Links Dump
drorzel | August 30, 2010
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Why experimentalists hate theorists.
(tags: science silly cartoons comics)
YouTube - Hitler and P = NP
Why the hell am I paying you morons to use a f&#$*% brute force algorithm?! That blasted Russian Perelman can solve the Poincare conjecture. Why can't you dimwits solve something as simple as finding the best route?"
(tags: science math computing silly video)
drorzel | August 29, 2010
dirtcandy : HOME
The third part of a series (with links to parts 1 and 2) on the making of an episode of Iron Chef America that will air Sunday night.
(tags: food television blogs culture)
Liberal Arts Chemistry: If Hemingway were a Chemist ...
There is a reason why some reagents and some chemical reactions have not been reported yet. When it comes to some binary and trinary combinations of elements the path to the chemistry textbooks is very ... Darwinian. And let's face it boys and girls, the true measure of success in chemistry is not measured in prizes. True impact is when your…
drorzel | August 28, 2010
Williams College - The Purple Cow goes national: ESPN College Football GameDay commercial looms
"In 2007, when I was but a wee sophomore at Williams College, ESPN College GameDay visited our campus marking the first and possibly last time they visit a Division III school. I thought that would also be the last Williams College would ever hear from ESPN. Boy, was I wrong, and glad to be.
It was an ordinary Wednesday (May 4th) when I received a call from Eph Sports Information Director Dick Quinn (DQ) asking if I knew how to get my hands on the Purple Cow mascot outfit, because if I did, then…
drorzel | August 27, 2010
6 Baffling Flaws in Famous Sci-Fi Technology | Cracked.com
"For instance, when the main reactor fails in Star Trek they call it a "warp core breech" and it happens so often there's an entire page listing times it has happened on the Star Trek wiki. Seriously, it was like every third episode.
Their only safety measure against this was, hilariously, to "eject" the warp core out into space to allow it to explode (taking anyone nearby with it) and leave the ship utterly disabled. You know, like how when you have engine trouble on your car, your only option is to punch a button that makes your…
drorzel | August 26, 2010
"Mumble mumble shoulder something": R.E.M., Guided By Voices, Ghostface, and the pleasures of lyrical ambiguity | Music | The A.V. Club Blog | The A.V. Club
"The Stipe of R.E.M.'s early recordings uses words to create abstract compositions. It's not the only way to approach lyric-writing in rock music, or even the best way. Some of my favorite lyricists favor strong statements and clear narratives. Bruce Springsteen's "Stolen Car," to choose just the first example to spring to mind, is an extraordinarily effective, deeply sad song that would lose much of its power if Springsteen were to…
drorzel | August 25, 2010
Streets of the optical scientists! | Skulls in the Stars
"[While a post-doc in Amsterdam] I would take the bus to the rink from my apartment, and every day would travel down Maxwellstraat and past Lorentzlaan, but it didn't occur to me until near the end of my time in The Netherlands that these streets are named after the physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz!
In fact, all streets in the neighborhood of Watergraafsmeer are named after famous scientists and mathematicians, which is really a joy for a physicist like me. So after skating at the last day of the season at the…
drorzel | August 24, 2010
The mismeasure of education « Confused at a higher level
"Put simply, it makes just about as much sense to obsess over these numerical rankings as it does to try to numerically rank favorite restaurants, or jazz songs, or single malt scotches, or ... you get the point. It is a false quantitative-ness about unquantifiable qualities that I've seen people deploy in all sorts of situations and to which I am occasionally prey myself, to be honest.
The unquantifiable nature of these things doesn't mean that there is no comparing these things. Of course there is. I've spent lovely evenings…
drorzel | August 23, 2010
Washington, We Have a Problem | Politics | Vanity Fair
"It's Obama's conviction--you hear this from the most senior White House aides again and again, because it reflects the thinking at the top--that by keeping his head down and doing his job he can also pursue a different strategy, one that doesn't aim to win the day or the week but that looks toward victory in the long run. "You can do your job well," as Axelrod puts it. "You can bring the troops home from Iraq, and you can move forward on things that will strengthen the economy, and you can hope that over time people say, 'He had a…
drorzel | August 22, 2010
News: A Graphic Text - Inside Higher Ed
A bunch of professors in MBA programs have written a textbook in graphic novel form. I'd make a joke here about what this says about our future captains of industry, but, really, do I need to?
(tags: education comics business academia books)
slacktivist: A bank run in reverse
"The United States is flush with low-interest cash from the Giant Pool of Money. Yes, that cash will one day have to be repaid, but right now what it means is the government has the opportunity to invest it in ways that will help to generate future revenue, which is to say in…
drorzel | August 21, 2010
Swans on Tea » Politics and the Star Trek Effect
"There are a couple of episodes of Star Trek that I can recall having some fundamental physics failures, which would lead one to believe that in the Star Trek universe, one cannot do an integral over time. The episodes that come to mind (and it's been a while, so I may have some details wrong) are The Paradise Syndrome from ToS, and Déjà Q fom TNG. In both episodes, the Enterprise needs to transfer some energy and momentum to an object, and in each episode, they go for the Big Effort⢠and lose. "
(tags: science physics television blogs…
drorzel | August 20, 2010
An 18 Billion Mile Journey is almost complete! : Starts With A Bang
In honor of the upcoming completion of Neptune's first full orbit since its discovery, a discussion of how it was found.
