Topography of Ignorance

Explain it to me like you're five

2011-07-30T11:39:00.003-05:00

BoingBoing just put up a stupidly wrong explanation of the "Debt Ceiling" "Crisis" -- as you explain it to a five-year-old via a reddit thing.

Pretend you have a credit card. And this credit card has a limit, we’ll say $1000. This credit card is pretty near maxed out and you don’t really have any cash. You need to buy some stuff soon, and you know that between now and August 2nd you need to buy some things, and you have no choice but to buy them on the credit card. At that point the credit card will be completely maxed out.

This credit card is our debt ceiling. We will hit the limit of our borrowing limit on August 2nd.
Now let’s continue further. We know we have some bills next month, and we also know that we have some cash coming in, but when we look at what we have coming in vs what we have to pay, we don’t have enough to cover it. Let’s just say we know we’ll be short by $100. So now we know ahead of time that we’ll be short, and we only have one real option: call the credit card company and ask them to raise our limit.

This is what the debt ceiling legislation is trying to do: raise our credit limit.

As you said, normally this happens all the time without issue. This time, some politicians decided to stand up and say: “Umm, long term this whole ‘borrow more money’ method may not work out.” So they are holding off on raising the debt ceiling until we can better align our “bills” and our “income”. There’s two ways to do this: either you lower your bills or you raise your income. Either you pay less money out, or you bring more money in.

This is where the argument happens. Democrats (traditionally) would prefer to bring more money in, so they’d like to “raise taxes”. Republicans (traditionally) would prefer to have lower bills, so they’d like to do “spending cuts”.

So the argument now is “How can we find a compromise where everyone is happy?” We haven’t (yet, hopefully) found that compromise.

If we don’t find the compromise, and we don’t raise the debt ceiling, then we’ll have a bunch of bills due and not enough money to pay them. At this point we’ll have to start prioritizing who gets the money we do have. Should it be seniors on Medicare? Should it be active duty military? Should it be people we owe interest to for a loan payment?

This is just like our credit card example if the credit card company doesn’t raise our limit. Do we pay our rent? Do we pay our car payment? Do we pay back a guy we borrowed $50 from?
And the repercussions are this: whoever we DON’T pay, how does that negatively affect us? Will we be able to get more loans? Will people lose trust in us and a government? Etc. So the outcomes could be nothing or they could be disastrous. No one knows for sure.

OK, they lost me when they compared national debt to a credit card. You know, in the first sentence. The commenters, who realize that this is wrong, and not simply in a way that any dumbed-down explanation ought to be, but just wrong on the basics of the ideas (for example, that the argument is between two equally intransigent forces, one of whom is set on raising taxes and one who wants to cut spending), are essentially united in condemning it. One offered this far far better article: "7 mistakes journalists make when covering the debt ceiling debate (& how to avoid them)" Though this is one though is probably the best:

BrokenRobot

Here's my attempt at explaining this to a five-year-old:

OK, kiddo, here goes. As you know, Mommy and Daddy both have jobs. Mommy is a schoolteacher, and Daddy is a banker. Well, we've been paying all our household bills with Mommy's salary so Daddy can keep his for himself, and because Grandma is old and sick, we've been helping her out with bills, too. And sometimes we give a little bit of money to the firemen and the police and the school and the library.

Things have been rough lately, so Mommy asked Daddy to consider putting a little bit of his salary toward household expenses, instead of spending it on fancy vacations, private planes, drugs, and bribes. Daddy said no, but he did agree to let Mommy ask for an advance on her paycheck so that she could pay the nice man at the store what she owes for last month's payment on Daddy's new car. But Daddy said Mommy can only ask for an advance if Daddy is allowed to kill Grandma. So say goodbye to your grandmother. In the spirit of compromise, Mommy also offered to let Daddy sell your kidneys to his friend down at the country club, who needs new ones because he ate too much rich food. Sorry! We'll miss you!

The Guardian wonders aloud about science

2010-11-30T16:04:00.005-05:00

Once again, I am puzzled by how the British public has a better understanding of science than us, while the science journalism in that country seems to be much worse. Last week for example, I saw probably the worst sub-headline ever in the Telegraph:

Antimatter has been captured by scientists for the first time in an astonishing physics breakthrough that echoes the hit Hollywood movie Angels & Demons.

I wrote about some of their other shoddy work a while ago too. The Telegraph rarely disappoints (unless you are looking for it to actually be right). It seems like the headlines are particularly bad, so that might have something to do with having to compete with tabloids, or some cross-pollination or something.

So today when I caught this piece in the Guardian, often the least bad of the UK newspapers for science: "Ten Questions Science Must Answer" I expected the worst. It is the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society and they were trying to come up with what challenging issues lie ahead of us in the near future. I usually enjoy lists like this, because they are a nice reminder of the big picture questions that many of us are working towards in a small way, or simply things that are unexplained by science, but part of common human experience. Science did a good one a few years ago, for instance (and weirdly, there is a wikipedia article titled "List of unsolved problems in physics"). This page is really good too. And there are white papers and yearly reviews in journals that are cool to look at, and more specific. So since the Guardian is just winging it, it has the potential for broad appeal, or disastrously poor scholarship. Because of the format though, it's a little of both. Instead of getting in, you know, scientists, who might know a thing or two about where their field is at the moment, and what is currently understood, and where it is ultimately all leading they seem to have been content to go halfway, and have non-scientists simply speculate about what they don't know about. I can't blame the random novelists and poets for not being on the cutting edge of organic chemistry, but why are they being asked in the first place? When they're cobbling together lists of "greatest movies of the past 50 years" or whatever, why aren't they getting Neil deGrass Tyson in there?

So most of the actual things they come up with aren't so bad:
What is consciousness?
Is there a pattern to the prime numbers?
Can humanity get to the stars?

And a couple of the novelists manage to ask not-idiotic things like:
How are we going to cope with the world's burgeoning population?
Will I be able to record my brain like I can record a programme on television?

Probably the most thought-provoking is Brian Cox's "Can we make a scientific way of thinking all pervasive?"

This would be the greatest achievement for science over the coming centuries. I say this because I do not believe that we currently run our world according to evidence-based principles. [...]
One only has to look at the so-called controversies in areas such as climate science or the vaccination of our children to see that the rationalist project is far from triumphant at the turn of the 21st century – indeed, it is possible to argue that it is under threat. I believe that we will only be able to build a safer, fairer, more prosperous and more peaceful world when a majority of the population understand the methods of science and accept the guidance offered by an evidence-based investigation of the challenges ahead. Scientific education must therefore be the foundation upon which our future rests.

Which is followed by John Sulston saying essentially the same thing but with a focus on the tension between liberal democratic government and the inability of these kinds of governments to work collectively to solve large-scale problems that most of the population doesn't recognize or understand. Both interesting and important questions; so far, so good.

Then we get this gibbrish by "broadcaster and writer" Joan Bakewell:

What happened before the big bang?

To simply declare – as some scientists do – there was no space or time before the big bang and that the question is therefore meaningless is hard to accept, as it suggests matter was created out of nothing. But then if there was some kind of pre-existing primordial chaos that was fashioned into the universe by the hand of God, then where did the chaos come from?

At the other end of the timescale, I'd like to know whether robots will ever supercede humans. We are told scientists have already created artificial intelligence that can respond to emotion, but will they be able to go beyond getting robots to affect responses and generate feelings spontaneously – such as falling in love?...

And it goes on like that. OK, there is nothing wrong with wondering this about the big bang, and it certainly doesn't make you stupid to not understand the subtleties of cosmology, but this isn't actually an open question, which is the point of the article. Time is a dimension, and dimensions may be bounded. It is difficult to accept intuitively, because the passage of time seems like something fundamental, but asking what came before the big bang is analogous to asking what is north of the north pole. It is a singularity, the question simply has no meaning. It's like asking what the big bang "expanded into" or something -- not a stupid question unless you were born with an innate intuition for higher dimensions, but not actually a new area for discovery. Scientists aren't going around arrogantly "declaring" things to irritate you, if you asked one about it, she'd explain what it means, not spit on you for not majoring in physics. Acting like there is some attitude problem, where we all go along with something that non-scientists can easily poke holes in just to frustrate them is ridiculous and illogical. And what the hell was that jargon about robots? Why didn't someone read this before it got in a newspaper? This article was written or compiled by Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and an astronomer, who surely knows that the time question is nonsense (at least the way it was phrased). Why doesn't anyone check these things?

Then we have a poet laureate, Andrew Motion, spouting off on what reads like a genuine plea to have someone explain things to him:

Can someone explain adequately the meaning of infinite space?

The idea of there being no end to space seems logically impossible. How can there be no limits to space? We know the universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into? Is it squeezing into something else and making that contract, or is the universe just venturing into nothingness? In which case, nothingness and somethingness appear to be much the same. We are also told the universe may contract in time; this raises similar questions. What replaces the space that was the something of the universe?

On a more frivolous level, I'd also like to know whether my cat is fully evolved as a species. She certainly gives every impression of having pretty much everything she needs. Following on from this, I'd also like to know whether humans are the final step in the primate evolutionary ladder, or whether there will be another species running the world one day while we get locked up in zoos and forced to smoke cigarettes in laboratories. I'd die a happy man with answers to these questions.

Hey look! I wrote that thing about what space "expands into" and here he goes and wonders about exactly that! It's incredible. Again, these are questions that you could find out the answers to by googling -- they are not unsolved mysteries for the Royal Society to get around to. Here's an idea: instead of wondering aloud about your own ignorance in a national newspaper, why don't you READ A FUCKING BOOK ABOUT IT. There are zillions of books about cosmology written for a popular audience. And then there is that nonsense about cat evolution that just demonstrates he doesn't know the basics of biology either. Why didn't the person who took down this quote just tell him that those aren't open questions? I am so annoyed by this guy getting his uninquisitive musings published that instead of kindly explaining them in the patient and eloquent manner that I am known for, I am going to dismissively and angrily jot down responses to each of the questions he poses. In order:
- There just can
- The idea of something being "outside the universe" is meaningless: counterfactual
- No and no
- Counterfactual
- All living animals are "fully evolved"
- There is no "final" step in evolution, species don't evolve "toward" something, they evolve to adapt to or flourish in their environment.

There, I just solved 10% of the mysteries of the universe.

Ironically, by seemingly not having anyone edit these, they're contributing to the science-education problems that two of the prescient commenters pointed out! With garbage like this, how are the people there better educated on science issues? I would genuinely like to know...maybe without researching it, I should try to get my pointless witterings published in a newspaper and then someone will tell me...

Guardian - Ten Questions Science Must Answer

Sensitive Female Chord Progression

2010-10-20T22:50:00.003-05:00

From Here and Now on NPR a while ago, the revelation that many many songs have the same boring pattern. Having heard it explained, you will be forever cursed with the knowledge that these songs are derivative garbage.

Entertainment writer Marc Hirsh has been noticing the same chord progression in a large number of rock and pop hits over the past few years. He’s dubbed it the “Sensitive Female Chord Progression” because he first heard it in songs like Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” and Sarah McLachlan’s “Building a Mystery”. But guys can play it too.

Here and Now [Mar 4, 2009 -- scroll down to the fifth story to hear it]

And as a related issue, nearly the same theme explored as a comic rant against Pachelbel's cannon (which doubtlessly has it coming)

The Modern Insane, Illegal, Fairly Pointless Cannonball Run

2010-10-17T23:06:00.003-05:00

This is in no way timely, but I recently re-encountered this story and thought I would be deficient in not posting this article I saw a couple years ago, about the people attempting to record the fastest ever time crossing the American continent on land, for no purpose other than impressing their other independently wealthy, overcompensating, friends. The time to beat is 32 hrs 7 min (amazingly) from New York City to LA*. They have an enormous array of radar equipment, several co-pilots, at some points, an effing helicopter, and are regularly traveling at 100-140 mph along the normal highways. The technology is primarily aimed at averting police detection, because not only would it slow them down, but at these speeds they cross over into the kind of territory where you don't get speeding tickets anymore. Furthermore, even if they do accomplish it, they have to wait several years to claim the title, until the various statutes of limitation expire in the states where they have been recklessly endangering. Not to mention regularly outrunning the police who spot them. "To beat the record, Roy has calculated that he needs to maintain an average of almost exactly 90 mph from Manhattan to the Santa Monica Pier. For occasional spurts, 90 is not uncommon on the highway. But for a day and a half of barreling across the United States, 90 miles per hour is essentially insane...As a Cannonballer makes his way across the continent, the accumulation of his time and speed forms a rising and falling curve called a running average. For every second spent below his 90-mph target, Roy will need to compensate by investing a second going faster than that average."

I don't think I have much to say about this, of my own, other than that although I can't really see the point of this kind of thing, and I would never want to be friends with any of these people, because they're probably way more into Vin Diesel than I could ever be comfortable with-- it is impossible to ignore how rare this kind of maniacal devotion to anything is. The story is just so strange and incredible that it is surprising that it isn't better known.

Wired - The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory

*Or one of those annoying outskirt towns that is essentially the same thing.

Electric Box 2

2010-10-17T22:53:00.002-05:00

A quality waste of time. By which I mean that it is a quality way of wasting time, by trying to be smart.

Electric Box 2

Is this the greatest newspaper headline ever?

2010-09-29T09:18:00.004-05:00

Lesbian martial arts expert frees under age lover in Indonesia

Police are investigating the escape of the 15-year-old girl, who allegedly admitted to having a sexual relationship with her 26-year-old taekwondo teacher in east Jakarta.

The girl, Tn, who comes from a community that only uses one name, left home to live with her teacher, Sj, for a month.

The girl's father called in the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak) to "cure" his daughter's sexual orientation and agreed to place her in protective custody.

...

[Telegraph (Photo not included...)]

Volcano Tornado!

2010-09-21T14:07:00.005-05:00

Noooooooo!!!!

Stephen & Donna O’Meara explain the chaos in above photograph: “As the hot eruption cloud swirls, a vortex is created that spins off rare volcanic cyclones. As red rivers of lava pour into the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano, huge explosions blast fragments of hot lava and cinder upwards 1,000 feet or more. These pieces of fragmented lava are called tephra –the booming tephra explosions create arcs of color during long exposures. During the daylight hours the hot lava looks black. As sun goes down it begins to glow red and a vast steam clouds form as it meets with ocean water.”

