Swans on Tea

Using Wordle, the font size of planets and moons, determined by the diameter, at Orbiting Frog

Technically, phrases. New vocabulary (to me) at Cosmic Variance. Symmetry Breaking

Chad was wondering what to blog about, and then tapped into the mother lode, judging by the number of responses. The Innumeracy of Intellectuals
I’m a professor at a liberal arts college, putting me solidly in the “Intellectual” class, and there’s a background assumption that anyone with as much education as I have will know [...]

Today’s Non-Sequitur
Quick thoughts: yes, it would fire. As Tommy Lee Jones reminds us, pistols (not just Glocks) can fire underwater, if you’re stupid enough to do so (like you’re performing DIY Shock wave lithotripsy) — they carry their own oxidant.
The bullet would travel faster, too. There would be less drag [...]

I spied a nit at which I must pick. This is something that’s become ingrained in certain science discussions, one of those innocent things that may or may not propagate a misconception and I’m sure it rarely causes an eyebrow to be raised, but, dammit, someone’s wrong on the internet.
Someone will tell [...]

Say no more. gg explains dark states, electromagnetically-induced transparency and storing information coherently.
Freezing images in an atomic vapor! Probably no swimming costumes, though.

Interesting link over at physics and physicists (rather than the title being a misquote from “Bull Durham.”) Is Faith The Enemy Of Science?
Richard MacKenzie of the University of Montreal has written a rather thought-provoking and lengthy article as a rebuttal to a talk given by Lawrence Krauss. In it, he is disputing Krauss’s assertion [...]

The balcony is closed
Roger Ebert reminisces about Gene Siskel, following the announcement that Ebert & Roeper were leaving the show.
The first time they appeared on the Johnny Carson show:
We were scared out of our minds. We’d been briefed on likely questions by one of the show’s writers, but moments before airtime he popped his head [...]

The Periodic Coffee Table
By embedding all element samples in clear acrylic, they are beautifully presented and also protected from tarnishing. This format also helps to addresses health and safety issues, as all potentially toxic or corrosive substances are permanently encased in a thick layer of robust resin. Argon gas and mineral oil is further used [...]

DelFly Micro Air Vehicle Weighs Just Three Grams
The ‘dragonfly’ has a tiny camera (about 0.5 grams) on board that transmits its signals to a ground station. With software developed by TU Delft itself, objects can then be recognised independently. The camera transmits TV quality images, and therefore allows the DelFly II to be operated from [...]

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 [...]

I don’t care what Ted Kennedy and his Nantucket neighbors think. I like a lot of the wind turbine designs.
Wind turbine bonanza
OObject: beautiful wind turbines
via Kottke