Swans on Tea

The monetary density of things
People have been saying that the new industrial grade swimsuits like the LZR Racer are worth their weight in gold. As you can see, this is clearly inaccurate. But such a suit is worth its weight in marijuana or industrial diamonds.
At the high end of this graph is gold (the only [...]

The real message of Toy Story. Warning: this cannot be unwatched.
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via Mine

Humbling at indexed.
Observation: Jessica’s plots vary as either 1/r, r or r2, but I can’t recall any that had an actual inflection point (in my semi-random sampling). There could be some subtle implications in inflection points. No asymptotic functions I can recall, either.

Gender issues in science. Nerd Girls at Bad Astronomy, which begat smart = sexy at Cocktail Party Physics, which begat Flirt harder. I’m a physicist at sciencegeekgirl.
There’s some really interesting commentary to go along with the posts.
I have the sneaking suspicion that this topic is one where it is impossible to be right; there [...]

ARES — Perseverance is your word today. You will not become frustrated at your continued inability to separate quarks from each other.
TAURUS — You will suspect that the force pushing you away from the center of a circle is in fact a figment of your imagination, and would not be there if you were [...]

If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you ARE! Crash Davis
The Quirkbook
“Making a list of superstitions / foolish consistencies / lightweight OCD behaviors e.g. I always put my RIGHT shoe on first. You?”
[...]
“In what order shall I put [...]

Some good followup to the whole why-are-math-and-science-such-small-portions-on-the-plate-of-intellectualism and all of the tangents (too math-y? juxtaposed topics, perhaps?)
Fear and loathing in the academy and Assorted hypotheses on the science-humanities divide at Adventures in Ethics and Science. A lot to chew on (or gum, if you are so inclined)
The best reason to learn something [...]

Whilst scurrying through the intertubes, I ran across a post entitled Should We Ban Physics? at Overcoming Bias.
At the recent Global Catastrophic Risks conference, someone proposed a policy prescription which, I argued, amounted to a ban on all physics experiments involving the production of novel physical situations - as opposed to measuring existing phenomena. [...]

I was attempting to collapse a wave function Thursday — the A/C for the office has been taking much of the past week off, with promises of its imminent repair since Monday. The one working chiller has the capacity to cool the building only a few degrees below ambient, which was nowhere near adequate [...]

Title IX Takes on Science
Men once greatly outnumbered women in collegiate athletics—Title IX brought equality. Men currently outnumber women in science—could Title IX have the same effect? Associated primarily with sports since its inception 26 years ago, Title IX actually applies to sexual discrimination throughout education. According to a recent article in the New York [...]

Brains on the Line
NFL players’ Wonderlic scores, compiled according to position. Some of the highest scores belong to the offensive linemen, particularly tackle. I played offensive tackle in high school (ha!), but that had a lot more to do with being big and slow vs being smart. (and I wasn’t smart enough [...]

A couple days back, Chris Anderson at Wired posted some junk about large volumes of data making the scientific method obsolete, misapplying George Box’s quote, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” I was a little too distracted to respond, but it didn’t exactly escape the notice of the science and skeptic blog-o-icosahedron.
Bee [...]