Wow. Some people are so dumb it would take them an hour to make minute rice. I want to get that site’s customer list so I can do a tour and just slap people upside the head. Or possibly sell them them my air purifying apparatus, which takes advantage of non-commutative loop space in M5-branes [...]
Since an online discussion brought this back to my mind today:
That’s a habanero pepper. (It’s a close cousin of, and more or less interchangeable with, the scotch bonnet pepper.) For most people in North America, it’s the hottest pepper you can easily get your hands on–indeed, there are probably lots of people who think it’s [...]
You know, my feelings about our current PM, and his ideological associates are no secret around these parts, but my ability to rant certainly takes a back seat to that of Canadian SF author, and scientist, Peter Watts1. And more than being a better ranter, he appears to have no fear at all of getting [...]
Some recent research (here’s the researcher, by the way) might shed some light on a lot of what happens both inside modern capitalist societies and between the West and the rest of the world–or at least on how some things are allowed to happen. Not coincidentally, the same light is shed on intra-organizational behaviours, which [...]
So, I thought the barbecue sauce guy was weird, but he has possibly been surpassed by the eggbeater bandit.
New Walter Jon Williams books are automatic buys in this house (as you know if you’ve been reading for a while), and now he’s not just selling me his books, he’s putting anime on my Ziplist.
I may [...]
Continuing on the theme of my being impressed by the kind of madness that is constructive (this dates back to at least the first time I found out about Korczak Ziolkowski), let us take a moment to reflect upon the kind of person who could build the Underground Fortress.
I am weirdly attracted to the idea. [...]
I am so jealous of all the people working at the LHC this week.
However, the best thing I’ve seen that’s LHC related this week was Hawking talking about his $100 bet against the project finding the Higgs boson.
Why do I think it’s the best thing?
Well, look at this part of his comments:
I think it will [...]
Shannon worked for Bell Labs (now owned by Alcatel-Lucent).
Guess who just shut down “fundamental research” in physics?
Not quite sic transit gloria mundi, but definitely a chunk of the glory of American research.
In some ways I’m a classic information theory junkie–Claude Shannon changed the way I think about the universe just as much as any golden book.
Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, is something that I keep thinking I’ve finally had my “kick from the knee” moment with, and then something comes along to make it clear [...]
This pleases me. That is all.
Also, the Backup Dancers credit made me laugh out loud.
The KGB Raffle winners are up.
It appears I have won a wormhole.
Could this, combined with my recently acquired Mad Scientist goggles, be the beginning of my career as a supervillain?
Or, alternately, the beginning of a mildly comic adventure through time and space?
You know, I’ve always suspected that it wasn’t just that most “nice guys” are insecure, codependent cases. And science has vindicated my suspicion:
New Scientist: Bad guys really do get the most girls
NICE guys knew it, now two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty [...]
You know the drill–some things that I found worthy of some comment:
I quite liked Julie Rehmeyer’s short piece on the math scholars who accidentally solved an astrophysics problem. It’s got all the good stuff: pure math, astrophysics (come on, “gravity lensing” just sounds cool, even without any context), serendipity, and above all a good science [...]
I’ve never been one to engage in a lot of “there are two kinds of people in the world…” divisions.
Oh, I think that humans are fundamentally inclined, probably at a biological level, to see things in terms of “us and them”, but like a certain brilliant Scotsman, I also tend to think that the direction [...]
Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: (1) No sea-creature is less than two [...]
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