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Category Archives: Silly
Mathworld
Some random thoughts on coordinate systems, math-y terminology and the real world.
I went into Bed, Bath & Beyond the other day, and wondered, “What’s beyond Bed, Bath & Beyond? The name does not specify how far beyond bed and bath it goes.
As you drive through northern Pennsylvania there’s a sign that reads “Endless Mountains, next 6 exits.” What? Only 6? They’re endless, right? It must be that they’re endless in some other dimension, and I’m just going through with some perpendicular component.
Back when I lived in Orlando, there was a novelty/gift store called The Infinite Mushroom. One day I stopped off and there was a sign on the door explaining that they had moved. But if they were infinite, how could you tell? To make matters even more confusing, they later expanded. Obviously they could not be infinite in all dimensions. I started to refer to them as the semi-infinite mushroom after that.
Which One was 'Big X'?
Prairie dogs return to Md. Zoo. Keepers scramble as animals try to escape.
When the animals were let out of their crates into their new habitat Wednesday, not all sought to escape. More than a few seemed happy to take a noontime siesta. Others were more interested in a lunch of biscuits, kale, apples, carrots, alfalfa hay and mulberry leaves.
But a few intrepid prairie dogs tried to find their way out, sending keepers scrambling to plug escape routes.
The one that looked like Steve McQueen managed to steal a motorcycle, but didn’t make it out.
Not Understanding Banter at all Well Today
Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how’s your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Oh, wait. Bacon in the Asteroid Belt is meant to be taken literally. Answering the timeless question of how much energy it would take to put pork products in orbit. Hmmm. Bacon. Sausage. Sausage. There’s a nice, woody word. (Not at all tinny, like asparagus or celery)
On Second Thought, Let's Not Go to Starbase 12
Not Quite the Red Badge of Courage
Via the Heisenbergian one, I discover the Science Scout Merit Badges
The “I blog about science” badge. Obviously
The “science deprives me of my bed” badge (LEVEL II) Two week at Cornell’s Nanofabrication Lab (NNF)
The “broken heart for science” badge I just had to go to grad school …
The “non-explainer” badge (LEVEL I) My mom still introduces me as a nuclear physicist
The “what I do for science dictates my having to wash my hands before I use the toilet” badge. On occasion …
The “works with acids” badge. HF scares me, but I used it at the NNF
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL III) ’nuff said
The “experienced with electrical shock” badge (LEVEL III) I remember “locating” the 400V leads to the piezo stack on the confocal cavity while adjusting some optics
The “I’ve done science with no conceivable practical application” badge. TRIUMF
The “I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” badge. TRIUMF again, and time in 5 nuclear power plants while in the navy
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III) Ah, the joys of Liquid nitrogen
The “destroyer of quackery” badge. Got my start at talk.origins on USENET
The “inappropriate nocturnal use of lab equipment in the name of alternative science experimentation / communication” badge. If you’ve got it, use it!
Technically, it's not Plastic Surgery
instructables: Gummi Bear Surgery
NOTE: This Instructable contains graphic images of Gummi Bear surgeries.
Balloon Art for the Beginner
Much, much simpler than “your lower intestine”
Oh, Sure. Take All of the Fun Out of It.
A Unified Quantum Theory of the Sexual Interaction
In the simplest theories of the sexual interaction, the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian describing all allowed forms of two-body coupling are identified with the conventional gender states, “Male” and “Female” denoted |M> and |F> in the Dirac bra-ket notation; note that the bra is superfluous in this context so, as usual, we dispense with it at the outset. Interactions between |M> and |F> states are assumed to be attractive while those between |M> and |M> or |F> and |F> are supposed either to be repulsive or, in some theories, entirely forbidden.
The treatment, however, is incomplete. There is no mention of the difficulty of describing an interaction in the dressed-state picture. Nor any analysis showing that M-F coupling with aligned spins may, with some probability, be equivalent to applying the creation operator (clearly, these are bosons), while in interactions with spins anti-aligned, this does not happen; both interactions usually occur with both particles in an excited state.
That's Odd
Thursday is an Odd Day
Odd Day is coming Thursday, 5/7/9. Three consecutive odd numbers make up the date only six times in a century. This day marks the half-way point in this parade of Odd Days which began with 1/3/5. The previous stretch of six dates like this started with 1/3/1905—13 months after the Wright Brothers’ flight.