(tags: science astronomy planets blogs starts-with-bang)
Fixing a Hole: The Beatles' Imaginary Post-1970 Albums, Part 1 | Popdose
"I'm actually quite surprised there isn't something like this out there already. A few web searches I did unearthed one article in Reader's Digest that did put together three such albums out of the early '70s material, but then stopped. But why stop at three? I'm going to…
drorzel | August 19, 2010
slacktivist: Please forgive me for the actions of extremists I have never met who commit acts of violence that I have never advocated
"As a white male Baptist, it is my duty today to denounce the violence perpetrated by Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, who yesterday attacked the police headquarters in McKinney, Texas, in a heavily armed but ineffectual assault involving a high-powered rifle, road flares, "gasoline and ammonium nitrate fertilizer."
I understand that this denunciation must be swift and unambiguous and that, in the absence of such denunciations made by and on behalf of every and all…
drorzel | August 18, 2010
The Should I Skip Class Today? Calculator
Here's a clue: If you need to use a web-based "calculator" to decide whether to go to class or not, it doesn't matter whether you go to class or not.
(tags: education academia stupid internet)
Backreaction: Worries
"At first sight, physicists seem like normal people. But ask what keeps them up at night and you realize the magnitude of their outworldliness. "
(tags: science physics academia politics society culture blogs backreaction)
Teach the indirect measurements § Unqualified Offerings
"It occurs to me that while the vast majority of "just a…
drorzel | August 17, 2010
For Lean Budgets, a Plug-and-Play Solar System - Green Blog - NYTimes.com
You know you're a physical scientist when "Plug-and-Play Solar System" suggests something like "... then you put Jupiter here, and you're all set. See, they're orbiting already! And it's open-source, so it's free." Sadly, this is actually about some home photovoltaic thing.
(tags: science astronomy planets environment energy nytimes blogs)
News: Parenthood Gaps and Premiums - Inside Higher Ed
"Linda Grant of the University of Georgia [and] Kimberly Kelly of Mississippi State University noted that many experts would…
drorzel | August 16, 2010
Sex between adolescents in romantic relationships is often harmless to their academics
"The context in which adolescent sexual activity occurs can substantially moderate the negative relationship between sexual intercourse and education, according to research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.
"Compared to abstinence, sexual intercourse in committed romantic relationships is often academically harmless, whereas in other types of relationships it is more detrimental," said Bill McCarthy and Eric Grodsky, sociologists at the University of…
drorzel | August 15, 2010
YouTube - Beat It + epic Crazy Chinese Omnipotent China red army
The Internet is a very silly place, but I'm glad we have it.
(tags: video music world silly internet youtube)
Why Does College Cost So Much? - Forbes.com
"Instead of holding up a magnifying glass to the industry, we take an aerial view. The view from above shows us different things. Rising college costs are an important byproduct of broad economic forces that have reshaped the entire economy, and in particular of the technological progress that has so dramatically raised living standards over time.
Our technology story rests…
drorzel | August 14, 2010
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » Eight Signs A Claimed Pâ NP Proof Is Wrong
"So, in the future, how can you decide whether a claimed Pâ NP proof is worth reading? I'll now let you in on my magic secrets (which turn out not to be magic or secret at all).
The thing not to do is to worry about the author's credentials or background. I say that not only for ethical reasons, but because there are too many cases in the history of mathematics where doing so led to catastrophic mistakes. Fortunately, there's something else you can do that's almost as lazy: scan the manuscript, keeping a…
drorzel | August 13, 2010
Think Globally, Compromise Locally - Green Blog - NYTimes.com
"Bill McKibben, whose 1989 book, "The End of Nature," helped coalesce and spread worry about climate change, views the national environmental groups' strategy of winning support for energy and climate legislation by compromising with industry as a complete failure. "The result: total defeat, no moral victories," he wrote at the environmental news site Grist, speaking of the Senate's inaction on climate legislation.
"Making nice doesn't work," he added.
Whatever the merits of his position, it has less traction when it comes to…
drorzel | August 12, 2010
If Physical Books Are Dead in Five Years, How Do the Poor Find Books? Whither (or Wither?) the Library? : Mike the Mad Biologist
"The great promise of our libraries is that, if you can physically get there (and for some services, even that isn't required), you have access to the materials, rich or poor. And in the 21st century, that also means the internet, for those who can't afford to access it. Personally, I use the library all the time, and it seems a pretty bustling place to me--if anything, it would appear library use is soaring, at least in Boston.
Books need to be accessible to all…
drorzel | August 11, 2010
Crowd Sourcing Loses Steam - Newsweek
"There's no shortage of theories on why Wikipedia has stalled. One holds that the site is virtually complete. Another suggests that aggressive editors and a tangle of anti-vandalism rules have scared off casual users. But such explanations overlook a far deeper and enduring truth about human nature: most people simply don't want to work for free. They like the idea of the Web as a place where no one goes unheard and the contributions of millions of amateurs can change the world. But when they come home from a hard day at work and turn on their computer…