[Visual Science at Discover]

Moher, Moore, More

2010-08-27T11:59:00.001-05:00

Been traveling a bit lately. In June I went to Ireland, the land of my impoverished potato-farming lineage. When we visited Cobh in County Cork, the departure point* for most Irish emigrants to the US, we saw this statue depicting Annie Moore and her brothers out on the former site of the pier. Ms. Moore was the first person to pass through Ellis Island. Someone shoved her to the front of the line saying "Ladies first!" and an official gave her a $10 coin. Her brother is oriented so as to be pointing directly at New York City. So naturally, there is a picture of me with it, looking like a zombie:

It is a bit weird then that there should be a statue of her in Ireland, since her importance seems primarily Ellis Island related. But that is because this is just one half of a pair of statues, with the other one being in New York! So somewhat by coincidence, when I was in New York last week, we went to see the other one:

I'm trying to imitate her pose, but it just looks like I'm saluting -- an appropriate compliment to the other inexplicable photo. We expected the NY statue to be a mirror image of the Cork version, but disappointingly, she isn't even facing her twin. And where are her brothers? I want a $10 coin.

*My ancestors likely spent their brief time there nervous and heartbroken, I wandered around taking pictures of goofy wax figures and having a lovely toasted sandwich. Isn't history fun! (Advice: Get a sandwich at the Cobh Heritage museum, they're dynamite).

'Roid Rage

2010-08-27T11:10:00.003-05:00

Asteroids that is. And they're not actually angry. They're just being discovered from 1980-2010. It's cool to see that many objects in orbit over time, who doesn't like a little Kepler's Law in action?

From YouTuber's szyzyg's description:

The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.

[via Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Fluorine: It tastes like burning

2010-08-23T12:10:00.003-05:00

This is the first I've seen of Dr. Martyn Poliakoff's Periodic Table of Videos but it's a good one. Each video is about an element, and this one focuses on Fluorine, one of those non-heavy elements that you still don't see very much of because of it's extreme reactivity. That reactivity is on display in this as they use it to burn through steel wool and charcoal -- just by squirting it at them, even in cold, liquid form.

Unlike most chemistry, this video comes with a moral: don't mess with fluorine.

[via BB]

Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule

2010-08-11T15:53:00.000-05:00

Mr Rodriguez contemplating the
implications of the Supreme Court's
1972 Flood v. Kuhn ruling which
upheld Major League Baseball's
exemption from anti-trust litigation,
despite what many observers
considered an 'overly strict'
reliance on stare decisis
...and Chien-Ming Wang's rash.

While carrying out my usual research on the broader public importance of obscure facits of baseball I happened across this unusual legal article that explains, in excessively footnoted detail, the legal and societal precidents for the adoption of the Infield Fly Rule. For those sociopathic Americans who don't tivo spring training games, or humans who are from that wild and lawless land that isn't America, the Infield Fly Rule states that when there are less than two outs and runners on first and second, the batter is automatically out if he hits a pop-fly that could be easily caught by an infielder -- whether or not the infielder actually catches it. This prevents the defense from intentionally dropping the fly ball to make a double-play. The runners in this situation have no choice but to stand near their respective bags, assuming the ball will be caught, and then in the event that it isn't, would be too far from advancing to 3rd and 2nd to avoid an easy double play. It's baseball's equivalent of the en passant.

The article, (which was published anonymously and later revealed to have been written by then law-student William S. Stevens), describes the invention and evolution of the rule in the 1890's in a scholarly/mock-scholarly tone that apes similar, less light-hearted works with overt formality. A footnote on the word "origin" reads:

6: For a discussion of origins, see generally Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 289 S.W. 363 (1927). Genisis 1:1-2:9. But see even more generally Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968); R. ARDREY, AFRICAN GENESIS (1961); C. DARWIN, THE DECENT OF MAN (1871); C. DARWIN, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859).

Stevens mainly describes how the rule developed out of a widespread desire to preserve the 'gentlemanly' nature of the sport, and was later modified with the same goal in mind -- for instance by reducing the role that umpires originally had in enforcing it, whereby they would make a ruling on who was out and where they runners ought to be after the play had taken place. Since this could cause arguments (and a purpose of the rule is to let the game play out with everyone playing to their best abilities) it was changed so that the umpire calls it and gestures during the play, to put everyone on equal footing. Also interesting is his retelling of how the calls for such a rule arose out of a game in 1893 where an infielder intentionally allowed a fly to drop with a runner on first, but only in order to catch the runner because he was faster than the batter. He got only a single out, not two, merely substituting a fast runner on first for a fat, slow one, and this isn't even a situation that the rule applies to! And once this tactic had been realized, similar plays seemed to have the umpire calling out the runner regardless of the fact that there was no rule against intentional drops.

Evidently, there are a number of parallels between the standards that established the IFR and those that formed English Common Law. I'm not an expert on historical legal questions, but the comparisons he makes are fairly broad, so I doubt that they are too controversial. The idea that the academic world was begging for a comparison of these two things is a little more far-fetched, but it's still a great topic, due to the amount of analysis you can do on such an obscure rule.

Still, I can't help but wonder about one thing -- he rightly points out that the nature of baseball has its roots in 19th century English sporting culture, that it's intended goal was more about exercise and camaraderie than competition. The attitudes of this society and era, to "[keep] the rules simple and [allow] moral force to govern the game" is apparent in many aspects of modern baseball. For simplicity there are things like the fact that there are no rules about where fielders can stand (or that there are even any codified differences between them), or knocking over fielders covering a base (as long as you're not unnecessarily violent about it) what constitutes a pitch (the eephus counts), a strike, a fair ball, etc. There are even more examples of moral impulses codified in the rules*: balks, catcher's interference, crowd interference, uproar about sign-stealing, slapping at balls during a tantrum. It's not a rule, but people even get upset about running over the mound when you're not supposed to. Not to mention steroids. Hmmm...a lot of these things are A-Rod related...

Anyway, the thing that I think I disagree with him about is the notion that these attitudes are primarily English. I don't doubt that they were originally, but if that is true, why does baseball, which has been developing in the US for at least 150 years, retain a strong sense that right and wrong are important to the sport while soccer, which was also arose out of this gentlemanly English attitude of fair play (and is most popular there) is more rife with unpunished deception and fake injuries than pretty much all other sports?

"Aside, The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule," anonymous, 123 Univ. Penn. Law Review 1474 (1975).

*The primary counter-example to the moral prohibition against trickery in baseball that springs to mind is the hidden-ball trick, but it's overruled by the opposing desire for simplicity.

Battletrek Generatica

2010-08-11T11:12:00.006-05:00

Some awesome bootleg covers that require no commentary:

A good-hearted tween comedy! [via Nerdist]

And this [via GammaSquad], which looks like it would probably be way more awesome than real Phantom Menace:

Some Reminders

2010-08-03T11:19:00.004-05:00

-Like all (science) graduate students, I am woefully behind everything happening in the world of entertainment. So even though it's probably not news to anyone normal, I was surprised to find out recently that there is a Facebook movie coming out soon. I can't think of anything other than this:

Facebook/off

And as usual I can remember the wild early days of Facebook where that "Too close for missiles, I'm switching to guns" tag-line comes from. Back before they started changing everything and letting in all the riff-raff who didn't go to Elite East-Coast Colleges.

I'd also like to point out, as I usually do in these circumstances, that the guy who founded facebook dated my ex-girlfriend's suitemate when we were freshmen at our Elite East-Coast Colleges. The only thing I remember about him was that he made an incorrect, but still lame, joke about trigonometry while playing frisbee in the common room. He said tangent when he should have used sine...or nothing. Also, that that girl dumped him shortly before he created that website and became a billionaire.

-I found out a few days ago that the expression "kid gloves" deals with gloves made from the skin of young goats -- not the kind of kids who are young humans. Please adjust your speech accordingly.

-I am sure that I have learned many other delayed or otherwise interesting things recently, but I've been busy doing astronomy stuff, and more importantly, programming, so that I can reduce images without having to think about each step of the process manually. For some reason, scientific (or even basic) programming is not yet part of any physics curriculum, though it seems like the primary thing many of us spend out time on. I've had to learn how to use various things, but never formally, and almost always in the context of "figure out how to do this for your job." It seems as though somewhere around your 3rd or 4th year of undergrad, professors start assuming that you know how to use most command-line programs, or write code in fortran or C, despite there never being any (even suggested) instruction on these things. Plus, many intro comp-sci classes tend to cover topics that are mainly useless to science majors. I wish my college had had some kind of "Unix-study abroad" style immersion program where that was the only way they let you communicate. (Hey, at least we'd get to travel...) I've gradually gotten proficient, but it's a lot more painful when you don't know how to phrase your (surely) stupid questions to get an answer out of the internet. Fluent or not, at least the end result is pretty:

Happy 4th of July!

2010-07-04T12:02:00.002-05:00

Odds and Ends

2010-06-26T09:47:00.009-05:00

As Seen on TV: A Tribute to Doing it Wrong

Super Mario Brothers with real time accompaniment. Includes sound effects! I think hiring a guy to play for you like this is how to play Nintendo if you are extremely rich. (Mario 3 is also featured here)

Lastly, there is so little reason to bother with the World Cup -- the most complicated part of the sport seems to be the ranking system whereby they determine exactly how many draws are needed to move on to the next round, which teams that actually win their games deserve to be eliminated, and how many you have to lose before advancing.

Nonetheless, everything involving North Korea is a candidate for humor, and they're seized the chance by hiring Chinese people to pose as fans for their games. It sort of makes sense that they're not going to allow actual North Koreans to leave their impoverished Stalineque nation just to attend a soccer game. On the other hand, it would look bad to have no one cheering for them, hence the idea of sitting, like, 100 identically-dressed Chinese guys in the crowd and paying them to cheer.

Tipping the Scales

2010-04-28T19:24:00.004-05:00

Powers of Ten from Heinz Legler on Vimeo.

A cool interactive take on the indelible 1968 Powers of Ten film (above) (or this a cheap, probably pretty expensive, Morgan Freeman-narrated knock-off). I've never actually heard anyone use the term "Yoctometer" but I support anyone wanting to.

It is an interesting fact that the divisions between different areas of science is based mainly on the scale they study. You could reasonably argue that everything important having to do with chemistry, for instance, takes place between roughly 10^-7m and 10^-9m. Counting molecular stuff, biology gets everything from the 10^-7m to 1 m scale or so. Physics, of course, is everywhere...

The Scale of the Universe:

What YOU Need To Know About Space Combat

2009-12-21T11:47:00.004-05:00

Cool post by an aerospace engineer about the kind of stuff we all know we spend more time contemplating than we ought to, Gizmodo considers The Physics of Space Battles:

First, let me point out something that Ender's Game got right and something it got wrong. What it got right is the essentially three-dimensional nature of space combat, and how that would be fundamentally different from land, sea, and air combat. In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets' orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we'll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists' revolt. So, it would actually make sense to build space defense platforms in certain orbits, to point high-power radar-reflection surveillance satellites at certain empty reaches of space, or even to mine parts of the void. It also means that strategy is not as hopeless when we finally get to the Bugger homeworld: the enemy ships will be concentrated into certain orbits, leaving some avenues of attack guarded and some open. (Of course, once our ships maneuver towards those unguarded orbits, they will be easily observed – and potentially countered.)

Dark Matter Matters

2009-12-18T10:25:00.005-05:00

As a card carrying astro-related blog owner I am contractually obligated to comment on yesterday's kinda-sorta-it-might-be-dark-matter-semi-quasi-announcement by the CDMS II group.

There had been rumors about this thing for over a week that CDMS had some kind of watershed announcement. That they had discovered dark matter (what other important announcements can DM detection projects make?), that they were publishing in Nature today, that a torrent of papers was about to hit the arxiv with analysis of this last night, that they had all learned the true meaning of Christmas and were going to be nothing but kind and generous from now on.

Yesterday, with the hype reaching a fever pitch, they held a seminar on their findings, broadcast online. Unified in the concerted effort to drive everyone crazy in anticipation they began the lecture with about 10 minutes of freshman-astronomy-level rationales for the existence of cold dark matter, before moving on to another 10 minutes of descriptions of things that were important to them but not to us, like the arrangement of the detectors and the way the data was collected. Then she threw in a joke about a spherical cow, and stalled for another 5 minutes. Finally, she got to a slide that said "Results" or something at the top, and the video completely froze. Of all the panicked, oh-my-god-just-tell-us-already, freakouts I can imagine something causing, this was way up there. When I regained consciousness and the video started working again she was on a slide that said "Conclusions," and before I could make out any of the bullet points, the camera quickly panned away and she started taking questions. It was awesome.

Anyhow, in the aftermath of that humbling experience, what actually transpired during those missing minutes has come to light. CDMS detected TWO events. But because of the way they pull events out the noise of other stuff hitting the detector that could appear as a false signal, they'd expect to find about 0.8 events in the time the experiment ran. There is a 23% chance that what they saw was just random noise. I read someone describe this as the least helpful possible result and I have to agree. It isn't enough to be a conclusive discovery, and it isn't enough to say that dark matter definitely ISN'T being seen in this kind of detector either. So unfortunately, not enough for solid results, and not much to come up with a decent parameter space constraint either. It could certainly turn out they did find it, but that will have to wait for later confirmation. Just a lot of build up, a suggestion that we might be on the verge of learning something really interesting, a clue, and then the realization that nothing has been settled and you'll have to keep waiting for answers. Kind of like an episode of Lost.

Links:
Best popular article about this I've seen: Scientific American
Cosmic Variance Liveblog of Yesterday's SLAC seminar.
Basically alright article with a non-sequitur about supersymmetry: NYTimes

Actual CDMS Paper

Evolution

2009-12-18T10:10:00.004-05:00

Why does it feel as though stuff like this actually happens? Oh yeah, because it does. Better these guys than James Inhofe at least.

Season's Greetings from a Telescope!

2009-12-15T10:34:00.003-05:00

Merry Christmas, from Hubble:

This year, say it in stars! Send your friends and relatives best wishes for the season with our printable holiday cards. Messages of joy and peace are illuminated by the natural splendor of the universe.

Worst Article Ever

2009-12-13T12:57:00.004-05:00

I like Slate, but this lady seriously has nothing to offer. Unless you count her frequent attempts to be the worst parent ever. Without ever really meaning to, I've stumbled across her various articles about freaking out because her sons wanted to see Star Wars (she was afraid they might like it), freaking out when her son went unsupervised in the woods of suburban Connecticut for 45 min, and discouraging her son from being curious about how magic tricks work.

