tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199876552024-03-07T00:27:32.445-05:00ZZASCAPE[curious thought]davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-55329935716513680352010-01-31T08:58:00.002-05:002010-01-31T09:00:57.455-05:00WeatherAnd now, here's the weather. Over to you, Dave.Thanks, Bob. Well, it's just crappy out there. No other word for it. 100% chance of white excretion all over the ground, turning into black ice overnight. Now there's a euphemism for you: black ice. Coming down, it wasn't dramatic at all--kind of a slushy, snow--that amorphous precipitation the just-too-perky weather lass (sorry Brandi) calls "davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-32742447263554337222008-04-13T06:23:00.005-05:002009-10-07T10:28:46.562-05:00The Interruption It’s never a pretty sight to see a NaN spoiling for a fight. I try to avoid them and their modern-day conundrums when NOT impossible. In this case, he was an exception and I had to deal with him. As is typical of the breed, he tried to corner me in a logical blind ally, bit by bit. Annoying but methodical, these NaNs. “Are you familiar with the phenomenon called davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-313416956402852982007-05-06T06:50:00.000-05:002007-05-06T07:03:44.152-05:00Chlorophyll TricksA recent little article in a recent Science News (Week of April 14, 2007; Vol. 171, No. 15, p. 229, subscription required) has a mind-bending piece about how plants harvest sunlight. Here's the central mystery:The efficiency of photosynthesis, as this process is called, has long astounded scientists. Virtually every photon absorbed by chlorophyll initiates a photosynthetic reaction. Plants use davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-28032021345690609082007-04-05T09:37:00.000-05:002007-04-05T09:40:08.879-05:00Epiphany The last thing Earl Martin ever said was “sixty-seven,” which was quite an extraordinary feat, and one still talked about by the doctors at Burlen County Memorial Hospital. One theory had it that during life, Earl had consumed so many depressants that he was immune to the pre-surgery anesthetic, kind of like the South’s answer to Rasputin. Before they put him down they asked if he was davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-81650597339535342382007-04-03T19:33:00.000-05:002007-04-03T19:36:02.493-05:00Pizza Hut SongOkay, it's really the "Burger Dance" by DJ Otzi. But it's really annoying, and your kids will love it. In German, "Hut" means hat.davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-78597222545073771082007-04-01T13:00:00.000-05:002007-05-06T07:05:52.303-05:00Beachfront ValuesI've been reading through the articles over at realclimate.org, a blog on climate matters run by climatologists. Check out their hilarious April 1 post. Meanwhile, we spent a weekend at North Myrtle Beach. I started mulling over the connection today after lunch. From a game theory perspective, what would we expect beachfront property prices to do as sea levels rise?To make the problem more davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-44523534375181760462007-04-01T10:55:00.000-05:002007-04-01T12:53:18.650-05:00Soap Ain't as Simple as It Used to BeA few years ago I found myself in the middle of a faculty discussion about technology literacy. The topic quickly changed to "what is important for students to know about the advances made in science and their impact on society?" This was all irrelevant for the actual point of the meeting, but such things often take on a life of their own. Anyway, a biology professor proferred the opinion thatdavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-82968484286073515402007-04-01T10:33:00.000-05:002007-04-01T12:54:06.371-05:00Tiny URLsThis is one of those things I probably should have known about a long time ago. I've noticed the tinyurl domain from time to time, but just assumed it was a service provider. But I noticed a link yesterday and observed (finally) that it was self-referential: the url actually was tiny. It became obvious that the url was just a hash that pointed to something more substantial. So I checked out davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-60139645842113956992007-03-30T15:34:00.000-05:002007-03-30T15:39:54.791-05:00Hex Nut on SaturnIn the weird science file, goes this photo from Saturn:The hexagon is presumed to be a weather phenomenon (you can read about it here). Other theories include Saturn's lug nut, and a military headquarters. There's a naming contest on the Times.davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-6979708111891575122007-03-18T21:01:00.000-05:002007-03-18T21:04:10.668-05:00TwitterVision This is pretty addictive.davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-41076525486017720732007-02-14T22:13:00.000-05:002007-02-14T22:20:01.995-05:00Odd ScalesDaniel Thompson has a blog where he shares some musical compositions created with unusual scales. The 12-note version that you see on the piano goes out the window. In one case he uses a 26-note scale. I had some fun playing around with the math to see which of these produced the best fit for certain types of note ratios.davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-79550444537255631372007-02-14T19:17:00.000-05:002007-02-14T19:24:13.970-05:00Can I help you? No, I can't help you.In the seminar class I participate in, we profs decided we wanted to videotape the students so they could critique their own speaking styles. After trying it out with a borrowed video camera, we decided the department should buy a digital cam that records on DVD. I checked WallyWorld and found a Sony in our price range, researched it on Amazon, and decided that was the one. So this morning I davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-75475688108433153812007-02-12T21:33:00.000-05:002007-02-12T22:06:39.957-05:00Many-MeSo tonight I was working my way through this book on the philosophy of science that I borrowed and want to return soon. There's a bit about Parmenides that gave me pause for thought. According to this interpretation, the universe is full of unchanging stuff, and our perceptions of change