Links for 2010-09-07

“I love xkcd wedding cakes / boom de yada boom de yada.”

“The aim of physics.org has always been to help those interested in physics navigate this sea of information. Over the past few years we’ve gathered together over 4,000 of what we consider to be great webpages, and put them into our Explore database on physics.org.

To take things one step further, this year we’re hosting our first ever physics.org web awards to give the best physics sites out there some well-deserved recognition.”

“However, if I am going to go on criticising bad history outside academe, I have to find something that works. I thought I would begin by asking people on Twitter what they thought. I got some great suggestions, some which I don’t know and can’t yet comment on and a few that I would not agree with. I was struck initially by two things: 1) how few of the authors were trained historians or historians of science and 2) how many of the books have long-winded subtitles (Sobel’s Longitude evidently retains its influence with publishers).  I will discuss some of the selections further in future posts but, in the mean time, you can have a look yourself.”

“The universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, yet we still don’t know what much of it is made of. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of it consists of books telling us that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The soaring popularity of popular physics books is a publishing phenomenon.”

“In the quantum chess computer game created by undergraduate computer science student Alice Wismath, a piece that should be a knight could simultaneously also be a queen, a pawn or something else. The player doesn’t know what the second state might be or which of the two states the piece will choose when it is moved.

“It was very weird,” said Ernesto Posse, a Queen’s postdoctoral researcher who took part in a recent “quantum chess” tournament at the university in Kingston, Ont. “You only know what a piece really is once you touch the piece. Basically, planning ahead is impossible.””

Catty reviewer comment of the year nominee: “The only pop performer who has had as protean, as chameleon like, as resonant a career [as Bob Dylan] is arguably Madonna, who makes up in costume changes what she lacks in lyrical acuity; but few take her seriously enough to write really poorly about her, at least among the straight white males who still make up the rock intelligentsia. Fashion writers and Camille Paglia are something else.”