Still this is a new low: "My boys love astronomy. I couldn't care less." And that's just the title.

Basically she spends the whole article complaining about how boring space is to her and bemoaning the fact that her boys are always all interested in science, instead of..well, she never really says what. Except maybe some ponderous New York Times article about the 10th year of some couple's marriage -- everyone knows how normal kids really eat that stuff up.

I have never willingly studied a single page of astronomy. My knowledge of the planets begins and ends with My Very Elderly Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Pillows. [...] And yet my boys are in love. They ask for library books about outer space. They had a DVD of the moon landing. They go to the local planetarium. They recite facts about planetary gasses and burned-up stars and black holes and something else called a white hole. "Mom, did you know?" they ask before launching into a minilecture. I never do. Nor, if I'm honest, do I care to find out. The other day, Eli interrupted himself in the middle of a shooting star explanation and said, sagely, "Mom, sometimes you don't really listen to me."

This leaves me with a guilty question: What do you do when your children's interests don't match your own? Do you do your utmost to cultivate genuine enthusiasm and expertise? Do you fake it? Or do you keep the faith with your own passions, figuring you're teaching a lesson about assertion of selfhood and independence?

I am tempted to stray down the last path—is that the one for the lazy, self-involved parent, or is it the proudly resolute one?

Um, lazy and self-involved. Next question?

What kind of quandary is this? These are elementary schoolers. Is she aware of the range of stupid crap they could be into? And she's second-guessing the one that's actually educational? Sure, they're just kids and no one is saying that they're going to do whatever they're interested in now, but having your mother casually dismiss your nascent curiosity in the natural world is not helpful.

And then there's this garbage:

Maybe he'll be a rebel astronomer, and someday reform NASA, or call for an end to manned space missions so that the money can be used to fix Social Security? A mother can dream.

There are so many things wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin. First of all, NASA's budget is insignificant compared to Social Security (or practically anything else the government spends money on). It was $18.7 Billion in 2008, while SS was $696 Billion*. Studies show that Americans overestimate NASA to be one of the largest federal agencies, believing that it receives a quarter of the budget, when in reality it gets less than 1%. Plus a large fraction of astronomers do not favor manned space exploration, other than the role it plays in maintaining space-based telescopes, which are tremendously important.

Eliminating NASA, and all other publicly-funded science for that matter, and spending that money on other stuff would increase funding for social programs by ~2%, does anyone think this would make a huge a difference? This is one of those non sequitur "let's solve our problems on Earth first" (before ever doing science, apparently) statements that stupid people make without considering where their iPods and laptops come from.

Oh, and she cites Gregg Easterbrook. So all in all, not good.

*This chart is pretty good for showing federal expenditures visually.

Possibly the Best Post on Wikipedia

2009-11-07T10:25:00.003-05:00

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas

My only quibble -- why "fraudulent"? Are there cats with legitimate degrees?

Shooting things in slow-motion

2009-10-14T11:23:00.002-05:00

Slo-mo bullet porn. Videos like this are only quasi-illuminating, but they are certainly hypnotic. I love the way that the bullets appear to behave like a liquid-- presumably the energy of the impact does actually melt them. The world certainly looks very interesting at very high, and very low speeds.

For more slow-motion impacts, see this previous post.

Simply the Best

2009-10-07T08:39:00.005-05:00

Best of Wikipedia is my new favorite site. As someone who too frequently has to resist the urge to spend hours link-hopping around obscure wikipedia articles, BoW is a dangerous place. They simply put up a couple of unusual and fascinating articles a day. For those of you with more self-control a sample of some of their recent entries includes:

Gruen Transfer: In shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer refers to the moment when a consumer enters a shopping mall, and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout, loses track their original intentions. Spatial awareness of their surroundings play a key role, as does the surrounding sound and music. The effect of the transfer is marked by a slower walking pace and glazed eyes.

Paraprosdokian A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. An example by Groucho Marx is, “She got her good looks from her father, he’s a plastic surgeon.”

Semantic Satiation Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a cognitive neuroscience phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who can only process the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

So there you go.

[Comic via XKCD, obviously.]

Wrath!

2009-09-30T15:53:00.008-05:00

I think I can scoop Strange Maps for once. Wired posts these infographics of what Kansas State geographers consider maps of the 7 Deadly sins. (Red is sinnier, Yellow is more good)

Greed
Average income compared with number of people living below the poverty line.

Envy
Total thefts (robbery, burglary, larceny, and grand theft auto) per capita.

Wrath
Number of violent crimes (murder, assault, and rape) per capita.

Sloth
Expenditures on art, entertainment, and recreation compared with employment.

Gluttony
Number of fast-food restaurants per capita.

Lust
Number of STD cases reported per capita.

Pride
Aggregate of the other six offenses—because pride is the root of all sin.

So this is sort of a cool little thought experiment, but the methodology doesn't seem right for all of these. Greed, envy, wrath, and lust make sense. But what is the deal with gluttony? Aren't we one of the fattest countries? Why didn't they just do obesity rates? I'm pretty sure there should be more gluttony. And I don't really agree with the criteria for sloth. They should have done something a bit more sloth-related than entertainment spending. How about density of delivery restaurants, or cable subscriptions versus income? Not to mention the laziness of just making Pride the composite one. It would have been better to just use Porsche ownership or bloggers per capita. Not bad though.

As usual, those hypocrites in the bible belt stick out as the region least able to live by the rules they're always telling us we don't follow...

Kansas State University Geography/USACE

How many roads again?

2009-09-30T10:36:00.003-05:00

I remember hearing a while ago that Bob Dylan, of all people, was considering recording the voice for a GPS navigator. If his speaking voice is anything like his singing voice, a lot of people are going to end up in ditches.

So I was surprised to find out that there are actually already a bunch of these celebrity voiced gps units. Mr. T (I think he just yells at you)? Gary Busey? Knight Rider? And last of all, and for reasons no one can understand, Curt Schilling.

*Etc

2009-09-28T10:50:00.002-05:00

The Freakonomics Blog points out some graveyard humor, describing the origin of this clever headstone juxtaposition.

They belong to chemists buried in the Yale's cemetery. The one on the left of a John Kirkwood, while the right is Lars Onsager, both of whom were brilliant statistical and fluid mechanics. At first glace this looks like the absolute apex of academic one-upsmanship, but as usual, there is a buzzkilling explanation that involves these two guys not hating each other. Kirkwood died pretty young and his widow basically decided to make his headstone a curriculum vitae for some reason. Most people who knew him thought it was a bit odd, but Onsager's wife wanted to do the same for him when he died, but her family talked her out of it. His son Erling wanted to put an asterisk on there, but she vetoed it as being mean-spirited.

But the idea of the asterisk stayed in Erling’s mind, and years later, when the children were adding their mother’s death date to the monument, they also added the asterisk and the “etc.” footnote. “When my mother died, my brothers and sister and I, we all agreed it was the right thing to do,” said Erling.

Erling wanted to set the record straight on his family’s motive for including the notation:

The idea was very tongue-in-cheek. It wasn’t done maliciously. It was triggered by the neighboring headstone, but it was not aimed at it.

And all the people involved seem to agree that both of these gentlemen would have found it hilarious. So revenge downgraded to gentle comedy. It kind of reminds me of Jefferson's headstone, that mentions only that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Virginia Statute of religious freedom and that he founded the University of Virginia -- without bothering to point out that he was the President. Which, if you think about it, seems to say to all the other presidents "Oh, you were the president too? That's sort of cool I guess. I didn't think it was worth making a big deal out of..."

Expectation Value = Nerd Humor

2009-09-24T12:12:00.006-05:00

Via the other people in my department: these bookends, for the quatumly disposed. A handsome addition to any bookcase.

The folks who made these wrapped rigid paper around some bricks. That seems like kind of a tough method, but throwing one through a window would be a great way of intimidating a physicist.

The Office Doesn't Make Any Sense

2009-09-24T11:01:00.000-05:00

The Office makes no sense. The show itself. I can't believe I didn't realize this until just now.

The premise of the show (even though they never explicitly say so) is that a film crew is documenting the everyday life in the office of a paper company. This is, in and of itself, sort of amusing, but it makes for a good comedy format because you can cut in between interviews and you have interesting herky-jerky handheld camerawork. The fact that it is very easy to forget about the mechanism of the show, despite the frequency of characters addressing the cameras, is sort of disturbing since it seems to indicate that we're all so familiar with the style of reality television that we don't even notice it anymore. Nonetheless, the whole idea is that they're being filmed all the time, and there are plenty of instances where someone acknowledges the cameramen, or there is a boom mic, or the characters are trying to get away from the crew or whatever. And Michael Scott definitely acts the way he does because he is on camera. Plus, there are plenty of lines that are responses to obvious questions in the interview scenes, like when they start a line by repeating a question ("Where do I see myself in 5 years? Well..."). Still though, the idea is to make it a fairly subtle thing, to the degree that it isn't clear whether they're being filmed for a documentary or a reality show, and they've certainly done it well enough that we hardly think about it anymore.

Except that it's now so subtle that the premise no longer makes sense. Since they never explain the purpose of the documentary we don't know whether it's for a documentary film or for a reality show. If it was only supposed to be a documentary it would be over by now -- they definitely wouldn't have followed these people around for 5 years and produced like 30 hrs of programming. On the other hand, if it is a reality show, they've been on TV since 2005, why haven't the characters on it gained any notoriety at all? Any show on for that long would have to have amassed some degree of popularity. Plus, even if we're supposed to believe it is a very unpopular show on some low-rent basic cable channel, or that they edit out any references to the program, I'm sure that the people on the show would at least watch it themselves -- which means that by now, they would have found out about all the stuff from previous seasons that they didn't know about their coworkers. Which also hasn't happened. For instance, Ray or Karen would have known about Jim and Pam far earlier than they did.

The British version avoided this of course, because they only made 12 episodes. Ricky Gervais was extremely afraid of "spoiling" his creation. (How it got to be that every decent UK show is like that is beyond me.) Nonetheless, he wasn't so worried about franchising it out to nearly any country that makes TV programs. Everyone knows there's an American duplicate but you will impress people at parties by informing them of the existence of French, German, Chilean and Quebecois versions. That's right, Quebec. Here's they are playing hockey. So I'm not so sure that Gervais' "I don't want to water down my beautiful creation" stance makes any sense. Oh, and the titles of the other shows are great.*

France: Le Bureau
Germany: Stromberg
Chile: La Ofis
Quebec: La Job
Once again, Quebec comes out on top.

Anyways, I don't know how this post ended up getting this long. I guess I just find it amusing that the show is pretty popular, yet no one seems to have noticed that the entire format of the program is no longer reasonable.

*This Slate article from a few years ago about the differences with the non-English speaking versions is pretty interesting.

Don't know much biology

2009-09-15T08:25:00.003-05:00

...But I do know that I like these glass sculptures of diseases. The one above is a close-up of a single E. coli (is that how you say that?). Luke Jerram created a number of them depicting viruses and bacteria. The microscopic world is truly a weird-looking place.

"It's great to be exploring the edges of scientific understanding and visualisation of a virus. Scientists aren't able to answer many of the questions I ask them, such as how the RNA is exactly fitted within the Capsid? At the moment, the technology isn't there to answer all these questions for certain. I'm also pushing the boundaries of glassblowing. Some of my designs simply can't be created in glass, Some are simply too fragile and gravity would cause them to collapse under their own weight. So there's a very careful balancing act that needs to take place, between the limitations of current scientific knowledge and glassblowing techniques."

That last sentence isn't a phrase you hear too much.

via Backreaction

Vone bat video! Ah ah ah!...

2009-03-21T10:14:00.006-05:00

Bat in wind tunnel.

Super slow-mo bat videos, from biologists Dan Riskin and Sharon Swartz, here at Brown. Some discussion of the science behind it here at Carl Zimmer's blog.

We're so close to understanding how they turn back into vampires.

Sure, Blame the Physicists

2009-03-10T11:41:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has an article about Wall Street Physicists today.

Emanuel Derman expected to feel a letdown when he left particle physics for a job on Wall Street in 1985.

After all, for almost 20 years, as a graduate student at Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow at institutions like Oxford and the University of Colorado, he had been a spear carrier in the quest to unify the forces of nature and establish the elusive and Einsteinian “theory of everything,” hobnobbing with Nobel laureates and other distinguished thinkers. How could managing money compare?

But the letdown never happened. Instead he fell in love with a corner of finance that dealt with stock options.

“Options theory is kind of deep in some way. It was very elegant; it had the quality of physics,” Dr. Derman explained recently with a tinge of wistfulness.

I've always found it funny that the people who quit academia and go into finance are viewed from within physics sort of like sell-outs or quitters or as unsuccessful in some way. At least by the people I talk to, as sort of an undercurrent in the conversation. And yet, by any reasonable standard, the vast majority of society doesn't care about science at all, and cares a lot more about the ability to buy yachts.

Don't Be a Boron Moron

2009-02-08T10:34:00.003-05:00

Let's hope Conan keeps up the bizarre, science-based tirades, like this one from Feb 5th, when he's in LA. (His previous interest in Penning traps is well documented)

Holiday Time

2008-12-30T11:53:00.002-05:00

In celebration of New Year's Eve Eve, I give you my list of holidays in order of expectation/payoff ratio:

New Year's
Valentine's Day
Christmas
Halloween
Birthday
St. Patrick's Day
4th of July
Thanksgiving

As thousands of sad, lonely people have already observed, it is basically impossible to have a good time on New Year's Eve, because all you can think about the whole night is why you're not having a more fantastic time. That is why it comes in first. Valentine's Day is ranked above Christmas for the simple reason that most of the non-male population have romantic-comedy level expectations for it, and all the single people expect to not be totally miserable on that day. Neither of the expectations have any chance of being met. Christmas, though usually not as good as all the trappings indicate, is still possible to enjoy to a reasonable extent as long as you like eggnog and have grown used to the idea that you are getting socks again.

On the other end of the spectrum, no one who wants to eat a gigantic meal and fall asleep watching football can be disappointed by Thanksgiving. All we expect is food, and familial strife is considered a cliche at this point, so that makes it tough to ruin the expectation balance. Similarly, all you have to do on the 4th of July is have some hotdogs and fireworks; St. Patrick's Day some beer and corned beef.

