is A/m, etc. According to the International Bureau of Weights… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-09

Wave interference: where does the energy go? « Skulls in the Stars The two waves cancel each other out, leaving a completely unmoving string due to destructive interference. My student asked me: what happens to the energy? As posed, it seems that we started with two waves carrying energy, but they canceled each other out,… Continue reading Links for 2010-04-08

Final Links Dump for forty days, give or take. Physicists watch chemistry in slow motion – physicsworld.com “Physicists in the US have observed chemical reactions taking place at such low temperatures that they are dominated by quantum effects, rather than thermal collisions. The researchers showed that diatomic molecules containing potassium and rubidium are much less… Continue reading Links for 2010-02-17

Penultimate Links Dump (for a while) US LHC Blog » Let’s draw Feynman diagams! “There are few things more iconic of particle physics than Feynman diagrams. These little figures of squiggly show up prominently on particle physicists’ chalkboards alongside scribbled equations. The simplicity of these diagrams a a certain aesthetic appeal, though as one might… Continue reading Links for 2010-02-16

WINTER OLYMPICS: Robert Teklemariam will raise Ethiopia’s flag | Richmond Times-Dispatch “On Monday in Vancouver, Robel Teklemariam will compete for Ethiopia in the 15-kilometer cross country skiing event. This will be his second Olympics but the first with his mother in attendance. To qualify, he traveled the world on a shoestring budget, chasing down qualifying… Continue reading Links for 2010-02-13

The Mid-Majority : Last Man “For the past 20 years or so, I’ve played my own game every year at this time. It’s called The Last Man In America To Know Who Won The Super Bowl, or just “Last Man.” It’s a game heavily reliant on tactics, organizational skill, and evasive procedures. The object is… Continue reading Links for 2010-02-12