are nothing more than rearrangements of it. In other words, combinatorics is what makes the world go 'davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-52309573858330459412007-02-11T10:55:00.000-05:002007-02-19T13:30:19.833-05:00Games Yeast PlayOkay, admit it. At least once when you were a kid, you grabbed the last piece of pizza and put it on your plate while you were still only half-finished with another piece. It seems that some fungi have figured out a more sophisticated way to place food off limits to others. There's a cool article (subscription required) in New Scientist (Dec. 23-Jan 5 2007, page 32) about the yeast used in davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-53512251315525095612007-02-05T09:03:00.000-05:002007-02-05T09:11:56.850-05:00The Tooth and Nothing ButI went to the dentist for a cleaning (of my wallet, as it turned out) on Tuesday. Whilst I was waiting, these two other ladies struck up a conversation. Something like this:Mabel: You here for an appointment?Gladys: (turns white) Oh no! No! No, I'm here to pick up my husband. (whispers) He's gotta have three teeth pulled. Been in there for two hours already. No, I have to take valium justdavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-64952964612388330262007-02-01T18:52:00.000-05:002007-02-01T18:56:32.305-05:00LunchtimersThere's some cool stuff at lunchtimers.com. I like the puzzles the best, but here's a refrigerator magnet set: davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-27528093859797682442007-01-30T20:32:00.000-05:002007-01-30T20:55:17.483-05:00Games Make the ManThere are a lot of things in the world. Trillions of cells in your body, for example. But the number of ways to arrange these things swamps the actual number by an unfathomable margin. Suppose there are an even trillion cells in your body. If you scrambled the locations of these at random by swapping each cell with some other chosen in a cosmic lottery, what are the odds that after two such davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1169586377612656802007-01-23T15:59:00.000-05:002007-01-23T16:06:17.626-05:00My Wish for Sticky ConferencesHere's my wish for 2007, vis the Web 2.0 universe we inherited from 2006. I would like, pretty please, a web site that allows data and metadata to be attached to conferences. An example will illustrate what I mean.I just got back from the annual American Association of Colleges & Universities conference. As usual I made a slew of contacts, have sheafs of handouts and my own notes, the davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1168997177482308142007-01-16T20:20:00.000-05:002007-01-22T19:08:26.516-05:00NoisemakerSomebody was telling me about a new kind of noise generator used for office spaces. Instead of creating a 'whoosh' of white noise at low levels, it makes vowel sounds. This is supposed to confuse your brain when you hear a faint conversation. The overlapping vowel noises mask enough of the actual voices so that you can't hear--and don't even notice--the voices. Cool idea.By coincidence I was davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1166464980025847472006-12-18T12:52:00.000-05:002006-12-18T13:03:00.040-05:00Hyper-RealityProbably like every other academic in the world, I have a novel that I've been working on for years. I turned it into a screenplay last year, but found that format restrictive. In particular, it's hard for me to develop characters without the prose techniques of delving into thoughts and motivations. Realizing that the novel is never going to be written at the rate I was going, I resolved to davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1165108741569788442006-12-02T20:08:00.000-05:002006-12-02T20:19:01.600-05:00Despair, IncWe got a flyer in the mail from Despair, Inc. , which is a real company, as unlikely as that sounds. The cover of the slick catalog looks like a Mad Magazine version of a motivational products company's. The photo on the cover looks like a typical positive image of a whale's flukes emerging from the ocean. Except that on second glance, it's a ship going under! And the title in big Times Romandavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1161823159596329212006-10-25T19:37:00.000-05:002006-10-25T19:39:19.606-05:00The Dog who Sucked ToadIf you missed the NPR story about the dog addicted to toads, check it out here. I must be truly in the dark--I had no idea that 'lillypadding' was a word, much less that it meant licking toads to get high!davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1160972163411975802006-10-15T23:10:00.000-05:002007-05-09T19:59:38.259-05:00I, Smart BombCommander Mas didn’t fit the stereotype of a ramrod-straight no-nonsense naval officer. He slouched uncomfortably in the plush armchair and avoided the gaze of the senior officers, to whom this pentagon conference room and its glossy oak table were no doubt familiar. He twirled his cheap plastic pen nervously around his thumb, as he’d see kids do in Jakarta about a million years ago.The door davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1159749381221882032006-10-01T17:49:00.000-05:002006-10-01T19:36:21.256-05:00Trial and ErrerThe No Free Lunch Theorem says that there's no one best search algorithm that works over all inputs. This makes perfect sense from Complexity Theory viewpoint. Suppose you're looking for a point x with some property (maybe we're maximizing a function over a domain). Because we're dealing with all possible landscapes, on average there's no information shared between points about who's the davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1159734574268025722006-10-01T15:29:00.000-05:002006-10-01T15:29:34.286-05:00About TimeLee Smolin writes, near the conclusion of his new book The Trouble with Physics, that the key to cracking the problem of linking quantum mechanics with relavatistic gravity may be our notion of time. In classical physics, there's no way to identify what 'now' means. All times have equal status. This doesn't match our perception, so either the physics is wrong or our perception is wrong. The davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0