The Quantum Pontiff : Wisely Using Your Advantage "In other words, what is your probability of ruin, given a starting bankroll of D dollars, an advantage of p, and a target of T dollars?" (tags: science math statistics blogs) Optics basics: Coherence ë Skulls in the Stars A very nice explanation of one of the… Continue reading links for 2008-09-04
Baby Soothing Open Thread
We’re taking SteelyKid on her first road trip today, down to Boston to visit Kate’s parents for a few days. This ought to be interesting, as the drive is approximately as long as her longest naps. The disruption in her normal routine may or may not lead to an increased need for baby-calming, so this… Continue reading Baby Soothing Open Thread
Find a Pattern
What’s this graph? The cosmic microwave background? Preliminary results from the LHC? No, it’s SteelyKid’s feeding schedule. The horizontal axis is in days since we brought her home, the vertical axis is time of day on a 24-hour scale (in half-hour bins), and the color scale indicates the duration of the feeding in minutes. If… Continue reading Find a Pattern
links for 2008-09-03
Making Light: Why RMS Titanic Didn’t Have Enough Lifeboats "Sixteen hundred people died in the Titanic disaster because no one had worked out the implications of tuned circuits." (tags: history science blogs gadgets) The TNR Q&A: Charles Barkley "People can always bring up stuff. When I get involved in politics, I am not even going… Continue reading links for 2008-09-03
Colbert, Atheists, and Hermaphrodites
Comedy Central is re-playing Friday’s episodes of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which includes Stephen Colbert’s interview with Lori Lippman Brown of the Secular Coalition for America. It’s interesting to see that she doesn’t really fare any better than any of the religious nutjobs he’s had on in his various interview segments, in… Continue reading Colbert, Atheists, and Hermaphrodites
“Quantum Mechanics Is Magic”: The Making of “Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions”
This was the last of the experiments that I did for my thesis (it’s not the last xenon paper I’m an author on, but the work for that one was done while I was writing up), so my memories of it are bound up with the thesis-writing process. My favorite story about this stuff was… Continue reading “Quantum Mechanics Is Magic”: The Making of “Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions”
Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions
This is the last of the five papers that were part of my Ph.D. thesis, and at ten journal pages in length, it’s the longest thing I wrote. It was also the longest-running experiment of any of the things I did, with the data being taken over a period of about three years, between and… Continue reading Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions
Trying to Be Better Than That
Everybody’s favorite local troll left a comment in yesterday’s links dump about the scandal surrounding Sarah Palin’s daughter. It was remarkably coherent for an “Uncle Al” post, and actually bordered on funny. If you look at it now, though, you’ll find it’s undergone lossy compression. I dithered about this for a while, and then decided… Continue reading Trying to Be Better Than That
links for 2008-09-02
Swans on Tea û How Does Calculus Compare? Darth Vader explains the Pythagorean Theorem. Why? Why not? (tags: youtube silly math education) Roald Dahl’s seductive work as a British spy – Telegraph "I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year." (tags: sex history… Continue reading links for 2008-09-02
Science in the 21st Century
One week from today, barring anything catastrophic, I will be speaking at the Science in the 21st Century workshop at the Perimeter Institute. Sabine Hossenfelder has a nice run-down of the program at Backreaction, and it sounds really interesting. I have my talk more or less ready– I started making slides a week or two… Continue reading Science in the 21st Century