Everybody should read today’s Medium Large. In fact, you should read Medium Large every day. Why aren’t you?
Category: Silliness
New Frontiers in Spam
I just got a link-pimping piece of spam that suggests they’re improving the targeting algorithm for Subject: lines: Subject: hep-th index update (For those not in the know, hep-th is the High Energy Physics- Theoretical category on the porn server.) It’s still a “close, but not quite,” as I read hep-th about as well as… Continue reading New Frontiers in Spam
The String Theory Diet
Are you unhappy with the way you look? Feel like you’re carrying around some large extra dimensions? Want to compactify your manifold before the summer conference season gets here? If you answered “Yes!” to any of those questions, then you’re ready for the String Theory Diet! Each rich, satisfying meals of eleven-dimensional noodles, and watch… Continue reading The String Theory Diet
Double Entendres in Physics
RPM is dropping his Double Entendre Fridays, which threatens to cut off the world supply of really dorky sex jokes. But never fear, I’m here to pick it up with a physics version! Back when I was a lowly undergrad, I was the TA for an optics lab section, and was helping some students to… Continue reading Double Entendres in Physics
And the Problem is… What, Exactly?
The usual suspects are all upset about John Barrow’s crack about Richard Dawkins: When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer’s Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, “You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you’re not really a… Continue reading And the Problem is… What, Exactly?
You Are Likely to Be Eaten by a Grue
Of special interest to Nathan, evidence that the process of dissertation writing is the same across disciplines: > work on dissertation You spend three hours reading five articles which have nothing to do with the dissertation. > work on dissertation You spend twenty minutes online reading about baseball. > tear out hair Taken. You find… Continue reading You Are Likely to Be Eaten by a Grue
But Who Would Win?
Via Inside Higher Ed, a story with the nearly unbeatable headline: Feds Pounce on Student Dresses As a Ninja. Why was a student running around the Georgia campus dressed as a ninja? Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared… Continue reading But Who Would Win?
Inspiration at Last
Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog, and an excellente planne for a worke of grete literarye merit, including: The dog-maysteres Tale: the dog-mayster (talle, curtel of greene), his dogge, and his companiounes do fynde an olde wool-quaye that semeth to be havnted by a foule spectre – one of them has those fancie new eye-lenses, the… Continue reading Inspiration at Last
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
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