drorzel | September 9, 2009We did the far right column of the periodic table, so here's one for the left: the coolest-chemistry-demo-ever column, the alkali metals:
What's your favorite alkali metal?(surveys)
While you can make heteronuclear alkali dimers, at least in a transient way, we're talking atoms here, not molecules. Choose only one.
drorzel | September 9, 2009
slacktivist: Same to you, buddy
"A $100 account with no fees costs the bank more in paperwork and tellers' time than it's worth. In the long-run, such accounts can help depositors develop savings habits and savings balances, developing into the sort of customers banks can and do make money from. But neither the executives nor the shareholders of the bank are interested in that kind of long-run -- particularly not when, in the short run, they're losing money on these tiny accounts.
So seeing no incentive to provide such low-balance, no-fee accounts that would allow our young couple to cash…
drorzel | September 8, 2009Like every other blogger with a political opinion, I read Paul Krugman's essay on economics last week, and tagged it for Saturday's Links Dump. And while I appreciate Eric Weinstein calling me out as part of the "high end blogosphere," I'm not sure I have much to say about it that is useful. But, since he asked...
Twitter's interface makes it almost impossible to go back and figure out what the hell was going on even a few days ago, but going through Eric's feed, the crux of the matter seems to be that he takes issue with Krugman's claim that "the economics profession went astray because…
drorzel | September 8, 2009Via the Infinite summer roundup, Infinite Detox has a post about the novel's treatment of my favorite supporting character, whose title I have shamelessly stolen:
The problem I have is that from a dramatic standpoint, the wave of Pemulis-bashing that gathers force on p. 774 and crests in endnote 332 isn't convincing to me. For the first 773 pages of the book Wallace presents Pemulis to us as a lovable rogue and prankster -- he has an acerbic wit, he's nobody's fool, he's the Jack Sparrow of differential calculus. He wears a yachting cap, for Christ's sake. What's not to like about this guy?…
drorzel | September 8, 2009
Sunday Function : Built on Facts
One of the most useful functions in math isn't really a function in the usual sense.
(tags: math physics blogs built-on-facts science)
Hitler finds out about another Downfall parody from dawsonbros - Video
"Maybe we should just make one of these ourselves. Do our own clip."
(tags: video silly internet)
Pitching an idea for a new show in the Star Trek franchise. : Adventures in Ethics and Science
"The show would focus on a set of characters who are the Star Fleet equivalent of an internal affairs bureau on a cop show. These characters would investigate…
drorzel | September 7, 2009It's Labor Day today in the US, and Emmy and SteelyKid have both categorically refused to work on the holiday. So here's a picture of some pretty yellow birds.
(That's a thistle seed feeder hanging outside the bay window in our living room. It's shot through the glass, which accounts for the slightly soft focus. Still, it came out surprisingly well. Hooray for the new camera.)
drorzel | September 6, 2009"Dude, we need to talk."
"About what?"
"Your priorities are all out of whack. I mean, everything is about your puppy these days-- puppy blogging, taking the puppy on trips, buying the puppy toys. You need to get back to basics."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Well, more me, obviously. Don't get me wrong, I like the puppy and all, especially when she feeds me Cheerios. But ask yourself, who pays the bills around here, hmm? Me or the puppy?"
"So, you're saying you'd like to be more in the foreground?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"OK."
"That's maybe a little more literal than I was talking about. But…
drorzel | September 5, 2009We're headed out for a last road trip before the start of classes, taking SteelyKid to visit her great-grandmother and great-great-aunts. Why? Because she's this cute:
If you had a baby that cute, wouldn't you take her on the road? I thought so.
Normal-ish blogging will resume Tuesday. I'm scheduling a few other pictures to pass the time, though, just so you won't have to suffer an entire three-day weekend without this blog. Because I care.
drorzel | September 5, 2009
slacktivist: TF: No heroes
"Here is the scene LaHaye and Jenkins are stumbling toward: Nicolae sits in his office, meditating on his evil scheme and the worldwide suffering it will cause. In walks the hero.
If that hero is anyone other than Buck Williams, then we're in for some fireworks. Pick a hero, any hero. In walks Buffy Summers, armed with wisecracks and a nasty scythe-looking thing, matter-of-factly informing Nicolae that his scheme stops, now. In walks the Doctor, unarmed except for a sonic screwdriver and a boundless, inexplicable confidence, cheerfully explaining to Carpathia that…
drorzel | September 4, 2009I'm clearing out browser tabs before the weekend, which has reminded me that I've been terribly remiss in not passing along information about the Quantum to Cosmos festival being held next month at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario.
For 10 exciting days this October, Perimeter Institute's Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future (Q2C) will take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe. All events will occur on-site in Waterloo, Ontario and online at q2cfestival.com
Q2C's extensive program features more than 50 events --…
drorzel | September 4, 2009(I think that's the right number...)
