WordPress MU on blogs.scienceforums.net has now been upgraded to WordPress MU 2.7. You should notice that your admin screen has been drastically re-vamped
and re-shinied.
If you notice any odd problems, detail them here (with the error message) and I’ll try to fix them ASAP.
You can tell there’s something wrong with our system of keeping GPAs based on class average — i.e. out of 100 instead of out of the 4-point scale — when I get annoyed that I have a 96 in a class.
Stupid system.
For a while I’ve been thinking about the classic Internet dilemma: authentication. For trust to work on the Internet, you need to (a) be able to verify the server you’re connecting to is the one it claims it is and (b) be able to prove you are who you claim you are.
(a) is a problem mostly solved by SSL/TLS (though there are a few lingering problems — and a lot of people ignore when SSL is not there). But (b) is a much larger problem.
I wonder if, twenty years from now, our computers will be amazingly simple intuitive touchscreen thingies like they always show on Star Trek, or ludicrously complexicated devices that nobody can figure out except my children.
It’ll be interesting to find out.
Today I was looking through my introductory calculus textbook* for no particular reason. Well, I say introductory, but I think that’s a particularly bad choice of word.
You see, it was clearly intended to be an introductory text, but it failed at that rather miserably. I’ll give an example. Here’s how the textbook introduces the basic technique used to find derivatives (derivatives can give you the slope of a graphed function at any point on the curve):
To find the tangent to a curve
at a point
we use the same dynamic procedure. We calculate the slope of the secant line through
and a point
. We then investigate the limit of the slope as
. If the limit exists, it is the slope of the curve at
Whew. To figure out what that means, even to someone good at math, takes several moments of thinking to understand what the hell all the symbols and points and stuff are referring to, and how that gives the slope of a line. Compare the method used by the textbook to how Dave explained derivatives in his calculus tutorial (later edited and reposted by me). Sure, it’s longer Dave’s way, but you’re left actually knowing what is going on.
The textbook gets worse from there. It’d be more useful to someone who already understands the concepts and just wants to check some obscure property of logarithms or something. Understanding is buried beneath mounds of mathematical rigor.
If we want people to understand math, or at least not hate learning it, we’re going to have to make our textbooks less painful for a start. Take a look at the way Randall Munroe explains some basic physics in his blog: cartoon diagrams and jokes about death rays. Isn’t it so much more fun that way?
If I had more time on my hands, and if I could draw, I’d be writing a complete introduction to calculus. With stick figures, lasers, and actually understandable text.
Maybe I should try.
* Calculus: Graphical, Numerical, Algebraic, by Finney, Demana, Waits, and Kennedy.
My family likes classical music. It’s just the way we are. I grew up listening to all sorts of classical composers, from Strauss to Gershwin, and I got used to the musical style: complex themes, and variations on those themes, played with a symphony of different instrument types all carefully orchestrated to fit together perfectly.
Then I step outside of my house and I hear modern music. “Pop” music — i.e. what is on the top of the Billboard charts right now — is starkly different from classical. There’s vague background music, but that’s unimportant. The only important part of the song, it seems, is the singer. (Just listen to I Kissed A Girl, if you can stand it, for a good example of this.) The complexity of the music has dropped by many orders of magnitude.
I noticed this and thought “is this a real trend? Is music getting simpler?” So I looked back through some older music. Stuff like Hotel California, by The Eagles. Hotel California has anywhere between five and eight guitar parts alone, depending on which version you look at, plus percussion and a vocalist. The music is prominent, not just the vocals. If you look at other bands from “back in the day”, like The Beatles, they’re all similar: they have at least one or two guitar parts, bass, percussion, and some other stuff mixed in (The Beatles even used violins and cellos and stuff in some of their works). They’re more complex than modern pop music, but certainly not as complicated as a classical piece.
For most of the music I have heard, this trend holds true: music is decreasing in technical complexity as the vocals become the dominant part. Perhaps this is true only for the genres I have listened to or the bands I have chosen, but I think it’s rather compelling. What do you think? I’d be especially interested to see if there are any popular modern bands that buck the trend and go for musical complexity.
For the past year and a half, I’ve been a card magician. I started learning some basic sleight of hand techniques with cards and I’m now producing cards out of people’s pockets and making a chosen card appear in a sealed envelope halfway across the room.
Magic isn’t just a way to make other people feel stupid. It’s a lot of things:
Try it. If you want a good trick to learn, try this one (there’s a link to an explanation in the Related Videos box). It’s great fun, especially if you put the different-color card in a box and let someone hold it…
Nerd poetry! This is what happened when I was forced to parody The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
(Yes, it’s long, but it’s worth it. Really.)
Once upon a schoolnight dreary, while I worked, bored and weary,
On many a long and arduous paper of the English kind,
While I toiled, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a beeping,
As of some device slowly losing, losing its electronic mind.
“’Tis but a battery,” I muttered, “needing a replacement of its kind –
Nothing more, I hope to find.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the late of night,
And each separate keystroke rang out like a silenced gunshot.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – vainly I had sought to delay
The completion of my work – work I could afford not
To lose, work whose final completion I had sought
A whole lot.
And the cold heartless beeping of the unknown gizmo
Scared me – scared me with its beeping, insistent and unkind,
So that now, to ease my nervous mind, I sat repeating,
“’Tis but a battery, only a battery, needing a replacement of its kind –
An old battery needing a replacement of its kind –
Nothing more, I hope to find.”
Now I looked about in search of the insistent beeping,
With each passing moment my mind filling with terror;
Terror that the beeping may not be trivial,
Terror that the error’s wearer
Could be the cruel bearer
Of a fatal error.
I cautiously looked about the debris-strewn floor
To find this beeper, to find its hidden location
And suddenly I saw it; I saw what I had hoped not to admit –
A computer, my computer, the source of all my frustration,
And I saw on its screen a message that caused a curious sensation:
“Illegal operation.”
I suddenly felt quite faint, as though I had inhaled paint;
I fervently prayed this was but a mere aberration,
That my hard work, my essay, had not just seen its final day;
But alas, it was lost, by an act of electronic constipation,
By my computer’s ceaseless and mindless oration:
“Illegal operation.”
“No!”, I cried, “you fiend! I was nearly done when you intervened!”
I was filled with sorrow – there was a great emotional tribulation;
Poetry is not easy, The Raven less so,
And now it was all lost in the electronic devastation –
The fatal aberration – of my computer’s
Illegal operation.
Another nerdy musical parody is up on YouTube. This time, we take aim at My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music.
Enjoy!
As you can see, I’ve been helping make science- and nerd-related parody songs recently, and I’m looking to make some more. It’s a fun way to spend some time.
Do you have any songs you think could be written? Pick a song (preferably something that can be played on guitar or piano) and a promising subject or a few funny lines and submit them in the comments here. You don’t have to write the whole song — usually it’s easy enough to finish a song if you supply a line or two or a witty chorus idea. The best/funniest ideas might be used to make a new song later this year.
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