January 2011
11 posts
2 tags
Nerdy science joke
dsthenes: A physicist, engineer and a statistician are out hunting. Suddenly, a deer appears 50 yards away. The physicist does some basic ballistic calculations, assuming a vacuum, lifts his rifle to a specific angle, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards short. The engineer adds a fudge factor for air resistance, lifts his rifle slightly higher, and shoots. The bullet lands 5 yards long. The statistician yells "We got him!"
(he got it originally from slashdot)
New theories reveal the nature of numbers →
this is so cool, but I can’t explain it to anyone I know and have them also find it exciting.
science:
This feels like it should be exciting, but is also frustratingly above my head. What can be gleaned from press releases is this: a partition of a number is simply a way of writing it as a sum. So, 4 = 3+1 = 2+2 = 2+1+1 = 1+1+1+1, which means that the number 4 has 5 partitions. But the...
3 tags
Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health... →
Information is Beautiful is, frankly, a beautiful website, but I couldn’t pass up this particular infographic visualization. It shows of those things that are touted as the next big health craze, based on whether or not there is scientific evidence for said cure’s efficacy. And then it links to the abstracts for the papers supporting or refuting the claim. Really, really cool.
3 tags
While watching crap Sunday morning TV this morning, I came across a show called Mystery Hunters, which I guess (according to Wikipedia) is from Discovery Kids in the US and YTV in Canada. And in it, they treated pseudoscientific claims with a level head, coming up with a perfectly reasonable hypothesis at the end: for example, there was some sort of Loch Ness monster-esque mystery, that they...
Friday Weird Science: The Magnificent Mammal... →
I love North Atlantic Right Whales—I used to study them. But clearly I don’t love them the way they love each other.
Credit to scicurious, found via the twitter feed of Brian Malow.
Girl Genius →
It will make me sad if you don’t look at this webcomic because it’s awesome.
“It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.”
– Douglas Adams
Magic and neuroscience! What could be cooler?
(image from www.sleightsofmind.com)
Not only did this book make me want to learn the hell out of every magic trick I could find, but it taught me all sorts of cool stuff about how our brains are wired! Coolest hypothesis out of the book: since lots of magic tricks are based on joint attention (looking at something will make your conversation partner look at it), and autistic people...
