Posts

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Is This a Mathematica Bug?

Miguel Pais points to an interesting behavior of Mathematica, where he plots the function which is the square of the square root of x. Now, if the domain of x is taken to be complex numbers, Mathematica’s behavior seems to me to be fine. But can anyone explain this behavior
as anything other than a bug?
Update: Oops. That wasn’t the one I was trying to paste. See what happens when I disconnect from the intertubes for a few days. How about this one:

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Foxworthy Material

You know you’re in rural America when…
Reminds me of one of my favorite bumper sticker ideas of a few years ago (less true today): “Buy American: Do Meth!”

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Ski Day: Mt Shasta Ski Park

Well I finally made it to the ski slopes. Hopefully my late start to this year’s ski season will just mean that I push harder to get up to the slopes. Here is a picture taken from the base of the Mt. Shasta Ski area:
The two lifts servicing advanced terrain were shut down in the morning due to the wind, the wind chill factor was brutal, and the snow looked liked it had been shipped out directly from the East Coast: all ice and crud. But hey, it was the first day skiing!

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Merry Quantum Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I don’t think this explanation for Santa delivering presents using quantum theory works. But it does bring up the question of whether Santa could get a quadratric speedup using quantum gift delivery?