Hypothesis: The outcome of any pick-up basketball game depends more strongly on the match-up between the two worst players on each team than the match-up between the two best players on each team. Argument: If the talent differential between the worst players is sufficiently large, then on defense, the better of the two is essentially… Continue reading Hoops Hypothesis
Month: April 2006
Origin Story
Katherine Sharpe asked about the best science books ever, as a proxy for “what got you into science?” I wasn’t able to give a really good answer to that question, but I will share a science-related anecdote from when I was a kid. There’s a good chance that this will come off as either painfully… Continue reading Origin Story
Greatest Science Book?
Over at the new Seed blog, here on ScienceBlogs, Katherine Sharpe asks about the best science books ever (a topic that was also discussed at Cosmic Variance some time back. I’ve been sort of swamped this week, but that’s only part of the reason why I haven’t responded. The main reason is a shameful secret:… Continue reading Greatest Science Book?
Visualize It In N Dimensions, And Let N Go to Four
Mark Chu-Carroll has a very nice discussion of what “extra dimensions” actually mean in theories like string theory. It’s not the same thing that hack SF authors mean when they talk about “dimensions” in which the Nazis won WWII (that’s “multiverse theory” or possibly “landscapeology” or possibly “late-night stoner bullshit”): A better way to explain,… Continue reading Visualize It In N Dimensions, And Let N Go to Four
Truth is Stranger than Ficciones
Via Peg Kerr’s LiveJournal, an ABC News story that says we’re living in a Jorge Luis Borges story: So what is in the Gospel of Judas? It is a dialogue that claims to be a conversation between Jesus and Judas in which Jesus asks Judas to betray him. (And of course, you just know it… Continue reading Truth is Stranger than Ficciones
Why We Like the Onion
1) This week’s Inforgraphic: Job and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 2) Music reviews containing sentences like: “[The new Flaming Lips record] frequently sounds like Steely Dan as heard from the other end of a machine shop.” Which reminds me, I need to go down to the machine shop… (Yes, this is… Continue reading Why We Like the Onion
CSI: Durham
As anybody who has read my comments on basketball knows, I have an intense dislike of the Duke men’s basketball team, mostly due to their fans, who combine the arrogance typical of fans of a dominant program with a sort of snobbery regarding their own class and cleverness. This is particularly aggravating given the institutional… Continue reading CSI: Durham
Thin Kills?
As someone who has derived a surprising amount of blog traffic from posting about weight loss, I feel like I really ought to say something about Alas, A Blog’s case against dieting (which I first noticed via a Dave Munger comment). It’s a comprehensive collection of data (with graphs, so it must be Science) used… Continue reading Thin Kills?
Wire Torture
With hoops season having wound down, we’re slipping into that time of the year when I don’t have anything to watch on tv. ESPN shows nothing but baseball, the NBA, and Mel Kiper, and there’s very little on regular tv that’s worth a damn. Happily, I have a pile of Netflix DVD’s from back before… Continue reading Wire Torture
The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Things
The post title is a famous William Gibson quote, referring to the tendency of high-tech gadgets to be put to uses the manufacturers never expected. By “the Street,” he meant people in general, with maybe a slant toward the sort of underclass element he focusses on in his books, but he might well have been… Continue reading The Street Finds Its Own Uses for Things