Via his squidiness, a test on which pope you are. Me?
Seek help now!
You are a giddy combo of the weirder Popes, Stephen VI, Benedict XVI and St Peter
But we knew that already, no?
Comments?…I Don't Have to Show You Any Stinkin' Comments!
One of the more interesting “problems” in Science 2.0 is the lack of commenting on online articles. In particular some journals now allow one to post comments about papers published in the journal. As this friendfeed conversation asks:
Why people do not comment online articles? What is wrong with the online commenting system[s]? I think this is one of the central issues in Science 2.0.
Or as Carl Zimmer commented on comments appearing at PLOS One a few years back:
What I find striking, however, is how quiet it is over at PLOS One. Check out a few for yourself. My search turned up a lot of papers with no discussion attached. Many others had a few comments such as, “This is a neat paper.” There’s nothing like the tough criticism coming out about the new flagellum paper to be found at PLOS One.
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Alumni Magazines in Economic Bad Times
As an alumnus of the California Institute of Technology (thats “Caltech” not “CalTech” peoples!) and a member of the Caltech alumni association, I get a quarterly copy of Engineering and Science (E&S). In this month’s issue there is a letter from the editor concerning the future of the print version of Engineering and Science. It seems that, like much print media today, this esteemed publication’s print edition may go the way of the dodo.
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Strip Malicious Mischief
Ah, the games people play:
A 23-year-old Tacoma man and an 18-year-old Lakewood woman are suspected of throwing rocks from a railroad trestle onto at least 14 vehicles traveling southbound on Interstate 5 early Monday.
…
Investigators told KOMO-TV that the couple was playing a stripping game that involved each of them shedding a layer of clothing for every headlight they managed to break.
Fudzilla Plays Telephone and Loses
Here is an article at physorg.com about a result in quantum computing (see here for my own article on this result.) And here is an article on the website fudzilla describing this physorg result. How in the world do you get from the physorg article to fudzillas: “Top boffins who have been looking under the bonnet of Quantum computers are starting to think that they may not be the future of computing”?
Is the internet version of the game telephone more or less noisy than the spoken game?
And Now a Commercial Break
This Intel ad cracks me up:
Reminds me of the classic Onion: Stephen Jay Gould Speaks Out Against Science Paparazzi.
QIP 2010 – Save the Date
Via the man of many B’s, dates for QIP 2010 have been set. QIP 2010 will be in Zurich from January 18 to January 22. Website here.
Hmm, Switzerland in January for skiing?
Lies Your Physics Teacher Told You?
He of uncertain principles asks Which do you prefer: transverse waves, or longitudinal waves? The fact builder chimes in with a clarification of a common misconception.
Myself, certainly I’m going to go for transverse waves. Not only are all the cool waves transverse (well sort of), electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves, stadium waves, etc, but you can’t surf on a longitudinal wave.
And of course, how cool are gravitational waves? So cool they produce this mesmerizing action on a ring of particles:
Interestingly while light is often used as the quintessential example of transverse waves, (the example being give is usually that of plane waves of light) if you talk about light beams with finite diameter, longitudinal modes appear. (For example, see here) But I don’t fault my physics teachers for not teaching me this: learning physics is really just a series of less lying anyway isn’t it?
I Want to Quantum Jump to a Tiger
From Pravda, some pretty serious funny: Quantum transition to transform mankind in 2012.
Continue reading “I Want to Quantum Jump to a Tiger”