There Are Better Sources of Riboflavin

2008-12-09T19:02:00.007-05:00

An annoying girl in my morning math class was drinking out of a pint-sized half-and-half carton today. One of the types with the plastic screw top.

There are two possibilities here, and I don't know which is worse. Either she was drinking cream, as advertised (at least having the good sense to cut it with milk). Or she finished using the container and said to herself "Now this thing would be perfect for storing liquids in! I should wash it out, refill it with a commonly accepted beverage, and take it with me to use in public."

This is only the latest in the string of extremely weird dietary choices my friend and I have spotted among students of this class. Last week a different girl was consuming what appeared to be individually wrapped balls of dough with jelly on the inside. We spent much of class debating the meaning of this item. Before that, there was someone chowing down on gray, pencil-sized sticks of something out of a crinkly wrapper. There is only one class left, and I'm hoping to see a candy apple or a gigantic turkey drumstick.

Criminal Code Duello

2008-12-06T16:51:00.003-05:00

I was perusing the website that lists R.I. criminal offenses some time ago (who doesn't) and came across this anachronistic gem:

§ 11-12-2 Challenging or accepting challenge to duel. – Every person who shall challenge another to fight a duel with any dangerous weapon, to the hazard of life, and every person who shall accept a challenge to fight such duel, although no duel be fought, shall be imprisoned not exceeding seven (7) years nor less than one year.

Here is what I must know about this:
a) When was the last time someone was prosecuted under this law?
b) How hard would it be to get locked up for it? Not actually engaging in one, but simply invoking the challenge? If stood within earshot of a police officer and said to a friend, loudly and clearly and without laughing, "I hereby challenge you to a duel of honor! Pistols at dawn upon the Statehouse lawn, with hazard of life. I demand satisfaction!" and the friend said "I accept!"...would we be arrested?

(This is comprehensive and fascinating by the way: Wikipedia - List of Duels. Who doesn't love a good list?)

Galileo Galileo!

2008-12-06T14:40:00.002-05:00

It is well known among astronomers that Brian May, the guitarist from Queen has a PhD in astrophysics. The interesting part is that he was a graduate student at the time Queen took off, nearly finished with his dissertation, only to return a few years ago and complete his degree. He had published in Nature, and MNRAS on topics of interplanetary dust, but the lure of worldwide rock & roll fame overtook him, as it does many a prospective astronomer.

Sure, they may spend 30 years touring the world, earning millions of dollars and adoring fans, but they always come back for the radial velocities of dust clouds. That's where the real action is. (Fewer groupies though...)

NPR's Day to Day - Queen's Brian May Rocks an Astrophysics Rhapsody

Extremely Late and Mean-Spirited Entry

2008-11-28T13:17:00.009-05:00

Back in September 2007 I found an interesting map of ancestry survey results, showing that a large swath of braindead Appalachians considered their ethnic background to be "American." Since it's 7% of people overall, but actually the most common response in those areas, it seems likely that most of those 7% are localized to that part of the country.

As you can see, it's very pronounced-- prompting me to disdainfully write:

This is a convenient map of stupidity, provided by the U.S. Census. The "Americans" live in the off-white counties, which trace a predictable outline. Predictable if you are a contemptuous New England elitist. Apparently knowing what the word "ancestry" means is enough to make you an elitist.

Evidently, calling a large fraction of the U.S. stupid wasn't such an overstatement. The NYTimes made this handy map of the way the voting changed from 4 years ago, county-by-county and it shows basically what you would expect: since President-Elect Obama (I've been saying that way more than necessary) won by a solid margin, you'd expect to see a large gains by him everywhere on the map, as indeed there are...everywhere except among people who don't understand the meaning of the word 'ancestry'. These are the places where either (a) the last 4 years have somehow improved their opinion of the Republican party, (b) people were blown away by John McCain's ideas and campaigning abilities, (c) people noticed there was something a little...how shall I put this-- "black" about this Barack Obama character. Whichever it is, I don't feel too bad calling them morons.

Hmm, Maybe it isn't that dramatic...

Oh wait. Yes it is.

Conclusion: In this election -- Contemptuous New England Elitists 1, People Lacking Basic Vocabulary 0.

Well Done America

2008-11-05T14:38:00.003-05:00

Drink up!

CMB Beach Ball Liberated!

2008-09-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

In August 2006 I made a solemn vow:

This is the cosmic microwave background presented in the best known way of conveying scientific information: printed on a beach ball. Talk about an inflationary universe!

...A few years ago WMAP secretly distributed them to cosmologists. Needless to say, the early universe printed on a inflatable ball is something that I have decided I must have. For some reason, despite not being for sale, the ball seems to have its own web site...I pledge now to the internet, ultimate keeper of pledges made to no one in particular, that I will acquire this ball. I am not sure how yet, but I swear to do whatever it takes--breaking into someone's office, posing as an elementary school, sending threatening letters to beach ball manufacturers. whatever.

I am now free to disclose that I have triumphed over the forces allied against me-- the beach ball website that mysteriously refuses to sell it, the people who said I would never amount to anything, the journals that keep rejecting my groundbreaking work on the anisotropy of CMB beach ball distribution, everyone. I have, indeed, obtained the ball:

I can't go into the specifics of where it came from, but let's just say that a certain physics department who could never appreciate it as much as I do had a habit of carelessly leaving it in a usually unlocked room full of other neglected items, which I thoughtfully did them the favor of not stealing. And that I have waited until now to announce to the world because the institution that department belongs to, due to some bureaucratic stuff, took until a year after I had finished to send me my master's degree. Having gotten it in the mail a couple of months ago, I am now free, statute-of-limitations-wise, to reveal the success of Operation CMB Ball Freedom. It is hanging from the ceiling of my apartment, daily inspiring me to contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos. Mission accomplished.

Now a beach ball of the Neutrino Background pattern, that would be something...

Please Just Stop

2008-09-11T10:29:00.005-05:00

I have no desire to comment on the turn-on of the LHC and the "controversy" over whether we are all going to die. But to fulfil my community service as a guy who occasionally writes about science, I am honor-bound to do so. Plus I need to vent my frustration at basically anyone acting as though it is somehow an unsettled question. My buddy Dave put it best when mock-reporting that the LHC had, as feared, created a dragon. Depending on your tolerance for watching dead-horse beatings I have given you 3 options, reader.

Long Attention Span: If you are interested in a description of why anyone who seriously thinks there is some danger in turning on the collider, or that doing so somehow amounts to "recreating the big bang," is a complete moron read Backreaction's smack-down.

Medium Attention Span: This is one is just me yelling at you: Black holes would only be created in the case that an extrodinarily unlikely theory, that the universe has LARGE extra-dimensions turns out to be true. Something that is totally speculative and which we have NEVER seen any evidence for. On top of this, the particulars of this theory would have to be just right, which, as far as we can tell from other types of measurements, they are not. If all of this extremely disfavored junk turned out to be true, EVEN THEN they would evaporate in a femptosecond due to Hawking radiation. If they didn't, WHICH THEY WOULD SO THERE IS NO POINT IN EVEN WRITING THIS PART, they would be smaller than the nucleus of an atom and travelling at almost the speed of light, so they would never even interact with any normal particles to swallow them up, and would simply fly off into space never to return. And if any of this were possible, it would be happening all the time ALREADY because the cosmic rays bombarding the Earth are equivilent to the collisions that are going to take place, as far as this black hole nonsense is concerned. See how every part of that explaination is rendered moot by the preceding section? Ignoring that many layers of unequivical denounciation for this retarded black hole catastrophe concept means that you should lose the right to ever benefit from science in any way. And if anyone even thinks about uttering the phrase "but anything can happen" I will personally reach through your computer screen and punch you in the eye.

Low Attention Span: Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the Earth Yet?

This might be mildly chauvinistic

2008-09-09T07:52:00.005-05:00

From McSweeney's:

Physical Theories as Women

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.

2. Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.

3. Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she's really interesting and people you don't know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she's pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you've broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.
...

6. Cosmology is the girl that doesn't really date, but has lots of hot friends. Some people date cosmology just to hang out with her friends.
...

Soil physics is the lady you meet at the bus station. She's 45 with dingy teeth, glue-on nails, and 3 kids. She yells at one of them not to turn over the trash can, but he does it anyway. As you pass by, she asks if you know how to get gum out of hair. You keep walking.

Science Tabloids

2008-09-09T07:44:00.006-05:00

A harrowing vision of a very different world...where scientists are treated like celebrities.

Still, I would watch it if I were these people. Witten can be pretty sensitive about his shoes, they don't want to get a smack down in his next ~~single~~ PhysRev Letter: E. Witten, T. Shakur, "Hyperdimensional manifold collapse of motherfuckers who talk shit about my footwear" PRL 101 (2008)

Yes, not only is Tupak coming out with new albums every few months, he is also publishing. People are pretty much just remixing his old papers at this point, but that "Feat. T. Shakur" byline in your list of authors still helps you get played. I hear his next article is going to drop in ApJ this winter.

Twin Mirror

2008-07-17T08:27:00.005-05:00

Improv Everywhere, is the group that brought you such stunts as a bunch of people freezing in place at Grand Central Station, creating a time loop in a Starbucks, and my personal favorite: getting 80 folks to dress up in Best Buy employee outfits and swarm a Best Buy. Their most recent mission was getting identically dressed identical twins to fill a subway car, symmetrically. I knew twins were good for something.

Human Mirror - Improv Everywhere

Note to self: All sets of identical twins seem to own matching pairs of clothes. How sneaky...

Barackyogenesis

2008-07-01T22:04:00.003-05:00

Slate has a series of Obamisms that is about as good a lexiconographical study of our next president's neologisms as you will find anywhere on the internet. The widget here is quite a thing to behold. And this may be the best one yet -- combining cosmology, linguistic humor, and Change We Can Believe In™:

Barackyogenesis (buh-RAK-ee-oh-JEN-uh-sis) n. An attempt to explain why there were more Barackyons than anti-Barackyons in the Democratic Party, a condition necessary for the formation of heavier election matters.

Example: There must be some initial perturbation to explain the Barackyogenesis problem. Many political scientists have suggested that an imbalanced density of subatomic particles known as "charm quarks" in the candidates led to the dominance of Barackyons over anti-Barackyons.

Little boxes

2008-07-01T06:45:00.000-05:00

For some reason, the genre of physics flash games resembling crayon sketches has exploded recently. Meaning that there are now at least two. I will keep you posted of others as I become aware of them.

This is a bit simpler than "CPD" you just stack little boxes on top of something precarious. It is also extremely difficult. I can't tell whether that means there is more strategy or less.

Poiser Hand Drawn Physics Puzzle Game

I Am Dartmouth! (and so can you)

2008-06-23T14:15:00.005-05:00

This is very weird. My alumni magazine has fictional alumnus Stephen Colbert on the cover this month. Maybe I'll bother reading it for once. The article is an account of his time at the school he claims to have graduated from, hanging out with that shady crowd of Reviewers like Laura Ingram and Dinesh D'Souza, running from bears and so forth.

Like Dartmouth itself, the magazine is pretty traditional (read: lazy), so it doesn't have a website, I had to scan the cover. (This also explains why they call or write at least once a week asking for donations -- people who knew that I was grad student who was on full financial aid during my time there wouldn't bother.) Anyhow, since they don't seem to have computers, maybe I'll scan the story as well, I just don't want to get in trouble with a school I have no intension of ever giving money to.

Update: These people have the full article.

George Carlin

2008-06-23T09:12:00.006-05:00

George Carlin died yesterday. A very sad thing. I found this clip of my favorite of his routines on Cosmic Variance.

I have never believed in God, but it took me a while before I knew that I outright disbelieved in the whole concept. The first half of that was realizing that religious people were not just kidding themselves "emperor has no clothes" style (which I had always just assumed), and the second half was seeing that other people found it just as absurd as I did. And when you're on the fence about how strongly you feel, doubting that you should be presumptuous enough, as a fairly young person, to completely dismiss this entire philosophy that 90% of people take really seriously, it helps to hear someone like George Carlin. Someone who is just blunt and witty and brutally honest, who has no problem saying the kind of stuff that is so far off the radar of Acceptable, Serious Discourse, helps you see that yes, all those contradictions you noticed about christianity when you were 8 were perfectly valid. And yes, the pat, trite answers that you got in Sunday school when you asked about them were just as silly as you thought. And no, ridiculing people's seriously held beliefs is not wrong when they are completely full of shit...as long as you can be funny about it. So thank you George Carlin, for showing us that bluntness and honesty (occasionally tempered by humor) can go a long way. Joe bless you!

Look at Me!

2008-06-07T21:50:00.004-05:00

Through some internet miracle I scored absurdly good tickets to today's rout of the Seattles. Like best seats in my life tickets. Last week. For face value through the team website. Which is supposedly impossible...except that it actually isn't, as this grainy screenshot (that you'll have to trust is me on television) demonstrates.

Ticket resellers are a drain on society. At least the part of society that likes going to baseball games.

New Math

2008-06-06T20:33:00.006-05:00

Ordinarily, I would post something like this and say "hey look at this video that humorously acknowledges science/math concepts!" This really contains no actual information, but is so clever and vulgar that it just doesn't matter. Plus I've got the same shirt as that kid, so you know, excellent work.

Cancer!

(Thanks to Jenn)

Martian Sunset

2008-06-04T15:24:00.005-05:00

From NASA's Image of the Day, an artistic shot of the sun going down on Mars. In addition to being really beautiful, it certainly raises some important questions, such as: there's an alternative to the reviled (by me) Astronomy Picture of the Day?

NASA - Sunset on Mars

Hobo Matters

2008-05-29T20:29:00.003-05:00

To apologize for my absence I bring you this audio essay on the role of Hobos in the Great Depression from John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise. The visuals aren't good for much, other than pointing out that the only way John Hodgman could be funnier is if a PBS documentary gave him the veneer of boring credibility as counterpoint to his deadpan absurdity. People forget the other than the bit about "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" the rest of FDR's 1933 inauguration speech is pretty inspirational, particularly this passage:

"The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. And so I will kill all the hobos, and together we will knaw on their bones." It was time for a comprehensive hobo eradication program the president called "a new deal."

No wonder he's on the dime.

Colbert in Space

2008-05-13T22:37:00.002-05:00

Stephen Colbert interviewed astronaut Garret Reisman live from space the other day. Reisman is a big Colbert fan (like all astronauts...I assume), and he spent most of the interview cracking up. He was actually wearing a WristStrong bracelet, and noted the importance of wrists in space travel thusly, "I use it for controlling the robot arm...landing the shuttle and also for firing our laser cannon."

