Garrett Lisi, surfer and creator of possible theories of everything, has given a TED talk:
I had never thought to put Schrodinger into the box.
“I try to balance my life between physics, love, and surfing. That way even if the physics I work on comes to nothing, I’ve lived a good life.” Word.
(1+p)(1-p)
I wonder how many people this week realized that “ten percent down” followed by “ten percent up” does not equal “no change.” Probably a few. And how many realized that “ten percent down” followed by “ten percent up” is the same as “ten percent up” followed by “ten percent down”? Or that up 5 percent, down 3 percent, up 2 percent, down 8 percent, and down 8 percent in that order is the same as down 8 percent, up 2 percent, down 3 percent, up 5 percent, down 8 percent in that order? Commutativity is cool. Yes, I am easily amused.
SOHCAHTOA
A new entry in the best title every competition:
arXiv:0810.0827: Sine function with a cosine attitude
Authors: A. D. Alhaidari
Someday I promise that I will use the phrase “an exponential function with a logarithmic attitude.”
Mortgage Backed Quantum Computers
From the annals of strangely mixed news stories. Canada: $25 billion government bailout and….$50 million for the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing:
BRANTFORD, Ont. — The $25-billion government deal to buy mortgages from Canada’s banks isn’t a lifeline for lenders stuck with bum loans, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday…
He said the government will likely make money on the deal, because its borrowing costs are lower than those available to banks.
Harper also produced an election goodie, promising a $50-million grant to a high-tech research lab at the University of Waterloo.
The money goes to the university’s Institute of [sic] Quantum Computing.
The prime minister says it’s in line with the government’s efforts to spur research and development.
A new way to get out of the financial crisis: invest in the quantum computing! (joke about a superposition of rich and poor deleted for sanity’s sake.)
Signs of the Apocalypse: Google Finance Edition
You know it’s a heavy volume day when even Google can’t handle it:
Your message could not be posted to the DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE INDEX group because there have been too many messages posted to the group recently.
Markets
Fear
Google’s view of capitulation
Irrationality?
Anyone seen any old men with canes yet?
Crisis per capita winner? Iceland. Will the last one leaving Reykjavík please tear up that recipe for Súrsaðir hrútspungar?
Panics 1812, 1837, 1869, 1873, 1882, 1884, 1896, 1901, 1907,1937, 1973, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997, 2001. Add 2008.
Just over a hundred years ago
Another hundred year reference: the Cub’s ticket market.
Let’s blame Van Buren:
Information Age Transcripts
Not just grades but:
- Grade distribution for the class. At a minimum: class average, standard deviation, median. Even better: a breakdown by grade.
- Scores of students in the class on standardized exit exams. For example I’d like to see how students who took the class scored on physics GREs.
- Surveys of the students perception of the difficulty of the class. Comparison of this ranking for same students across other classes.
Today, when information storage is cheap, why is it that we have a grading standard consisting of a few lousy letters (less for some schools..you know who I’m talking about!) Should we shoot for a standardized more information content grading standard? Or is the current system fine for the purpose it serves (which varies widely among the users of the grades)?
Google Battles Drunk Emails
A priceless new email feature for gmail: Mail Goggles:
Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?
Now if only Google would add a similar feature for those hitting the reply to all button (instead they apparently have a function to make it the default reply option. Doh!)
Nobel Prize in Physics 2008
And the Nobel prize in Physics 2008 goes to…Yoichiro Nambu (1/2), Makoto Kobayashi (1/4), and Toshihide Maskawa (1/4) “for discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” and “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.” I’m buried under work but if I can claw myself out of it I’ll write a post about their work. In the meantime, here is the Nobel’s scientific background.
Grassroots
That’s it! The VP debate sent me over the edge. I’m running…