Links for 2009-08-29

"Set aside the edges of the bell curve -- the innocent fools and the diabolical Becks and Limbaughs and the rest of their kind. The vast, vincible middle is constituted of people who, like the GooFies, are to some degree simultaneously innocent victims and deliberate charlatans, simultaneously deceived and deceiver.

They don't know any better because they have decided not to know any better.

They ought to know better. And they need to know better.

What they require, in other words, is both liberation and repentance. The former must be extended to them. The latter must be demanded from them."

"We report on the results of a strongly improved test of local Lorentz invariance, consisting of a search for an anisotropy of the resonance frequencies of electromagnetic cavities. The apparatus comprises two orthogonal standing-wave optical cavities interrogated by a laser, which were rotated approximately 175 000 times over the duration of 13 months. The measurements are interpreted as a search for an anisotropy of the speed of light, within the Robertson-Mansouri-Sexl (RMS) and the standard model extension (SME) photon sector test theories. We find no evidence for an isotropy violation at a 1sigma uncertainty level of 0.6 parts in 10^17 (RMS) and 2 parts in 10^17 for seven of eight coefficients of the SME."

"Here is Jerry Jenkins' notion of how best to convey the full, terrifying powers of the Antichrist. Nevermind that he is a global potentate capable of mesmerizing his followers into unwitting slavery -- he can also leave you a voicemail message even if you never ordered voicemail."

"There are already plans to stage the play during the intermission of an upcoming production of Waiting For Godot."

"The term "dimension", however, has another meaning in physics: a more mundane one, but equally important. This other type of dimension, used in what is known as dimensional analysis, has been used to gain surprising insight into difficult physical problems."

"The Physics Teacher article (The 'Nut-Drop' Experiment - Bringing Millikan's Challenge to Introductory Students, L. McCAnn and E. Blodgett) shows a variation of the oil drop experiment that gets the same idea across. Instead of looking at the motion of a charged drop of oil, students will look at the motion of a container with different number of metal nuts in them (unknown number of nuts). Instead of finding the charge on one electron, the students will find the mass of a single nut."