Links for 2009-10-18

"As Hank explains in a recent article, when he visits a Casino he plays the Roulette. His simple strategy consists in betting on a single colour, doubling the bet every time he loses; when he wins, he starts back with the minimum bet.

Such a strategy is not going to make you rich, but no strategy does at the Roulette, especially the American one which has both a "0" and a "00" -two neutral numbers thrown in to enhance house odds. The idea of doubling every time is that eventually the colour you bet on is bound to appear, and you will win back all your fiches, plus one. "

"If over time people were getting poorer, but the number of hours in the day was getting longer, and gender norms were shifting toward the idea that women should get married young and drop out of the workforce in order to do unpaid domestic work, then obviously people would start cooking more. But that's not what's happening. Compared to people in 1959, people in 2009 have more money, less time, and less ability to call on socially sanctioned unpaid domestic labor. So obviously they're going to cook less."

Good luck to Nick, as he leaves Six Apart and goes back to school to study physics full-time.

"It's been suggested that "decoherence explains the emergence of a classical world". That is, if we believe our world is quantum, then decoherence can explain why it LOOKS classical. Logically, this implies that without decoherence, the world would not look classical. But... what on earth WOULD it look like? Human beings seem incapable of directly observing anything "nonclassical". I'll show you how a hypothetical quantum critter could interact with, and learn about, its world. A quantum agent can use coherent measurements to gain quantum knowledge about its surroundings. They can use that quantum knowledge to accomplish tasks. ... I'll explain the remarkable new perspective on quantum states that comes from thinking about quantum knowledge, and I'll argue that it's a useful perspective by showing you two concrete applications derived from it."

"While I know that many US high school students never take physics, that many high school students who do take physics are taught by "cross-over" teachers whose disciplinary training is not in physics, and that rural and urban school districts often lack the resources to provide quality high school science curriculum, I still found myself shocked by the numbers reported by Angela Kelly and Keith Sheppard in their AJP article on high school physics availability in the New York City public schools. According to the article, nearly 55% of the New York City public high schools did not offer a single physics course during the 2004-2005 academic year. At first, I thought maybe the authors were considering only college-prep physics, but no, fifty-five percent of the city high schools offered NO physics courses, not even a conceptual physics course requiring little mathematical proficiency!"