The Website Building
worldsfair | October 19, 2006Ah, if only the science of the google search engine was a little less elusive. But check this out. I was google mining for info on our new intern, and noticed that if you're on google.ca (googling in Canada), and type in the word "Paul," this is what you'll currently get:
Note that the second ranked hit, is the official Government of Canada site for our Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This is pretty amusing, since our previous Prime Minister was the liberal Paul Martin.
What's even richer though, is if you google for "Stephen" and note him appearing further down and first only as the head…
bcohen | October 7, 2006So I see this link from Arts & Letters Daily which says physicists shouldn't be meta-physical and should be strictly Popperian instead. And it seems so very quaint and old-fashioned and grandfatherly, and all I can think is that, as Abraham Simpson once waxed poetic about when trying to convince Burns that he could help bust the Union like they did in the '30s, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. And I hear they used to put an onion on their belts, which was the style of the time -- so all I can think is, first, I'm…
worldsfair | August 1, 2006
Cognitive Daily (link)
A GAME THEORETIC APPROACH TO THE TOILET SEAT PROBLEM
The toilet seat problem has been the subject of much controversey. In this paper we consider a simplified model of the toilet seat problem. We shall show that for this model there is an inherent conflict of interest which can be resolved by a equity solution...
Chemblog: The Addi(c)tive Blog (link)
A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING "WHY" CAN BE DANGEROUS
SARAH: Daddy, were you in the shower?
DAD: Yes, I was in the shower.
SARAH: Why?
DAD: I was dirty…
worldsfair | July 31, 2006
Evolgen (link)
THE ETHICS OF CLONING: A DEBATE BETWEEN ME AND MY TWIN BROTHER
MODERATOR: Tonight's debate is on a topic meriting serious discussion: the ethics of cloning. Our participants are two outspoken proponents of opposing positions. Because it is a question for all of society, we have decided to include all and not simply the 'academic elite.'
Justin, you are going to argue that Cloning should be abandoned in any civil society?...
Effect Measure (link)
THE BIOTECH GAME OF LIFE
A boardgame...
Dynamics of Cats (link)
SEXY UNIVERSE
You are fine, what did you say your name is again? Mm.…
bcohen | July 28, 2006How about a sampling of the lists over at McSweeney's, the perfect Friday activity. Here are a bunch that are either science-related, engineering-related, invention-related, or plain unrelated.
I'd be interested in any kind of ranking people have, the bests of the links, that is.
We'll do these in reverse chronological order...
Failed NASA Sapce Programs, by Jonathan Shipley
Hoover Dam Fast-Fact Pamphlet If Hoover Dam Were a Scale Model Made of Legos, by Orr Goehring
Dr. Phil's Inventions, by Scott Smith
Unpublished Sequels to Famous Science-Fiction Novels, by Steve Rushmore
Terrifying…
worldsfair | July 28, 2006
Living the Scientific Life (link)
PHOTO OF A NICE SET OF BOOBIES WE SAW AT THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Photography piece...
The Island of Doubt (link)
ON THE ORIGIN, NAMING AND USES OF SEA HOLLY
During Atlantis' eighth invasion,
When that island nation had exhausted
Its supply of metal, the gardeners
Left their greenhouses, went to the warriors
And said, "We've made you coastal defenses--
Blades six inches long, divided triply,
Coarse-toothed, spine-edged, deep-rooted. They'll tangle
In the wrathful crab-men's chitinous claws
Rip the bellies from the Devil's dolphins
When they force their…
worldsfair | July 27, 2006
Pure Pedantry (link)
BABY STUDIES BIO
Baby studies bio, and I study biochem.
Baby studies bio, and I study biochem.
She likes her bio buddies,
But they don't like me and I don't like them...
Pharyngula (link)
LIMULUS & CHARLIE
Charlie wears broken glasses held together with tape and toothpicks. He is unemployed and occupies a one-bedroom apartment in Westchester, California, a half-mile northeast of LAX. Charlie eats in his car. His 1991 Nissan Stanza is a mausoleum of fast food, Frito Lay and Little Debbie wrappers. When Charlie was in the sixth grade, some of his classmates took to…
worldsfair | July 26, 2006
Uncertain Principles (link)
PHYSICS ENVY AMONG BIOLOGISTS: FACT OR FICTION?
Physicists often state their belief that all biologists would rather be physicists, but became biologists only because they were not very good at math. As evidence for this, they point to such findings as the fact that the vast majority of published studies in virology, cell biology, endocrinology, and even microbiology, use few if any partial differential equations or elements of number theory, and only one paper written by a biologist in the past 25 years (in the field of neurophysiology) has ever used tensor…
worldsfair | July 5, 2006So, Ben and I were discussing yesterday the depressing reality of our readership numbers, in that we think our unpaid interns are clearly not performing up to par with this blogging thing. In truth, we are so very very close to firing them all. And perhaps we would, if only we had gotten more than just one applicant from our previous advertisement (a slightly over keen individual named Paul Myers who keeps writing, like, 7, 8 or more times a day).
Anyway, whilst our interns are clearly lacking in compensation, they are nevertheless keen to learn from their mistakes, and so they ask you,…