catdynamics | November 18, 2015Skrekkur is an annual talent show for Icelandic schools, roughly 9-10th grade, and it has grown to become quite a big deal.
The winning act is usually stunning and original and very well executed, and I don't just say that 'cause my little cousins keep winning...
This year the winning performance, from Hagaskóli, was extraordinary, and not, as far as I know, featuring any of my cousins:
youtube video from Lára Hanna.
"I was ten years old when I was first called "whore"
I didn't understand why, now I understand
I was in the way, I was bossy,
I crossed the line, I tried to break out from my…
catdynamics | November 18, 2015Why sex is just like a nice cuppa...
This animation from Emmeline May and Blue Seat Studios is really quite excellent and has been making the rounds, but that doesn't mean everyone has seen it...
"Copyright ©2015 Emmeline May and Blue Seat Studios
Non-commercial use: Video must have copyright information displayed below video, with a live link to original. No alteration to the video may be made, other than translation."
Quite good analogy.
catdynamics | November 10, 2015The Kepler 2 mission serendipitously observed Neptune about a year ago.
The images were posted on the K2 website, but according to the website stat like nobody shared them, which sucks.
The animation was just shown at the Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, #DPS15, in DC so it is time to show it again.
Enjoy.
Kepler Observes Neptune Dance with Its Moons
Check Emily Lakdwalla's planetary blog for #DPS15 news
catdynamics | October 19, 2015As of this morning we have discovered over 1,500 exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun.
In addition to the confirmed discoveries, we have over 3,000 candidate exoplanets, most discovered by the NASA Kepler Mission through transits, where we see the shadow of a planet as it crosses in front of its parent star.
We know, statistically, that most of the candidate planets are real, but a few % are weird misalignments of something else that makes us think there might be a planet there. Filtering those out is hard.
We also see other things, weird and wonderful things...
Little over…
catdynamics | October 16, 2015Well, that took longer than expected.
Anyone still out there?
Lots to talk about, eh?
catdynamics | February 13, 2015We haven't done an iPod iChing prognostication in a very long time, and needs must!
So, Oh Mighty iPod One! What say you?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: The Secret Marriage - Sting
The Crossing: I Will Not Be Denied - Bonnie Raitt
The Crown: Away in a Manger - Kenny G
The Root: Last Christmas - Wham
The Past: All At Once - Bonnie Raitt
The Future: Rock Steady - Sting
The Questioner: Circle Dance - Bonnie Raitt
The House: History Will Teach Us Nothing - Sting
The Inside: Centuries - Fall Out Boy
The Outcome: She's a Rebel - Green Day
The Covering: well, that was tres…
catdynamics | February 3, 2015Bee at Backreaction has been busy over the last few months, here is my backlog reading list:
A Thousand Words
Do we live in a computer simulation?
Consciousness and Physics from Scratch
10 things I wish I had known 20 years ago
Science changed my life and yours too
Do we write too many papers?
Frequently Asked Questions
No, the long sought-after link between the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity has not been found
Does the scientific method need revision?
It is a good starting point, if you're not reading Backreaction already.
catdynamics | February 2, 2015Because I must trim browser tabs, here is a current short list of things that might be useful:
Threebody - online implementation of the open source IAS15 integrator - a 15th order high precision N-body integrator -
ASCL - Astrophysics Source Code Library - Open Source Code
Visible Spectra of the Elements - Except Astatine :-(
Astronomy Simulators - small web simulators for elementary concepts.
Some quite nifty.
From University of Nebraska.
All the Kepler 2 Campaign 0 data - with some tools to play with it
catdynamics | January 4, 2015One of the joys of the holidays and the University turning off the heating and locking us out, is that it provides time to catch up on things: papers, refereeing, recommendation letters, grading, syllabi, proposals, all the stuff one can rarely get to during actual working semester hours.
And, sometimes, there is time for real life: casual reading, family, catching up online...
One of the ye olde blog things I like to look over occasionally is Scott Aaronson's shtetl-optimized, for the latest on P!=NP news, or polemic on quantum computing.
This time, what caught my eye was his take on the…
catdynamics | January 3, 2015Happy New Year!
I heard that Killing The Internet is a Thing, and apparently keeping more than a few hundred tabs open in Firefox will do the trick, so I'm doing some blog dumps to get the year kicked off:
Quanta Magazine is an (editorially independent) publication of the Simons Foundation which has been doing some interesting science journalism, beyond the usual channeling or press releases and artificial dichotomy that plagues much of the media:
These are some of the stories they ran that caught my attention:
Seeing Cats and Cosmos
Why RNA is Right Handed
A New Physics Theory of Life
Fluid…
catdynamics | August 27, 2014In which Chris "Slick" Ford challenges me, and I accept.
In turn, I challenge Valerie, Diddi and Stefan.
You know who you are.
h/t to Sir Patrick Stewart for illustrating how to properly take on such challenges.
catdynamics | August 24, 2014good thing about Icelandic, it is phonetic, almost all the words are pronounced the way they are spelled, including Bárðarbunga
the extra few letters are just what they look like.
Fortunately Biggi Lögga is there to set you straight.
catdynamics | August 22, 2014Bárðarbunga is arguably the scariest of the 30 or so active volcanoes in Iceland.
Extreme volcanoes don't always have extreme eruptions, but they are scary because they have the capability for extreme events, uniquely so.
Bárðarbunga - under the ice cap at the top left - from Google maps
It is not the most active, it is not the tallest, it may possibly be the biggest in some sense, but it is the volcano which gave us the largest eruption on Earth since modern humans started trying to get organized: the Þjórsárhraun eruption about 8,500 years ago.
[caption id="attachment_3871" align="…
catdynamics | August 22, 2014Science had a very interesting special section this spring: The Science of Inequality - basically doing a summary and review of issues related to the stuff in Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century
The section has a series of very interesting articles on a range of related topics:
"Inequality in the Long Run" by Piketty and Saez
"The ancient roots of the 1%" by Pringle
"Our Egalitarian Eden" by Pennisi
"Physicists say it's simple" by Cho
"Tax man's gloomy message: the rich will get richer" by Marshall
"A World of Difference" by Underwood
"Can Disparities by Deadly?" by Underwood…
catdynamics | July 16, 2014Astrophotography is the title of a gorgeous and very useful new book by Thierry Legault
I had to taper off doing book reviews, much to the annoyance of all those lovely people who persist in sending me just the sort of books that I actually really love to read - it just got too time consuming - but, when Rocky Nook told me Thierry Legault had a book on Astrophotgraphy coming out, I agreed to review it immediately.
This is why:
shades of Atlantis
Atlantis
From NASA HQ Photo on Flickr
Thierry Legault is an expert and he takes beautiful photos. He is particularly known for his patient set up…
catdynamics | July 13, 2014There was an interesting article in the Chronicle a few weeks ago:
The Soul of the Research University by Nicholas Lemann.
Lemann provides a very interesting discussion of the contradiction between the academic ideal of the research university and the political perspective of the vocational school of further education, including some healthy historical perspective on the development of the concept in the US.
"Underlying all of this is the fundamental problem of the country’s having adopted two noncongruent ideals of higher education.
... most of the stakeholders that provide resources to…