March 19, 2010
Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize Announced - nice explanation of the conjecture and proof. Don't miss part 2 either.
September 19, 2009
Fast Fat and Out of Control Attention people who teach intro physics: attached please find the contents of your Monday lecture, courtesy the 1884 New York Times editorial board.
"The time is coming, however, when fat men will rival in speed the fastest bicycle, and light men will be utterly unable to compete with them."
The article is scanned in, and so it begins on the lower part of the left side, and continues at the top
August 18, 2009
A friend from high school edits this website, I figure y'all would enjoy. Enjoy.
July 16, 2009
World's Fastest and What Fast Looks Like -- two stunning posts collecting videos of people performing at top speed, from a 9.18second Rubik's Cube solution to skydiving at 614mph (no joke).
May 12, 2009
What Makes Us Happy? from The Atlantic is an article discussing a longitudinal study of the lives of a group of Harvard men starting in the 1930's and continuing even today. The underlying and fascinating question is "What does it take to live a happy and fulfilling life?" The equally interesting B-story discusses how the field of psychology and its methods has changed since the days of measuring head size. (I suspect there is enough tired methodology from the early days and simplification of explanation to drive TheWestIsTheBest up the wall).
April 20, 2009
APS in the news! The office has been all up in arms about this today. Let me say, APS did not actually tell 60 minutes to find Duncan and we do not support LENRs. Of all the things to report on....
HANG THIS CHEATSHEET UP IN YOUR TIME MACHINE - an interesting list (zoomable, but obligatory pedantry makes me feel it could be improved. [more inside]
March 03, 2009
The Phenomenology of Error Speaking of things that fill people (self included) with irrationally intense and immediate fury, I recommend Joseph Williams' deep and worthwhile exploration of "word rage".
I am often puzzled by what we call errors of grammar and usage, errors such as different than, between you and I, a which for a that, and so on. I am puzzled by what motive could underlie the unusual ferocity which an irregardless or a hopefully or a singular media can elicit, ... words like detestable vulgarity, garbage, atrocity, idiot, and simple illiteracy. The last thing I want to seem is sanctimonious. But what happens in Cambodia and Afghanistan could more reasonably be called horrible atrocities. ... Idiots we have more than enough of in our state institutions. And while simply illiteracy is the condition of billions, it does not characterize those who use disinterested in its original sense.
I am puzzled why some errors should excite this seeming fury while others, not obviously different in kind, seem to excite only moderate disapproval. And I am puzzled why some of us can regard any particular item as a more or less serious error, while others, equally perceptive, and acknowledging that the same item may in some sense be an "error," seem to invest in their observation no emotion at all. (I have condensed the passage)
It's long, and deserves consideration, so print it out and read it on the shitter. The amusing and somewhat unexpected conclusion provides additional payoff. [more inside]
February 11, 2009
Recovery Act Explorer - see the relative allocations of money, and see which are voted (by visitors to the site) to be good or bad uses of the money.
January 23, 2009
Regulators approve the first embryonic stem cell study in humans. They are using some of the old Bush approved lines but I want more than anything for this trial to show amazing results so there is direct evidence that the policies of the last 8 years were completely wrongheaded.
December 20, 2008
Slow Motion Video - it may not be initially clear what's going on. Stick it out: it's worth it. [more inside]
November 18, 2008
Interior of a giant leafcutter ant colony - scientists pour tons of concrete to fill tunnels and chimneys in a giant ant colony. Really giant: 538 square feet, 26 feet deep; required evacuating 40 tons of soil (the scale equivalent of the Great Wall of China). Hölldobler's book Ants (#27 on the "100 Best 20th century Non-Fiction Books" (AE) list, cowritten with Edward O. Wilson) just moved up my wish list. (vid after jump) [more inside]
October 09, 2008
The work of Tversky and Kahneman* (founders of Prospect Theory and so modern Behavioral Finance) came up at dinner last night, and I did poor service to the breadth of their accessible, surprising, applicable results.
Most of their work shows how decisions people make in the face of uncertainty and risk deviate from purely rational calculations* of utility & expectation. This is one of many refutations to the classic Chicago School's model of intrinsically efficient markets governed by the self-interest of purely rational agents. (As recent events remind us, deviations from rationality such as those of K&T create externalities that may be beneficially corrected through market regulation.)
For a reasonable catalog of these "cognitive illusions", take a tour through wikipedia articles citing Kahneman and Tversky with say "Theory", "Effect", "Heuristic", "Paradox" in the abstract. For a broader intro to behavioral econ, logical fallacy and the many ways we fall short as rational agents, I recommend the engaging How We Know What Isn't So by Gilovitch.
if this is too many links I *starred the two to click
September 29, 2008
Your Universe - log scale. Hmmm.... [more inside]
September 10, 2008
I am duly impressed about how much hurricane track prediction has improved year over year since the 70's. Hydrodynamic models are worth something!
August 07, 2008
Electrolysis hype.
What happens when university PR departments are too aggressive in their promotion of hum-drum science, and the media takes the bait? Shame on you M.I.T.
August 06, 2008
What have we done... Pictures of the large hadron collider from the big picture blog. Wow...just wow.
July 21, 2008
On colony collapse disorder and the adventures of beekeeping -
Finally, and, I suppose, predictably, I began leafing through beekeeping catalogues, weighing the advantages of wooden frames versus plastic ones and full-body “English-style” bee suits versus simpler (and cheaper) veils. By the time I ordered my hive, the initial reason for having one—to learn about colony-collapse disorder—had dissipated. The disease (or whatever it was) hadn’t turned up in the region where I live, which is western Massachusetts. But by that point I wasn’t sure whether I was writing the story to keep bees or keeping bees to write the story.
It's not in NE (yet), but bees across the country are suddenly dying off due to a mysterious phenomenon known as "Colony Collapse Disorder". There's no known cause and no proven remedy. You can learn more at the moderately self-serving helpthehoneybees.com, as publicized in this video (choreographed by the OK Go lead singer's sister, same person as did both their hit videos). [ny'er article via kottke, more links there. vid via momma k. I coulda sworn I posted this but no search revealed it. o well.]
July 18, 2008
A lusty Tomahawk chop to Taleyarkhan et al. who claimed to have shown nuclear fusion in a tabletop sonoluminescence experiment in 2002. Purdue finds some counts of academic misconduct and though it does not specifically implicate the 2002 Science publication it sure doesn't look that great in the overall scheme of things. I seem to remember some of Frommhold's students thinking this was pretty much impossible at the time of publication.
July 09, 2008
I keep hearing about this Wall-E movie (I think the closest we have here is Kung Fu Panda), which led me to read a little about it, which led to tangential surfing, which led me to this little nugget:
Without a head the cockroach would just sit around without doing anything much.
[more inside]
June 19, 2008
June 08, 2008
Cool interactive graphic assembling all the exit poll data from the dem primaries.
It's a top-notch infographic so it's from the NYT, natch. It's disappointing that the larger scientific community hasn't embraced information design and online communication the way, for example, those who study politics or baseball have. [more inside]
June 07, 2008
The Salem Hypothesis - Is there a correlation in the scientific world between subscribing to creationism and having an engineering degree and if so why? Can I also add another group which is the people who go into theoretical particle physics because they want to understand the mind of God?