links for 2009-06-29

"It all started Wednesday, when I got an email from Brandon Webb, who handles PR for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UT Dallas. He wanted to know if I could talk to a reporter who wanted to know whether a Styrofoam cup could break a windshield. (That's an advantage to being officially mediagenic - I don't get contacted directly now - they go through my 'people' a.k.a Brandon.)"

"Microcat is tunneling. Macrocat cannot tunnel."

"âI think pitchers know what they do more than understand what they do,â said [Colorado Rockies pitcher Jeff] Francis, who spent three years as a physics major at the University of British Columbia before signing with the Rockies in 2002. âEven though I do understand the forces and everything, thereâs a separation when Iâm pitching. If I throw a good pitch, I know what I did to do it, but there has to be a separation between knowing what I did and knowing why what I did helped the ball do what it did, if that makes any sense at all. If I thought about it on the mound, Iâd be really mechanical and trying to be too perfect instead of doing what comes naturally.â"