I've got a ton of stuff to do today, and it's the last Friday of summer, so here's a little light entertainment. As in previous editions, each of the two-word phrases on the list below should hopefully uniquely identify one pop song. If you think you recognize the song, post your guess in the comments, and post a two-word phrase of your own for other people to guess.
First, a few holdovers from the last round, which was all proper names:
a) Jean Content
b) Mojo Nixon
c) Billy Idol
d) Rocco Sifretti
While at least one of these people has recorded a song…
drorzel | September 4, 2009Physics Buzz has a nice article about Paul Erdos and the Erdos Number Project (mine is 6), which ends with a good question:
I for one, am wondering: who would be the Paul ErdÅs of the physics world?
It's a tough question, complicated further by the existence of really gigantic collaborations in experimental high-energy physics, where author lists can run to hundreds of people. The 511 collaborators that Erdos can boast is more impressive in math than in some fields of physics.
For something really equivalent in spirit to Erdos, you would need to look for a physicist who had a long and…
drorzel | September 4, 2009Summer is drawing to a close, which means we're finally starting to get some actual sports to talk about, after a long, dull stretch of nothing but baseball. So I've started listening to "Mike and Mike" again in the mornings in my office. Which may have been a mistake because I've just had to listen to Mel freakin' Kiper talking about the draft prospects of college players who have yet to play a game this year, and they've rather omninously promised a fantasy NFL update coming up later.
These are both pretty dire portents of the immediate future, and I think they're connected. The unhealthy…
drorzel | September 4, 2009
Pfizer Launches 'Zoloft For Everything' Ad Campaign | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
""At first, Zoloft was only used to treat depression," Pugh said. "But what is depression, really? Who died and gave doctors the authority to dictate who is and isn't depressed? One man's hangnail could be another man's darkest depths of despair. Isn't medication a tool to help people lead better, happier lives? Access to drugs should not be restricted to those the medical community officially deems 'sick.'" "
(tags: silly medicine drugs onion)
Physics and Physicists: Selling Physics As Is To…
drorzel | September 3, 2009I thought we'd go with a change of scene for this week's baby blogging, so we took Appa out into the back yard. Trouble is, it's a little hard to get a good Baby Blogging photo there because there are so many other things to catch SteelyKid's attention:
We haven't been outside much this summer, thanks to all the rain. The moss on the patio is an excellent indicator of what kind of summer it's been. Of course, we're getting nice summer-y weather now, when I have to be inside prepping classes all day...
drorzel | September 3, 2009The building where my office is is on a small hill off toward one edge of campus, and to get to the Campus Center, you used to be able to go out the main door, and go either left down a gently curving path to the other academic buildings, or right, where the sidewalk runs along the top of a slightly steep bank over to a driveway that then runs down to the loading dock at the Campus Center. Most people would choose the left-hand path, and most of those who took the right-hand path would cut down the bank rather than walk all the way out to the driveway.
I say "used to" because there's a new…
drorzel | September 3, 2009"...Can you name the six noble gases?"
As this could be no poser for an economic geographer, I rattled them off in their proper aristocratic order. "Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and -er- Radon. They were raised to the peerage in the eleventh year of England's George Fifth, and Neon was awarded the Order of the Seraphim by Gustav Sixth of Sweden for its compassionate service in guiding to bars and beaneries guys who roll into towns late at night."
-- from The Moon's Fire-eating Daughter by John Myers Myers
I used that as an opening quote (I can't remember the term for that-- "epigram…
drorzel | September 3, 2009So, I upgraded my desktop at home recently to a machine running Vista. One of the minor annoying features of this is that it defaults to requiring a password whenever it wakes up, so if I walk away for half an hour, I come back and rather than just moving the mouse to wake it up, I have to move the mouse to wake it up, and then click my name to get back to what I was working on. Given that this is a machine in my house, and I'm the only user of it, it's sort of silly to have that extra layer of security (and it makes it harder to check my email while baby-wrangling), so I decided to turn that…
drorzel | September 3, 2009
Physics Buzz: The Surprising Physics of Pipe Organs
"In 1877, English physicist Lord Rayleigh observed that when two almost identical organ pipes are played side by side, something strange happens. Rather than each blaring their own tone, the two pipes will barely make a whisper. But put a barrier between them, and they sing loud and clear.
Markus Abel and his team of physicists at Potsdam University in Germany found themselves uniquely poised to investigate the long-standing mystery. "
(tags: physics science music blogs physics-buzz)
News: Unexpected Philosophers - Inside Higher Ed
"That…
drorzel | September 2, 2009I sort of feel like I ought to have something to say about the recent controversy over creationists on bloggingheads.tv, which has caused Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer to renounce the whole site. If you're too lazy to click through those links, the basic problem is that bloggingheads has twice invited creationists-- sorry, cdesign proponentists-- to appear on their "Science Saturday" segments in recent weeks. Sean and Carl feel that giving people from the Discovery Institute this sort of platform amounts gives them more credibility than they deserve, especially since neither of them was…