drorzel | December 4, 2008There's a kind of tradition in theoretical physics of wacky "what if" papers. The whole "wormhole" thing is an example of this in action-- somebody noticed that the structure of General Relativity would allow you to make tunnel-like structures between points in space, and then asked what you would need to make such a structure. The answer turns out to include "a negative energy density," which is impossible, as far as we know, but that hasn't stopped people from creating an entire cottage industry around papers about wormholes.
(I don't know if other sciences do this-- are there biologists…
drorzel | December 4, 2008Via Matt Yglesias, another example of why I have a hard time taking economists seriously, talking about a measure of stock prices:
[T]he "Q" ratio [is] the value of the stock market relative to the replacement cost of net assets. The basic logic behind "Q" is that capitalism works. If the "Q" is above 1.0, then the market is valuing a company at more than it costs to reproduce it; stock prices should fall. If it is below 1.0, then stocks are undervalued because new businesses can't be created at as cheap a price as they can be bought in the open market. In the short run, this ratio is…
drorzel | December 3, 2008
Back to Reality - Olivia Judson Blog - NYTimes.com
"President-elect Obama already has a long to-do list. But here's another item for it: to restore science in government."
(tags: science politics us blogs)
Built on Facts : Gas in a (very small) box.
Air is denser than you think.
(tags: science atoms physics blogs education)
EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids
Evidently, Fitzgerald was right.
(tags: class-war education science psychology news)
Dynamics of Cats : The 1% Perspective
"Several individual institutions, any one of which is redundant in its function, have…
drorzel | December 3, 2008Last year, around this time, I posted a rant about the lack of science books in the New York Times's "Notable Books of 2007." While I was out of town last week, they posted this year's list. So, have things improved?
Yes and no. They do, in fact, have two books that are unquestionably science books on the list: THE DRUNKARD’S WALK: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow (which I also reviewed), and THE SUPERORGANISM: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, by Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson.
By my count, they list 52 non-fiction titles, meaning that a whole 3.8…
drorzel | December 3, 2008One of our 2008 Physics majors is currently in Uganda, working at a clinic/ school in a place called Ddegaya (Google doesn't recognize it, but it's somewhere around here). He's there as part of a program started by the college last year, which sent eight students abroad to work in impoverished areas, and then come back to campus next spring and talk about their experiences. As part of this, he's keeping a blog, because it's all about blogs these days.
Steve's a great guy, and from all reports appears to be doing well and doing good. His most recent post calls me out, though:
I love the…
drorzel | December 3, 2008The Daily Show nails the lessons of the Plaxico Burress fiasco:
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Jon Stewart Touches Kids - Plaxico Burress
Barack Obama InterviewJohn McCain Interview
Sarah Palin VideoFunny Election Video
Sweatpants, for God's sake.
drorzel | December 2, 2008
A Blog Around The Clock : The Open Laboratory 2008 - all the submissions fit to print
Some light reading to fill your infinite free time.
(tags: science blogs writing)
Pay Bankers Much Less - Finance Blog - Felix Salmon - Market Movers - Portfolio.com
"I've now reached the point at which I simply don't believe people when they say that lower pay for bankers will result in worse performance -- especially since it looks very much as though it was higher pay for bankers which was at least partly responsible for much of the present crisis. Let's bring down pay, a lot, and see whether…
drorzel | December 2, 2008SteelyKid is a genius in training.
How can I say that so confidently? Well, just look at this:
Still not convinced? Well, check out the original.
I rest my case.
(She's recently started sticking her tongue out all the time, or at least when she's not trying to jam one or both fists into her mouth. I'm sure this means something, but I have no idea what.)
drorzel | December 2, 2008A while back, Kate started doing a chapter-by-chapter re-read of The Lord of the Rings on her LiveJournal. Life intervened, though, and the project fell by the wayside.
She's re-started it, this time as part of the Tor media empire. So far, there's an introductory post and a discussion of the foreword and prologue, with Chapter 1 to come next week. If they're conscientious about their use of tags, the whole thing should be at this link.