Since they don't feel like maintaining Hubble, I guess chatting with Colbert is prettymuch the only worthwhile thing they do up there...

Eephus's Revenge

2008-05-08T11:25:00.001-05:00

David Ortiz struck out on an eephus pitch in the 4th inning of last night's game against Detroit. As I have previously stated, I love the eephus, and I cannot recall ever actually seeing this rare (non) pitch used. It looks like Armando Galarraga lobbed one in there though -- a 57 mph "curve ball" whose curvature was supplied by gravity. Ortiz had one of the classic reactions to it: paralysis. Even though I never like seeing Papi strike out, I have to say the expression on his face was absolutely priceless. It was the perfect blend of shock and regret. The sort of expression someone would get upon disembarking an intercontinental flight and realizing they left the stove on. He stood there stock still for about 5 seconds, gazing off into the distance, his face a mask of despair -- personifying the tragedy of missed opportunity. He seemed to be thinking about the alternate reality where he hit a 700-ft home run, and by extension, all that ever could have been. That is what the eephus does to you.
Update: There is video of it here.

In other hilarious baseball news, yet more evidence that A-Rod fails in the clutch: he fainted during the birth of his daughter in 2004. Mere weeks after helping the Yankees choke away the pennant, he choked away the delivery of his first-born, further compounding the impression that he cannot perform in pressure situations.

I Hate Everything Too

2008-05-08T11:08:00.003-05:00

For your reading pleasure, while unreliable bloggers like me remain busy and unreliable, I recommend some new things I've come across recently, in addition to all that stuff already on the sidebar:

Jacks of Science features some excellent writing. I hesitate to use the phrase 'science humor' because that sounds pretty non-humorous, but it's somewhere in that category. Posts like "Super Slow Motion is the New Slow Motion" with it's Coolness vs. Speed of Time graph and "Top 10 Greatest Video Game Scientists" are especially good.
ReducedMass is a good place for semi-offbeat science news with an emphasis on physics/astronomy. It's straightforward, not hard to understand to a non-scientist, but not uninteresting to a non-non-scientist.
I Hate Everything features a quint-weekly take-down of something, with the most vehement disdain. Nothing is too obscure or rarefied. Examples include "Why has siding become an acceptable building material?" and "Why don't people know what it is that light years measure?" For some reason, even when I don't agree with her, I still like reading it. Frankly I'm sort of jealous that she came up with this idea before me. As someone who hates a lot of stuff, and has a reputation for jokingly* looking down my nose at many things, something like this would have given me an endless supply of easy posts. Maybe if I shamelessly copy the format I can get written up.
*not really jokingly

Physics of Crayons

2008-05-06T14:17:00.003-05:00

This is way old, but still pretty awesome. A Finnish grad student spent 5 days making this funny little video game, and it ended up winning the Independent Game Festival this year, an important (I assume) video game contest consisting of many more slickly produced games. Essentially the idea is simply to solve puzzles in a 2D environment where you create shapes subject to-- wait for it-- the laws of physics. That is basically it, just some classical mechanics and the appearance of very rudimentary design. Slate's article on CPD is a good read, and it is especially cool to hear that such a simple and modestly designed game emerged as the talk of the Game Developer's conference (another important thing I assume), despite the many other high profile games showcased there.

Crayon Physics Delux (original non-slick version can be downloaded here for free)

Blowing things up in slow motion

2008-05-06T12:23:00.003-05:00

...has always been an entertaining thing to observe. I recommend Stopping Time a book of Harold Edgerton photographs (he was the guy who invented super-high-speed photography and took those iconic shots of milk drops and bullets going through apples). This gallery of things shattering is not quite as good, but it's still interesting. And this melodramatic video of food executions is even better.

Valiant weirdos hit Thomas Friedman with Pie!

2008-04-24T23:07:00.004-05:00

The world is round motherfucker!

As news sources as diverse and varied as the Brown Daily Herald to the Providence Journal to the Providence Daily Dose, are breathlessly reporting, pompous windbag Tom Friedman got pied by some commies at my school Tuesday. Evidently, they were not fans of his "sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet, for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change." Learning the precise views of pseudo-intellectual phonies like Friedman is not really my cup of tea, so I don't know too much about that, but it sure sounds about right. (The moment I hear the word "globalization" my brain initiates a complex series of reactions that blurs my eyesight, disables my hearing and causes me to start thinking about baseball*). Nonetheless, I am familiar with his cheering on of the Iraq War (great call dude!), and his repeated insistence (like all those other Very Serious and Respected commentators) that good times there were a mere 6 months away. Perpetually 6 months away. So he totally knows what he's talking about. Let's all listen to him and not throw pies. NOT!

Anyway, for someone with such mustachioed views on world events, he sure doesn't take a pie to the face very gracefully. Look at the way he freaks out and then looks all indignant -- as though he didn't just deserve or expect to get ambushed by some leftist caricatures with tins of green cool whip.

*Oddly, the phrases "Gaza Strip" and "meatless lasagna" have the same effect.

Update: A friend of mine here who went to high school with the alleged pie thrower, recounted an incident in the model UN wherein she dumped a bucket of water on the student playing George Bush. Foreshadowing of things yet to come? I think so.

Valuable Relics coming to Bristol Parade!

2008-04-23T09:39:00.000-05:00

Bristol, my home town, inventor of the 4th of July Parade, should have an interesting day this July: the Red Sox 2007 World Series trophy, and recently incarcerated ex-Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci will both be marching.

The Bristol Phoenix, on Buddy's history with the parade:

Mr. Cianci incurred the wrath of chief marshal Dr. Manuel Luciano DaSilva and town officials after he crashed the chief marshal's reception, which was being held under a tent at the Bristol County Medical Center. Mr. Cianci, who had just been elected mayor of Providence, had not been invited to attend. Despite being turned away, Mr. Cianci showed up anyway — via helicopter.

"Guests ... were less than delighted to see Cianci arrive; the downdraft from his helicopter props threw up billowing clouds of choking dust under the tent canopy," Mr. Simpson writes.

Five years later, in 1980, Mr. Cianci crashed the parade again, when he arrived at the Colt High School athletic fields via helicopter.

"They smuggled me in like the Trojan Horse," Mr. Cianci was said to have quipped later.

Other years include stories of Mr. Cianci falling off horses, being "un-invited" from the parade, and being called "rude" by the parade chairman. But one of his most storied connections to the parade and Bristol's residents will mark its 25th anniversary this year. For the last quarter century, one of Mr. Cianci's toughest stretches of the parade route has been 2 High St., the house owned by Raymond DeLeo. In 1983, shortly after being indicted for assaulting Mr. DeLeo over a rumored mutual romantic interest, Mr. Cianci defiantly marched by his house, pretending not to notice him. Over the coming years, guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard were known to turn their back when the mayor approached.

The rift ballooned in 2002, Mr. Cianci's last year marching, when guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard sang him an impromptu song in "honor" of his recent indictment on corruption charges that would eventually send him to prison for five years:

"For he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, which nobody can deny," they sang.

The last time Cianci marched (in 2002), shortly before being convicted of racketeering, he got a standing ovation. After his Napoleon-like exile, his return should be fairly amusing.

As for the trophy, that was arranged by Jeremy Kapstein, the guy who sits directly behind home plate at every game, and therefore has a position of influence with the team. He came down to Bristol for some seafood and had the misfortune of running into a parade official who managed to finagle it through "two or three months of e-mails, phone calls, back and forth letters and even a hastily arranged meeting among Mr. Kapstein and Fourth of July Committee officials in the parking lot of the Verizon store on Route 6." Nice.

[Some pictures from 2006, 2007]

We now resume our regularly scheduled program, already in progress

2008-04-14T14:48:00.001-05:00

So, sorry about that, Topography readers. Wasn't really in the mood for blogging for a few weeks. Or perhaps I was, but I was deluged with work and malaise.

But now, the work tide has (temporary) gone out, the Sox opening up Fenway has cleared away the malaise, and the sun is shining. Or it will be again, soon. So here is some of the junk that I bookmarked long long ago and never posted:

Subatomic Particle Plush Toys. I suppose a lot of people don't already anthropomorphize particles. This should be helpful to them. [Emergence]

Backreaction: Black Holes at the LHC - What can Happen? This is one of those retarded stories where news outlets get their hands on some sort of pseudo-factoid and run with it. If you are reading this, you probably know about the "LHC might create a black hole and swallow the Earth" thing. Some guys from Hawaii, who are NOT scientists (despite what I heard reported at least twice) sued to stop the LHC, pending some type of investigation into the likelihood of this catastrophe (which was actually conducted like 10 years ago). Backreaction does a good job of explaining why this is dumb. It boils down to this: black holes would only be created if there are large extra dimensions, which there almost certainly are not. And EVEN THEN it would be 1/1000th the size of a proton. And EVEN THEN it would only hit a few nuclei on its way through the Earth, and EVEN THEN it might not absorb them, but IF IT DID it wouldn't matter, since it would have a velocity well in excess of Earth's escape velocity. There is also a funny man-on-the-street video of people's views on the issue as well [via BA].

Eliza, Computer Therapist. I remember this as a DOS-based program on my family's 386. It is a psychologist with frustratingly naïve AI. Now, like all things of that era, available as online javascript, for free. Says the original (wildly erroneous) description:

Eliza will amaze you with its ability to ask probing therapeutic questions and then keep the conversation going. Based on the first computer therapist developed by AI expert Joseph Weisenbaum at MIT, this program will keep you, your friends or your family engaged in hours of conversation.

Well, at least it doesn't try to give you anti-depressants.

Stranger Maps of Space (and other things)

2008-03-22T16:49:00.001-05:00

Strange Maps recently put up some interesting astronomically themed maps. The one above is "A Better Sky." Well, not actually better, but at least more current. Someone took a constellation map and replaced the star groupings by fable, with star grouping by recent world leaders. Does this make more sense? My verdict: sort of. It doesn't involve pretending that Aries somehow resembles a ram...or anything else. Plus people like Einstein, Darwin and Roosevelt get stars named after them. On the other hand, Mussolini has his own star too, in the "Tyrants" constellation (with Hitler, Robespierre and other fun friends!). At least the sunspots would run on time. Wait a second, there is a Quebec star? Nein!

Next up, the "Unnamed Methane sea on Titan."

Hmm. This is pretty much what it sounds like. There may be a bunch of liquid methane on Saturn's moon, and, basically, um, scientifically speaking, there is a "sea" of it. And it doesn't have a name. May I propose dubbing it the Sea of William Carlos Williams? He got left off the constellation map somehow...

In actuality though, we don't know whether there is liquid methane there, this map was just made by looking at "dark spots" on some radar maps of the surface. Nonetheless, Titan is pretty fascinating. When you crash into it, it looks like this:

...to a probe. (The video is Huygens' decent in 2005, time-compressed from four hours.)

I have to say though, as cool as these maps are, they have nothing on Area Codes in which Ludacris Claims to have Hoes:

“In this song, Ludacris brags about the area codes where he knows women, whom he refers to as ‘hoes’,” says Ms Gray, who plotted out all the area codes mentioned in this song on a map of the United States. She arrived at some interesting conclusions as to the locations of this rapper’s preferred female companionship:

“Ludacris heavily favors the East Coast to the West, save for Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.”
“Ludacris travels frequently along the Boswash corridor.”
“There is a ‘ho belt‘ phenomenon nearly synonymous with the ‘Bible Belt’.”
“Ludacris has hoes in the entire state of Maryland.”
“Ludacris has a disproportionate ho-zone in rural Nebraska. He might favor white women as much as he does black women, or perhaps, girls who farm.”
“Ludacris’s ideal ‘ho-highway’ would be I-95.”
“Ludacris has hoes in the Midway and Wake Islands. Only scientists are allowed to inhabit the Midway Islands, and only military personnel may inhabit the Wake Islands. Draw your own conclusion.”

Yup.

Physics Ball

2008-03-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

The past few times I've filled out one of those bracket thingies, I've been pretty lucky through no fault of my own. Typically, I just go by the team records and guess, without any overriding methodology or interest. The method Chad Orzel employs to create the "Worst NCAA Pool Bracket Ever" is pretty admirable though: NCAA picks by physics graduate program ranking:

Winners determined by the rankings of the physics graduate programs of the competing schools. (If only one of the schools offers a Ph.D. program in physics, that school wins; if neither school has a graduate program, the higher seed wins.)

It is hard to see in the above picture, but basically it has Cornell over Wisconsin, with UNC and UCLA rounding out the final four. The last two aren't far fetched, but Cornell is wonderfully bonkers (update: they are already out! oh well, there is always next year Ivy League.) In fact the rest of the, um, 'elite eight' are actually not so weird either: Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Pittsburgh, Duke, but I mean, come on. [Full pdf in original post.]

It is worth noticing that the schools begin seeded as they are in the actual tournament, by basketball, not Physics. If there were organized by Physics to begin with (get on this NCAA!) you wouldn't have Stanford vs. Cornell in the first round. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But then again, neither does polluting academic institutions with recruited athletes.

[Uncertain Principles]

Equal nox

2008-03-19T19:46:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow is that vaguely astronomical holiday, where bearded men get out their sextants and declare with authority that it is now seasonally acceptable to mix lemonade with ice tea. It is cold and rainy here, so I may wait a few weeks to do that, but I will not have to wait another minute to balance my egg.

As the myth goes, of course, at the precise moment of equinoxity it is possible, albeit briefly, to balance an egg on its end, an otherwise impossible task. How this idea began is truly baffling. As is the thought that anyone who has pondered the mechanics of this idea for more than 30 seconds would continue to believe in it. (For more background, Snopes wins the quality name contest with "Infernal Egguinox"). I suspect that the only reason this notion continues to exist in the popular imagination is that equinoxes are the only day in the year anyone ever actually tries balancing eggs. Anyway, whatever the link between eggs and 12 hours of daylight is, I have long heard that one can balance an egg on any day of the year. But, the world has breathlessly wondered, how?

Well, at long last, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy demonstrates:

Prepare to be Blown Away

2008-03-12T21:17:00.004-05:00

...by relativistic asteroids.

Someone has taken the already ultra-realistic classic arcade video game Asteroids and added the one element it was sorely lacking, relativity. Of course, Asteroids already featured 2D warped spacetime, but now, there are Lorentz contractions too! If they could only manage to factor in the quantum hall effect, it could outsell Halo.