So there's yet one more reason to subscribe to Tor's RSS feed.
drorzel | December 2, 2008Via Ezra Klein, Adam Serwer takes dim view of conservative attempts to blame the Mumbai attacks on Indian culture, specifically the relative lack of guns among the geenral population:
This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I'd say it's simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvanism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does…
drorzel | December 2, 2008This caught my eye at the library yesterday, because it looked like a compact survey of kookery, and I wasn't disappointed. Indeed, it's probably the most blog-like book I've read in quite some time-- bits of the chapters could easily be posted at Orac's place, and nobody would think it odd. The endnotes are even full of URL's, and there is the inevitable blog.
Thompson defines "counterknowledge" on the first page, after listing off a bunch of popular kook theories:
This is counterknowledge: misinformation packaged to look like fact-- packaged so effectively, indeed, that the twenty-first…
drorzel | December 1, 2008
Schneier on Security: Lessons from Mumbai
"If there's any lesson in these attacks, it's not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. "
(tags: news society security blogs)
Does the broken windows theory hold online?
"Does the aesthetic appearance of a blog affect what's written by the site's commenters?"
(tags: culture internet blogs psychology society)
Good Math, Bad Math : Public Key Cryptography using RSA
How to encrypt and decrypt with RSA, with a worked example.
(tags: math science blogs computing)
Follow the Leader :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for…
drorzel | December 1, 2008I got email last week from the Institute of Physics pointing me to a pair of video interviews with Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna. Zeilinger has built an impressive career out of doing fundamental tests of quantum mechanics-- he's not only got the accent and the hair to be a brilliant physicist, he's got a long list of amazing experimental papers to back it up.
They've gone the Locus route, and not included any of the questions he was responding to, which is always a little weird. Zeilinger provides enough context that everything makes sense, though, and he says some really…
drorzel | December 1, 2008The Yorkshire Ranter points out the similarities between last week's horrific attacks in Mumbai and Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War, and dubs it the "world's deadliest novel." Steinn picks up on this, and wonders if it's accurate:
The plot of Dog's of War is a coup in an African country, and it seems likely the book has been used as a "how to" manual several times, possibly most recently in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
But, is it really the world's deadliest novel? And if not, what is?
I'm tempted to nominate Atlas Shrugged, but it's way too early to assess the impact of the current…
drorzel | November 30, 2008I've gotten out of the book-logging habit, but Spaceman Blues is good enough that I feel compelled to write about it. I had heard of the book some time back-- I believe I recall Patrick Nielsen Hayden saying nice things about it at some con or another-- but the packaging didn't really give me a clear idea of what it was like, so I never got around to buying it until Tor offered it as a free e-book. I'll buy a paper copy soon, though, and probably pick up his new book as well.
It's hard to fault the copy writer, though. This is a really difficult book to describe. The promotional site name-…
drorzel | November 30, 2008It has been observed that my New York Football Giants are undefeated this year in games where SteelyKid was present for the game, and happy. The one game they've lost, an inexcusable thrashing by the otherwise hapless Browns, was a night game, and Kate took her upstairs for a final feeding before kickoff, and put her to bed immediately afterwards, so she wasn't on hand for the ugliness.
We put this to the test today, thanks to a delay on Interstate 88 near Unadilla. We should've been home right around kickoff, but an accident closed the highway, and we sat parked on the road for a good 45…
drorzel | November 27, 2008It's Thanksgiving today, which has always been one of my favorite holidays. It's not just that there's nothing more American than a holiday dedicated to overeating and football. I also like the idea of setting aside a day to be thankful for what you've got.
And I've got a lot to be thankful for-- a good job, a great dog, a wonderful family, and thanks to SteelyKid:
I've got more to be thankful for every week.
drorzel | November 26, 2008
slacktivist: Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
"Part of the answer to that question is that our newspapers are being asked to do something they were never designed to do and something they are fundamentally and structurally incapable of doing: they're being asked to provide shareholders with double-digit and ever-increasing profit margins."
(tags: journalism economics stupid slacktivist blogs social-science society culture)
Boing Boing's Holiday Gift Guide part one: Kids - Boing Boing
A directory of wonderful gifts.
(tags: books comics literature kid-stuff)
Adventures in…
drorzel | November 25, 2008
nanoscale views: A (serious) modest proposal
"As part of the forthcoming major economic stimulus package, I propose that the Obama administration fully fund the America Competes initiative immediately."
(tags: science politics academia economics)
'Teaching Unprepared Students' :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs
"Many experts say that the United States can only truly see gains in the percentages of adults who have a college degree if colleges and universities get better at teaching students who arrived on campus unprepared for college-level work. But…