[via Uncertain Principles]

Go Team Physics

2008-03-09T12:54:00.003-05:00

OK, maybe just one more thing about politics, but only because it involves yesterday's election of a physicist to Congress.

Bill Foster, formerly a particle experimentalist at Fermilab, just won the seat formerly held by Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, in what was supposedly a solidly GOP region.

Mr. Foster defeated James D. Oberweis, a dairy company owner, in a contest for the 14th Congressional district, a long swath that runs from the far western suburbs of Chicago nearly to the state’s Iowa border. He will fill the remaining months of Mr. Hastert’s term.

Mr. Foster won with 53 percent of the vote, while Mr. Oberweis had 47 percent, The Associated Press reported.

“Back in the laboratory, this is what we’d say was a pretty successful experiment,” Mr. Foster, a soft-spoken man who makes regular references to his science background, told a crowd of supporters at a banquet hall in Aurora. “You sent a clear message to everyone in Washington. You demanded change, and you are demanding it now.”

Since this was only a replacement election he'll have to run again in November, but it still sends a "clear message to everyone in Washington:" physicists get things done.

Terrible Job, RI

2008-03-08T11:09:00.005-05:00

I thought Clinton would win here, but 58-40? Awful, just awful. At least my East Bay was the closest. I blame Warwick...not to mention the voters who live in Swan Point for this one.

I'm also going to blame the media for coming up with the idea that a net loss of 5 delegates in Texas equals a win for Clinton. Or the idea that gaining ~6 delegates when trailing by roughly 160 is some kind of dramatic, race-altering victory. This was probably the worst possible outcome for Democrats, the primary is simply going grind on forever with Hillary getting more and more desperate and vengeful. As many have pointed out there is absolutely no chance that Obama will be overtaken in delegates, meaning that if Sen. Clinton wants to contest the nomination she'll have to go against the will of actual voters with some type of tortured logic about how even if she got less votes she won all the votes that "mattered" in retard states like Ohio. (In her speech Tuesday night she said that Ohio knows how to "pick a president." Definitely. Thanks for re-electing Bush, morons!) In any case, the only way she can become the nominee is by overriding the will of actual voters, a concept that does not seem to bother anyone in her campaign. Instead of admitting that the only way to win is a party-rending reversal of popular intension, it seems that she'll soldier on, using Republican-style arguments against her opponent, trying to get the delegates from Florida and Michigan (where she coasted through on name-recognition, and being the only candidate on the ballot, respectively) added to her total, and generally dividing the 'crats.

After Super Tuesday when it seemed likely that the primary would stretch on forever I contemplated the idea that Puerto Rico would end up being relevant. I was sort of kidding to myself, but now I am actually annoyed. Territories that are barely part of the US should not get to have twice as much clout as certain states that, though small, belonged the original 13 colonies. Speak American, Puerto Rico! Or else get back in line with the other soon-to-be-but-not-yet-states like Quebec and Lithuania.

Alright, enough of this politics stuff. I'll get back to being irreverent shortly. It's just that this is the first time I've bothered to vote and I think I've learned an important lesson: one vote never makes a difference.

Battle of Rhode Island

2008-03-03T15:49:00.000-05:00

Despite our near total lack of delegates, Presidential-types have been campaigning in our little state. Last week, it was here that Clinton gave her sarcastic "the skies will open" remarks. Saturday Obama came here to mock her mocking him. McCain and Huckabee even came to visit both of the Republicans who live here. There have been radio and TV ads on non-stop. It is quite a thing to see anyone campaigning for president here. I certainly can't remember the last time anyone actually cared how we voted. So starved for attention are we that when Kennedy gave a speech downtown in 1960, we named the plaza after him.

Judging by that, I wouldn't be so surprised if we renamed Rhode Island College "Obama Island College." I went to see him there last weekend and I must say, it lived up to the hype surrounding his rallies in every way. There were so many people that it took at least 2 hours to get inside. The line coiled through 2 parking lots when we arrived and was soon snaking down a hill and out of sight. It is estimated 10,000 people showed up, but only half were able to get in. Because of the high-number of umbrella-related assaults every year, people were forced to abandon them outside the doors. When we finally did, it was packed shoulder to shoulder and despite the fact that everyone there had been on their feet for about 3 hours already, the crowd was so enraptured that they would have strangled every Clinton voter in the state, with their bare hands, if asked. At least I would have. It is predicted that Sen. Clinton will carry RI tomorrow, and if I had to, I would probably bet on it, but after seeing the excitement surrounding Barack's only visit I would be surprised if it isn't close. With such a small electorate, the movement of a few thousand voters translates into a fairly large percentage.

The RI Attorney General gave a good speech in which he referred to Barack as "President Obama" at least twice, probably not by accident, and implored the crowd to "suck it up and get it done" like a tough-but-fair JV hockey coach. Then, in what was probably the most comical moment of the day, Rep. Patrick "Patches" Kennedy came out and delivered 5 minutes of screechy, overheated oratory by way of introduction. It was funny because of how incongruous it was -- instead of working his way up to a frenzied pitch, he just strode out, turned his volume all the way up, and hit us like a wall. He sounded a lot like an exasperated Gene Wilder, come to think of it. Since he and Obama addressed the people stranded outside beforehand, he may have already been worked up, but it still just sounded as though he had spent the morning shouting at the top of his lungs for practice. Ironically, he was talking about the importance of inspirational verbal skills in the political process.

Rhetoric-wise it was pretty much the standard stump speech of the past few months, for those familiar with it. Probably my favorite moment was his shout-out to our former-Republican, former-Senator, permanent-bad-ass Lincoln Chafee (who was about 20 people in front of me in the line to get in).

Real change isn't voting for George Bush's war in Iraq and then telling the American people it was actually a vote for more diplomacy when you start running for president. The title of the bill was `A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.' I knew what it was, Lincoln Chafee knew what it was! [Crowd erupts] It was a vote for war. Linc Chafee knew the score!

The only thing missing was some actual references to Rhode Island. In fact, he mentioned Texas twice, presumably due to exhaustion (which it is hard to blame him for). I was disappointed though that in his 10 minute soliloquy about "hope" he didn't make the connection to our state's motto. The crowd, at least the native RI-fraction of it, was waiting for this, and it just never happened. It was actually possible to hear individual people shouting "Hope is our state motto!" and "Look at the flag!" during quiet moments, so frustrated were they by the absence of this obvious observation.

Still though, it was a barnburner. If he is elected, people will surely remember events like these for many years.

Projo, RIFuture, ProvidenceDailyDose

Leaping

2008-02-29T01:43:00.002-05:00

February is my least favorite month, and for that reason, it is bothersome to me that it occasionally has an extra day. I appreciate the oddity of it, of course, and yet I think I'd prefer that additional day to be the 33rd of May (I'm subtracting another day from February, as long as I'm in charge of the calendar). There are however, people who are so bothered, not only by our unusual leap day, but also by the very fact that dates of different years fall on different days, and that it takes a rhyme to remember which months have 31 days and which have 30 that they have cooked up a drastic and unrealizable dream calendar system. And of course, much like Styx or Ron Paul this crazy idea has a traveling band of earnest fanatics who just can't let it go.

The principle of the World Calendar is as follows: every third month has 31 days, all the others have 30 (Jan 31, Feb 30, Mar 30, Apr 31, and so on). Since this only gives you 364 days however, you tack on a so called "Worldday" at the end of December. Yet, in order that the calendar has the same calendar date falling on the same week day every year, this day does not belong to the week. In the rioting and violent chaos that would inevitably ensue upon this day, we would all note appreciatively that it was unnecessary to buy a new calendar from year to year. And so we would forever stare up at the yellowed pages of our "Kitties - 2023" until humankind's eventual vaporization by androids in the late years of the 21st century.

And of course, there would be leap years as well, but again, so as not to mess with the date-weekday correspondence it would be another of those blank days (a June 31st).

The ghastly system was devised originally in 1930 and supported by something known as the World Calendar Association for several decades. The lobbying of this organization succeeded in gaining some notoriety for the idea, and introducing unsuccessful bills in the U.S. Congress supporting the concept. Evidently, the League of Nations devoted a bit of time to debating and promoting the calendar in the mid-1930's while absolutely nothing of international importance was going on.

Aside from the obvious fact that the confusion and disorder that would result from changing over to this system would completely negate any possible benefit from it, there are a number of groups that have come out in firm opposition to the World Calendar, as though it had any chance of coming to pass. The first group, with the dumbest reasons for disagreeing with it, are religions who feel that the blank weekday would send the planet careening off its axis when the 7-day pattern of worship was disrupted. Second are the publishers of calendars, a politically formidable adversary. And if the World Calendar started gaining in popularity, people born on March, May, August and November 31st would emerge from the woodwork, uniting to protest the idea. If you've every talked to someone born on February 29th you know how defensive people can be about their birthdays getting taken away (Feb 29ers wouldn't mind if we just had 366 days every year and the seasons slid completely out of whack -- so bitter and self-centered they are). Plus, when it comes to birthdays, it would be unfortunate to be consigned to a life of Monday celebrations while guys like me lord their Saturdays over them.

But of course, in the words of the WCA, "THINK ABOUT IT: How can any civilized world achieve world peace while its main calendar battles with everyone who uses it?" And they have a point here, after all. People forget that the Bay of Pigs invasion failed due to confusion over the number of days in March.

Dekamegajoule Railgun

2008-02-20T02:16:00.005-05:00

The navy is trying to build a humongous railgun, a crazy, probably pointless weapon that shoots a projectile purely through electromagnets. Which is why I have no clue where all that fire is coming from. The video is still pretty cool though. The test depicted below involves roughly 10 megajoules of energy and Mach 7 for the 7 pound projectile. This site says "an 8 megajoule test shot has an impacting force that the Navy describes as being the equivalent of 'hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph.'"

Oh, and by the way, the flames are from the ignition of aluminum particles on the outside of the shell, heated to 1,000 °C by the aerodynamic drag.

Miniphotos of Marine Minatures

2008-02-20T00:39:00.002-05:00

Hey look! Really small marine creatures! Seriously, look how small they are! Especially the little spherical fish. But the amorphous collective thing above seems really cool:

This jellyfish relative called a blue button isn’t one organism but many, joined at the gas-filled hub that keeps the colony afloat. Each tentacle has a specialized role in the cooperative—catching prey, digesting, or reproducing. The pigment blocks ultraviolet rays.

Joooooooiiiin usssss. Resistance to the blue button is futile. You will be incorporated into our gas-filled hub...

National Geographic - Marine Minatures

Flat Earth? Teach the controversy!

2008-02-19T22:30:00.004-05:00

I've been seeing ads for Flat Earth vegetable chips recently. I doubt that they're actually a snack food espousing the Flat Earth Hypothesis and I am having trouble figuring out how they settled on this name. It does give me an opening however to mention that of all the crackpots out there, Flat Earthers (they even have a Society, BTW -- check out the wiki article for a good laugh) are among the most pathetic science deniers in the spectrum of science denial. Even if it is inexcusable, you can still understand why people disbelieve evolution. It is an amalgamation of several fairly complex processes that happen over millions of years and can't be easily observed in macroscopic creatures over short time-scales. And they are told that "believing" in it makes them irreligious, so the blinders go on anyway. Some people don't buy relativity either, being another hard-to-demonstrate-to-people-who-don't-like-physics type theory which is also really contrary to our everyday experience. And again, though these people are ignorant, you can sort of understand why they exist. But there are few essential facts about the world easier to explain to people than the Earth not being flat. You can just look at it. You have to be so paranoid to think there is an elaborate conspiracy to doctor photos showing Earth's sphericity that you are hardly worth trying to reason with in the first place. And contrary to popular belief, people have known the planet was round for thousands of years, as opposed to evolution and relativity which are 150 and 100 years old, respectively. I don't have any more profound stuff to say about this, railing against a hilariously quacky theory doesn't really serve any purpose. The wiki page is pretty good on its own, the explanations for phenomena like eclipses and tides are so much more convoluted and unlikely than the notion that the planet is a ball.

The Flat Earth Society also maintains that the Earth is accelerating upward at a rate of 9.8 m/s², thereby simulating gravity. This upward momentum is caused by the "Universal Accelerator", a vague term used by the Society to describe a force that originated at the Big Bang and caused the Earth to speed upwards. Gravity cannot exist on a flat Earth since the disc shape would eventually collapse on itself. However in a few Flat Earth models, other planetary bodies such as the moon and the sun are alleged to have gravitational pulls, causing the gravitational force on an object to decrease as it increases in altitude. This also allows spacecraft to "orbit".

Anyhow, for bargain basement pseudoscience, you can't go bagainier than these people. What else is there? The existence of the moon?

Stephen Colbert's Fallback: Astrophysics

2008-02-15T00:24:00.000-05:00

Mere moments after calling attention to Zosia's criminal record I have occasion to conveniently post exactly the same thing as her. What a coincidence...

Of course, a bit featuring Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn't have gone very long unnoticed. Especially one in which he states the unvarnished truth about astrophysics: it's a safety career.

Breakfast of ions

2008-02-15T00:21:00.006-05:00

Atheist Sees Image of Big Bang in Piece of Toast

"I was just about to spread the butter when I noticed a fairly typical small hole in the bread surrounded by a burnt black ring. however the direction and splatter patterns of the crumbs as well as the changing shades emanating outwards from this black hole were very clearly similar to the chaotic-dynamic non-linear patterns that one would expect following the big bang". "It's the beginning of the world" he added excitedly.

Ever since news of the discovery made national headlines, local hoteliers have been overwhelmed by an influx of atheists from all over the country who have flocked to Huddlesfield to catch a glimpse of the scientific relic. "I have always been an Atheist and to see my life choices validated on a piece of toast is truly astounding" said one guest at the Huddlesfield arms hotel.

What a coincidence, I could have sworn I saw the early large-scale structure of the universe in some latte foam yesterday!

Supersupernova

2008-02-13T16:31:00.001-05:00

I don't care that this is neither timely nor newsworthy, I just saw this simulation on The Universe and I had to post something about it. This computation group at UChicago seems to have come up with these beautiful videos of Type Ia supernovae exposions. The spike originating from the center is the dramatic ignition of carbon, and the entirety of the simulation comprises only 3 seconds in real time.

You can see a better quality video and a decent article related to it here.

ASC / Alliances Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes

Update: It has recently come to my attention that the illustrious Zosia was part of the team responsible for stealing the very video shown above and posting it on YouTube. From the comments,

he got this video from ME, and i stole it from rocky, who stole it from don lamb...please, i'd like some credit for the multiple levels of stealing i'm responsible for.

Credit awarded.

With all that larceny experience, it's no wonder she's so good at stealing from my blog.

Well so's your coffee

2008-02-10T13:17:00.000-05:00

For your entertainment: a few commercials that didn't stand the test of time very well. We all know how funny ciggerette ads from the 50's seem nowadays, but racist Jell-o? Misogynist coffee? Who knew.

Only the Room is Virtual -- the Waiting is all too Real*

2008-02-09T22:24:00.000-05:00

Jan 26. Regular Red Sox ticket sales. I sign onto the ticket buying website at 10am, and spend hours in the Virtual Waiting Room™ with no success. My prospects of visiting Fenway this year appear slim.

Feb 6. Email from the lottery machine, letting me know that it has deigned to permit me to try, just try, buying tickets to one of this year's "special" games.

Feb 9. - 12:00pm I sign into the Virtual Waiting Room™.

10:11pm I actually get through the waiting room, and buy some sweet obstructed view seats. At least they're for Opening Day.

*Title shamelessly stolen from Jere.

I Humbly Accept

2008-02-09T21:03:00.000-05:00

In honor (I assume) of my blog's 3rd birthday, the knowledge that I am getting a steady stream of hits for people googling the "Best Scientist in the World."

If it is on Google it has to be true.

Three Years

2008-02-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

...of this blog. Founded Feb 8, 2005.

Sure, it may not publish every day, address the important issues of the day, or otherwise contain anything of real worth.

But hey, it's something.

To Serve Man...Neutrinos

2008-02-07T00:37:00.000-05:00

I love the idea of putting neutrinos to use for something. Anything really -- they are so difficult to detect that at this point we are working for them. But I am hopeful that mankind may, one day turn the tables on the weak reaction and put it to use for the good of humanity, as these folks are trying to do.

AIP Physics Bulletin: Anti Neutrinos and Nonproliferation

A new compact detector may help international inspectors peer inside a working nuclear reactor in a non-intrusive way by directly measuring the flux of anti-neutrinos coming out. Since their first use, nuclear reactors have, at least in principle, been closely related with nuclear weapons. For example, reactors produce plutonium which can later be fashioned into bomb material. The question of how to monitor the actual operation of a particular reactor and compare the changing plutonium inventory to what is expected from normal operations (producing electric power, say) is a large component of nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

For some perspective on this, the picture is, of course, of the Super Kamiokande detector. The Super-K can tell the direction neutrinos are coming from and detect weaker energy ones than you'd be looking for coming out of a reactor. Even considering this, a cubic-meter sized detector, as is being developed by the folks in the article, would be quite an accomplishment.

This Primary is Killing Me

2008-02-06T18:03:00.000-05:00

So I have been paying a bit too much attention to the presidential primary lately. I ought to know that I get nothing in return for this attentiveness other than anxiety and the ability to make shallow and occasionally witty observations about politics to my friends. And yet, I can't help myself. I like reading about history, and trying to understand human events.

So hopefully, by dumping out the contents of my brain in this blog entry I can get it out of my system and get back to worrying about things I have some control over.

First of all, I like Obama. This would not be a problem for most people, but I like being contrary, and instead everything about me is right in middle of his demographic. I'm 23, male, well-educated, from a liberal state. I am in academia and going into science. I use facebook. I am not religious. I have a gmail account. This is his wheelhouse.

And pretty much everyone I know is supporting Barack. It makes me feel silly to be part of this mob, but it just can't be helped. I wish I wasn't so predictable, but I actually like Obama, and can't begin to imagine how cool it would be to actually like the president, rather than to simply prefer them to the alternative. There is though, a certain "empty vessel" quality to him that causes supporters to believe that he reflects their own attitudes more closely than he probably does. Fortunately for me, I'm not obsessed with the minutae of anyone's views. Presidents do not get to determine the exact details of any policy, those are decided in Congress. I just want the president to be a smart Democrat who doesn't annoy or anger me, so that I can ignore the news more easily. It is the broad outlines that are important. I think he would help build a solid majority in the House and Senate, inspire the public to embrace more progressive views and take advantage of the fact that the country is listing leftward right now. Unlike most Democrats in recent memory he actually appears to have a spine, and doesn't simply water-down rhetoric to appeal to the mushy middle that doesn't actually prefer to vote for candidates who seem to be apologizing for their views. Electing someone like that would really help me get back to ignoring the news.

There is a thing George W. Bush did when he was running in 2000 and 2004 where he would drop cloaked biblical references into his speeches to signal religious votes that he was one of them. Obama seems to be doing the same thing. The best example I can think of off the top of my head: every speech I have heard him give uses the word "science" or "scientists" at least once, whereas this is not something other candidates make a point of doing. This seems like code for bevy of issues that are important to the left like global warming, evolution, stem cells, and religion in politics. Well, not to mention the fact that he has actually expressed opinions about these things too...

Here are some thoughts in no particular order about the candidates:

The night we bombed Iraq I tossed and turned for hours before puking and falling to sleep in a cold sweat. And not because I am some hyper-sensitive humanitarian, I just knew it was going to set off a cascading, long-term disaster in about 50 different ways. Anyone who knew less than I did, as a (then) 18 year old college freshman, about Iraq in 2003 should not be president. They probably shouldn't be anything.

I have heard a lot of people say "We all know that both candidates have an equal chance of winning the general election..." Back up there, hypothetical person, "we" don't know anything. This statement is untrue for several reasons. Firstly, Clinton sets up a lousy contrast with McCain. Her primary campaign is based on the notion that she is experienced by virtue of (in the minds of most people) being famous for longer than her opponents. 7 years in the Senate, wherein she regurgitated Bush's talking points, caved on practically everything of importance, and supported the war, shouldn't count for much. McCain spent roughly the same amount of time being tortured in Vietnam, and then another 30 years in the Senate. Equating the years she spent attending the funerals of minor world leaders with those he spent being an actual Senator is going to seem pretty flimsy. When she tries to take advantage of public sentiment favoring withdrawing from Iraq he'll simply remind us that she voted for it. Obama on the other hand will draw much cleaner distinctions. He can hammer McCain non-stop for his bellicosity. He isn't pretending to be experienced, and can sell his candidacy convincingly as a break from the past. He is a probably the best political orator in a generation and he is much, much younger. McCain will seem tired, old, and cranky in contrast to Obama.

Secondly, there is no elasticity in public opinion about Clinton, everyone knows her already. Anyone who already dislikes her is not going to be won over. And those who do dislike her do so vehemently. With McCain the Republican nominee, conservative voters are going to feel a lack of enthusiasm in the election...unless the Dems nominate the person they already hate more than anyone else. Obama is not well known, on the other hand, and the more people see of him, the more they like him.

Most people are predicting a Democratic win in the general election either way, but I don't see it. It seems to me that Obama would win by a significant margin and H-bomb, barring something unforeseen would lose, but probably narrowly. I'm sort of invested in the Dem race so I can't predict it with any accuracy, but unfortunately for us, the cool, inspiring candidate who the young clever people like never wins the nomination. This is what gives me a sense of dread about the rest of the campaign, but who knows.

On that same note, here is a nightmare scenario I would like you to contemplate: Sen. McCain taps Huckabee for VP to shore up religious voters. The Democrats nominate Clinton and lose. After 15 minutes in office, McCain dies, since he is about 150 years old, leaving Huckleberry in charge. Jesus replaces Washington on the $1 bill. The End.

It is so stuck-up and wrong to say this, but for lack of a better understanding of Hillary voters, I think they just don't follow the news very closely. Polls well in advance of elections essentially show name recognition. No one is really paying attention, and when asked, they simply go for the one they have heard of. When pundits are surprised about shifting trends shortly before the election day, that is really just voters waking up and looking at candidates for the (usually) the first time. My fear about this front-loaded primary was that following Iowa and NH there would just not be enough time for Barack to overcome his opponent's superior fame. He was on an upwards trajectory, and given another week or so, he likely would have won more delegates than he did. As a cynic, I was fairly blasé about his candidacy until I heard him speak, and then I was floored. The more time there is for people to hear him speak the better.

It is a minor miracle that Edwards dropped out when he did, though it was still late enough to do some damage. Edwards and Obama were splitting the liberal, thoughtful, anti-war, anti-Hillary vote. If he had not run at all, Obama would have won all 4 of the initial contests and would be far closer to capturing the nomination. Though he does indeed try promoting important issues, John Edwards seems quite opportunistic. I think he hasn't endorsed either remaining because he can't figure out which will win, and he would like something in return.

I think some of the subconscious appeal of Barack Obama is based on his name. It is so utterly ridiculous, that it triggers a rebellious impulse to support someone whose moniker conventional wisdom would deem an automatic loser. It is kind of a fuck-you to the establishment who pours over this kind of nonsense.

The next day that there will be a large number of delegates up for grabs is March 4th when RI votes along with Ohio, Texas, and Vermont. There are a few Obama-favoring contests between now and then, but there is an entire 2 weeks preceding March 4th with nothing on the calendar. We are much smaller than OH and TX, but I have no doubt that both candidates will show up and certainly both will advertise here. It is sort of cool, considering that everyone here had been disappointed that with the front-loaded schedule we would have no impact at all. Considering the paucity of contests around the same time though, it seems that we will get much more attention than we would have if we were part of Super Tuesday. And having split up Connecticut and Massachusetts, both campaigns may think they have a good shot at our precious 32 delegates. Probably by leveraging our state motto, pictured below.

Well, I feel a little better now...

Stupor Tuesday

2008-02-04T12:38:00.000-05:00

There was a time, not too long ago, when the state of Rhode Island held their primary on Super Tuesday. But since those states decided to lurch forward little RI was left behind, on March 4th. It is the 2nd biggest day though, so if there is still an election going on I may -- emphasize may -- end up going to the polls. Nonetheless, this Daily Show clip is a pleasant look back at an era when RI wasn't at the tail end of the primaries, most of the correspondents on the Daily Show were funny, and they could send Colbert to Providence to have him interview our giant blue termite.

This is just to say (that William Carlos Williams blows)

2008-02-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

You know that horrible poet William Carlos Williams? I sure wish one of my high school friends had written a scathing parody to stick it to him and his stupid palindromic face.

Oh wait, one of them did. And I came across the 2001 Bowsprit while rummaging through my attic. (The original "poem" may be read here This Is Just To Say.)

This Is Just To Say (To William Carlos Williams)
By Brendan Dougherty

I have eaten
your poem
that was in
my literature book

and which
you were probably
saving
for rereading

Forgive me
it was delicious
so short
and so minimal

Prof. Carrey discusses the Ekpyrotic Universe

2008-02-01T15:27:00.000-05:00

Remember that bit that Jim Carrey did about stochastic phase switching of electrons in penning traps on Conan O'Brien's show last year? No? Well then watch it here. I'll wait.

Done? Good. Well, somehow, Zosia (having recently awoken from her internet hibernation) has found a similar segment from that show, far predating last year's, featuring Carrey and little-known physicist Stephen Hawking. (It is a few minutes into the clip, btw.) The subject is less obscure (I'm always overhearing people discussing brane cosmology) but it is every bit as good. The Finnish subtitles are pretty hilarious too. In fact, I'll go one step further and say that Fins are hilarious.

Periodic Prints

2008-01-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

Check out this awesome periodic table of the elements. Each element is a different print. Some even correspond to the element depicted.

Never Forget

2008-01-31T16:03:00.001-05:00

Reinventing the wheel Tea Kettle

2008-01-31T13:16:00.000-05:00

Sax notes lead to off-beat boiler

The device looks oddly like a bent desk lamp, with a metallic ball at the end instead of a lightbulb. When plugged into the power supply, and the ball is lowered into water, it boils the liquid within seconds -- even as little as a tablespoonful.
...

He said he first came up with the concept 50 years ago and it took him half of those years to figure out how to make the device.

"The principle is beautiful. I have cashed in on a natural phenomenon and it's all about music," he said.
...
Davey noticed as he played the saxophone at home that everything resonated at a different frequency.

"The glasses will tinkle on one note. Knives and forks in the drawer will tinkle on another note and I realised that everything has its point of vibration," he said. "In the same way, a component in the ball is tuned to a certain frequency."

Boiled water? Count me in!

Constructing construction of the LHC

2008-01-31T00:28:00.000-05:00

Symmetry magazine has some good articles in their most recent issue. Which is another way of saying "there are some parts that aren't about the LHC." First, an article by Dennis Overbye about the wretched "God Particle" terminology. I think he arrives at the wrong conclusion (he says it's ok), but I admire the effort.

Physicists groan when they hear it referred to as the “God particle” in newspapers and elsewhere (and the temptation to repeat it, given science reporters’ desperate need for colorful phrases in an abstract and daunting field, is irresistible). Even when these physicists approve of what you have written about their craft, they grumble that the media are engaging in sensationalism, or worse.

Seriously dude. There is enough God in other places, lets keep science a nice pristine, hypoallergenic, god-free zone. Through stake-burnings and heavy sack beatings if necessary. This god particle business is really dragging down our atheist world conspiracy.

Secondly, is this weird blip about some lady studying the "anthropology of physicists." I kid you not. Anthropology, it seems to me, ran its course about 50 years ago. Once they finished off the idea of cultural, um, whatever we called the concept that it Europeans should take over third world nations and make them wear pants. And yet, despite our now-complete picture of human behavior, anthropologists continue to exist. Camping out in banana republics, publishing papers on how the introduction of plastic bags has impacted indigenous communities, and using the word "construct" in an incorrect social-sciences sense that annoys those of us with a grasp on the English language. After a term of anthropology as an undergrad we had heard so many accounts of trips to Papua New Guinea that we began to assume the constant influx of anthropologists there to observe its many diverse and isolated cultures was propping up the local economy. At one point I asked the professor whether any anthropologists had studied the culture of anthropologists working in Papua New Guinea -- the answer was yes. Why the field of did not self-destruct at that moment has eluded me.

But enough diversion. The woman observing particle physicists is about one step away from that.

“I’m interested in how social convention or custom enter the objective world of physics,” Roy says. For example, the use of “right-handed” and “lefthanded” to describe the parity of particles can be seen as a link from concrete, observed reality to the abstract workings of the mind...Roy also examines the assumptions made by particle physicists and the effects of those assumptions on their results. She is interested, for instance, in the criteria that the ATLAS Trigger Data Acquisition group use for deciding which particle collisions are interesting enough to record, and which to throw out.

There might be something to the first question, but the second is a technical one. Now if only we can find someone to tail the anthropologist, we could better understand her culture...

The Unbearable Lightness of Bottles

2008-01-30T08:56:00.000-05:00

I don't know how I forgot about this. A few months ago, casting around for something worthwhile to do in Philadelphia, my girlfriend and I headed over to the "museum" area, and settled on the "science" museum. Which, like everything else in that city, has been named after Benjamin Franklin. (Primary scientific accomplishment: inventing the sign convention that makes current a "flow" of positive charge, the opposite of the direction that the negative elections, which are actually the ones flowing, are flowing.) It was not an impressive place. Parts were fun, but kind of sad. Such as the giant heart that you can walk inside. It looks sort of cool and fanciful from the exterior, but once inside is really just a series of dark tunnels. They had a whole electromagnetism section that was nothing more than a collection of poorly functioning freshman physics demonstrations. Like the gold leaf/pith ball thing which most people couldn't figure out how to use and barely worked at all, conveying only the concept that a confusing series of steps could cause tiny pieces of foil to quiver and separate by a tenth of a centimeter.

It was all like this. And I don't think it is just because I have grown up from an easily entertained child into a cynical physics grad student man-child. I've been to the AMNH in New York, and I have a solid recollection of Boston's science museum of my youth as being a great deal more fun. In the words of Michael Scott, "You don't go to the Science museum and get handed a pamphlet about electricity. You put your hand on a metal ball, and you hair stands up. And then you know science." It was like that. They had a show where a guy in a Faraday cage created huge arcs of lightning between Van De Graaf generators. That is how you demonstrate E&M, through fear! Philadelphia, on the other hand had...a giant replica train that moves several feet. There is so much we can learn about the 1840s...

Anyhow, I think I pinpointed the very best moment of our trip. This exhibit, demonstrating the effects of air on plastic bottles:

Behold the majesty of Physics!

Roundup 1/28/08

2008-01-28T10:21:00.000-05:00

The Hulk-out list. A compilation of the events that caused David Banner to get angry and Hulk-out.

38. Placed in a small room with a ravenous black panther

44. Kicking over a beehive and then being surprised when the bees are mad at
him

47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - "You don't understand, I
have to be there by 4:00!" - "Hey, mac, it's rush hour, we ain't gettin' there til five,
so relax." - "BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!"

84. Being placed in a room that is filled with carbon monoxide gas

Oddly, after writing about former Sen. Chaffee yesterday, I saw an environmental talk today by the guy who beat him, Sheldon Whitehouse. He seemed very direct. At one point someone asked him a hopeful question that most people would probably try to give a fuzzy, indirect answer to. Whitehouse just said, "No, I don't know anything about that" and moved on. So that was cool. Not as cool was his saying that he doesn't support nuclear power (though he admitted he might be mistaken). If climate change is the global catastrophe it is supposed to be, windmills and florescent lightbulbs aren't going to do it. Making cars as efficient as they already are in most other western nations by "2025" or whatever isn't going to do it either. And people aren't going to change their lifestyles. Wind, wave, hydroelectric, and solar, even at maximum capacity will not be enough. That calculation you do in intro modern physics about how much power you get out a pound of uranium (~4.7 gazillion volts, if I remember correctly) must be designed to brainwash young scientists into liking nuclear energy.

New Material Pushes the Limits of Blackness.

Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.

What we need to do here, is take this material, slap in on the outside of some animal-human hybrids, and have them terrorize ordinary, hardworking Americans. People don't want to fund science unless they are panicked.

Update: As Jere pointed out in the comments, Bill Lee beat me to the punch on the carbon nanotube story, as he usually does.

Chafee: I wouldn't have voted for me either

2008-01-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

Linc Chafee was one of the few Senators with the foresight and balls to vote against the Iraq War, and always struck me as the type of thoughtful politician who is fairly uncommon. Rhode Islanders thought so too, though he was, technically, a Republican. He lost re-election in 2006 in what was essentially a calculation on the part of voters here that his mere existence would allow the GOP to control the Senate. Since the margin in the Senate ended up being one vote, our decision to oust a guy we liked and agreed with to stop him from enabling the party we don't, proved pretty crafty. He is now essentially saying that our decision to not re-elect him was smart. The odd thing is that he didn't like the Republican leadership anymore than we did, but with the R's funding his campaign he couldn't just jump overboard. (Or as he says was afraid the prez taking revenge on RI). He's an independent now.

Of his new book, the Projo says:

The most startling revelation: Chafee must be the only senator in U.S. political history who says his defeat was the result of voters acting logically.

“The system works best when power remains in the hands of the voters,” writes Chafee. “I was a casualty of the system working in 2006, and while defeat is never easy, I give the voters credit: They made the connection between electing even popular Republicans at the cost of leaving the Senate in the hands of a leadership they had learned to mistrust.”
...
Exit polls done on Election Day showed that Chafee had a 63-percent job-approval rating, high enough, in most election cycles, to guarantee victory.
...
“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee. “Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”
...
The book has some through-the-looking-glass scenes; one in particular reads like Hunter S. Thompson sans drugs. As Mr. Bush pressed insistently for war, Chafee requested a meeting with CIA brass to examine the evidence against Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Sooner or later, I have to vote on this war, show me everything you have,” Chafee requests of the CIA.

“What they had, I discovered as the meeting stretched into an hour, was next to nothing,” recalls Chafee. “They showed me what they had with little comment and no enthusiasm. Someone handed me one of the infamous aluminum tubes, the kind we were told Saddam was using to enrich weapons-grade uranium while plotting mushroom clouds over America, the ‘smoking gun’ that Condoleezza Rice warned about.

“I looked at the aluminum tube, looked at the analysts and thought, I can go buy one of these at Adler’s Hardware,” the Providence hardware emporium, writes Chafee.

Adler's? Oh, snap!

Bubble Disaster

2008-01-26T23:22:00.000-05:00

Collapse of the False Vacuum is finally getting the credit it deserves from people contemplating the end of the world. Meaning Dartmouth grad student and simulation-maker extraordinaire, Joel Thorarinson's simulations are getting credit from the internet.

End of the World: 10 Disasters That Could End It All At Any Given Second

5. Bubble Nucleation

According to the leading cosmological model the universe began as a false vacuum of empty space filled with energy. This incredibly unstable, high-energy state went through the process of bubble nucleation to reach a more stable, lower-energy state. This huge release of energy caused the expansion of the universe. We would like to think that the world we now live in is a stable true vacuum but it is possible that although the universe is at a lower energy level now than it was before, we are living in another false vacuum which could collapse at any moment. If a low energy bubble nucleates in our false vacuum it would expand at the speed of light, once again changing the universe.

The list includes "divine intervention" as well, but is otherwise alright. Not that there is any way to judge how good this list is until humanity is finally wiped out. The important thing here is that Joel is getting some respect for his amazing simulations of bubble nucleation, viewable here.

East Coast Relativity keeps it real

2008-01-24T13:26:00.000-05:00

I learned today that the widely used metric signatures in general relativity are referred to as East coast and West coast. Somehow, I have been through 2 GR courses and a ton of cosmology without ever seeing this. A spacetime interval dS² = -c² dt² + dx² + dy² + dz², is Eastern while (+---) on the right side would be Western.

So in keeping with my general ambivalence towards other parts of the country, I am happy to find out that my choice of coast also suits my choice of metric convention. Still, it's no wonder physicists are always shooting each other.

And a side of Dolphin Rings

2008-01-23T02:01:00.000-05:00

Dolphin Play Bubble Rings

According to the quote reproduced on the Projo's Subterranean News:

A physicist would marvel at some of the play behavior observed in young dolphins at the Project Delphis laboratory. They blow underwater bubble rings by injecting air into water vortices, about the thickness of a straw and 1 to 2 feet in diameter. The rings don't rise to the surface! The babies play with these underwater toys by moving them around with their rostrum, or biting them. They even bounce the rings off the wall, and elongate them with a flick of their dorsal fins into 15 foot corkscrews.

Well I don't know if any of this is interesting physics-wise, but physicists certainly would marvel at it, since it is amazing.

Mike Lowell: Probably not a murderer IRL

2008-01-23T00:26:00.000-05:00

-Courtesy my good friend Matt, the information that Stephen Colbert appeared in a Law & Order Criminal Intent episode (imdb). Probably, you can watch it somehow with your iTunes or what have you, but I don't have an iTunes (it conflicts with my policy against paying for things), so I can't and I can't find a great version of it on the tubes other than this rather long climatic scene (which doesn't make a lot of sense out of context)

-Speaking of murderers, I have had two separate and very different dreams where Mike Lowell, 3rd baseman of the World Champion Boston Red Sox is trying to kill me. In the first one he wiped out a backyard full of children with an automatic rifle and then stalked me, knowing that I had witnessed the crime. I somehow managed to throw him off a jetty. In the second, he went from room to room of some vaguely-defined dormitory stabbing people.

Everything I've heard about the real Mike Lowell leads me to believe that he is the sort of chap who helps old ladies cross the street, but what you do in other people's dreams says a lot about you. If he kills again, I am going to the authorities.

-When you finally are murdered by Mike Lowell, you will be pleased to know that you can be forever interred in a casket or urn bearing his team's logo from "Eternal Image - Brand name funerary products that celebrate the passions of life." Brand name! Only $5,000! Need I say more?

Mercury: Not Actually Made of Mercury

2008-01-19T12:31:00.000-05:00

Except in the sense that people call dirt "Earth" sometimes. I suppose if you were on Venus you would call the soil "Venus." Anyway, this is all just an excuse for me to show some gratuitous Mercury shots. The MESSENGER Mission just got to Mercury and photographed it's barren, hostile, sunburnt surface in great detail. This is the first mission to the (now) littlist planet since the Mariner 10 mission in the seventies. I spent a lot of time pouring over glossy picture books about the planets when I was younger and I think I got the impression that Mercury was yellowish, even though I knew that it wasn't. Futurama got that idea too. And, amazingly, the NASA art staff got it too!

So for Mercury-huggers this mission is a bonanza. Surface composition, magnetic field, the core (which is liquid now apparently), and these "dazzling" photos, which are probably just doctored pictures of the moon.

The photo below was taken near the closest approach and shows a section of Mercury 500km across where smallest craters are only 1km or so. Seriously though, this is just the moon.

[Official Messenger Site, Photo 1, Photo 2, and the Planetary Society has an excellent article]

Anachronism

2008-01-19T00:25:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up, the movie theater in Seekonk Mass was mysteriously split up across a street. On one side, they had 10 screens, and on the other, they had 2 more. The smaller side always got the second-runs or generally weaker movies and the theater itself had the feeling of a gradual slide into despair. Whenever I saw a movie there it was always nearly totally empty, even on summer weekends, and you could tell the (usually singular) employee was passing the time by thinking about all the action they were missing across the street.

Anyhow, since there was one theater complex in Seekonk, but it was split in two, the two halves were referred to as Seekonk 1-10, and Seekonk 11-12. When you looked up a movie in the paper, it would have a number next to it, and that would tell you which theater it was in. Eventually, a few miles away, but still in "the 'Konk," a souped-up multiplex (also a Showcase) was erected and at long last, mercifully, the 11-12 was euthanized*. However, the 1-10 continued to exist. Since there are now two Showcases, to to tell the difference one is referred to as "Seekonk Route 6" and the other as "Seekonk 1-10." I only recently realized how absurd this is. It might as well be the Seekonk 4-14, the numbers don't refer to anything other than as a point of reference for a theater that no longer exists. More importantly, and this is very important in my opinion, the Seekonk 1-10 shows 12 movies at a time. It still has 10 screens, but the reason for calling it "The 1-10" is because there were ten movies which each have a number -- the 10 refers to the movies not the screens. So both parts of the current name make no sense. I just thought I should explain this to you, in case you ever find yourselves on the mean streets of the 'Konk.

*It was turned into something called the "Fireplace Showcase" to utilize pre-existing signage. I found this photo through google image search, but I don't know how to credit it.

THIS IS WRONG

2008-01-17T00:24:00.000-05:00

This is an albino penguin: a crime committed by nature, against nature.

Evidently, this is known as a "leucistic" penguin, but I think naming it only attempts to justify the ignominy. Penguins wear tuxedos, like my cat, or this guy. I don't like things that are different.

[h/t grrl scientist also, some more weirdo pengs]

In Which I Brag About a Christmas Present

2008-01-14T17:42:00.000-05:00

It may be 3 weeks after x-mas, but bragging about astronomically-themed gifts is still in season. There is nothing quite like a 150-year-old engraving to help you enjoy antiquated notions of clusters, nebulae, and comets. Thanks girlfriend!

Update: I forgot the best panel. Here it is, I think it speaks for itself.

Eat your Vegatables

2008-01-06T01:53:00.000-05:00

...by the milliliter.

Roundup 1/3/08

2008-01-03T14:42:00.000-05:00

I think there is some kind of internet rule that if you write about science ever at any time, and perhaps even if you don't, you have to link to the Edge World Question of 2008. Which seeks out 'those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are' to ask: "What have you changed your mind about? Why?" Well they didn't ask me, despite the fact that I obviously fit that description, so I'm not going to. Suck it, Edge World Question Center.
There is some kind of popularity contest happening today. What state better than Iowa to represent the mainstream of popular opinion? Actually, I tend to think that mainstream popular opinion is not always a great way of picking standard-bearers, but Iowans may have discovered an even worse method. I usually have predictions about how stuff like that is going to turn out, but this time, I seriously have no idea who either party is going to nominate. I think I could pick who would beat who in a general election, but these primaries are difficult to figure out. The Democrats because they seem to like all the candidates, except for the half that doesn't like H-bomb Clinton, and the other half who does but doesn't quite know why. The Republicans are even worse, since they seem to dislike all of their candidates equally, but for different reasons. Hopefully, neither party will get someone with a majority, and we can get candidates chosen in smoky back rooms at open conventions.
This is a from a few weeks ago, but Slate has a nice roundup of time-wasting web-based games. There's one where you're a poor family in Haiti that has to survive and not die of cholera. I think they made it completely impossible to emulate relate grim reality. If there is something that flash gaming was missing, it was guilt over 3rd world poverty.