CapitalistImperialistPig

Julianne of Cosmic Variance is an astronomer who works primarily with galaxy formation, but admits to tinkering with dark matter from time to time. The linked post tells us all we need to know about the physics of chocolate and how to produce it in the ideal crystalline form. Money quote: Science. It works, bitches.

One mystery of science unexplained by the standard model or string theory is the origin and dynamics of the magneto-mentallic field that rigorously excludes any comprehension of irony from the (otherwise very clever) brain of Luboš Motl . It seems that humorist and novelist Bruno Maddox has written a column for Discover magazine Three Words That Could Overthrow Physics: “What Is Magnetism?” claiming that science has yet to come up with an acceptable explanation of magnetism. This column became the occasion of a whole flood basaltic eruption of righteous outrage from Lumo, denouncing Maddox and suggesting that he might be isomorphic to Lee Smolin, Peter Woit, Karl Marx, and all the other demons of the Lumonic underworld. To be sure, the article was spotted earlier by Bee of Backreaction . She sensed that it might be humorously intended, but she wasn't amused either. Maddox may not know much physics, but as the son of physicist, science writer, and longtime Nature editor Sir John Ma...

Jared Diamond's thought provoking essay on civilization and revenge in the 21 Apr New Yorker managed to sneak by me for a while. Since Diamond is writing it, it's pregnant with insights into human nature and culture, but it left me wanting to argue. The principal focus is a war of revenge fought between two clans in the New Guinea highlands. In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle’s death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans . . . Daniel told me that responsibility for arranging revenge usually falls on the victim’s firstborn son or, failing that, on one of his brothers. “Soll did have a son, but he was only six years old at the time of his father’s death, much too young to organize the revenge,” Daniel said. “O...

Just in case there is still somebody on the planet who didn't get the word, Miley Cyrus, AKA Hannah Montana, is the billion dollar a year mainstay of Disney's preteen empire. At age fifteen, though, she has nearly reached the sell-by date for her six to fourteen demographic. Her canny parents have made plans for a transition. Following in the footsteps of Britney, Lindsey, and others, they apparently figure it's time to skank her up a bit for the older kids. A little bra flashing, plus some semi-porn via Vanity Fair and Annie Liebovitz ought to be just the trick - no pun intended. Naturally enough, many parents of her current fans are outraged, but that's part of the plan too. Somebody really ought to prosecute her parents.

Acting on a telephone tip from an anonynmous female claiming to be an abused student, Arizona police today raided the secretive compound of fundamentalist mathematicians practicing polygony. According to the tipster, girls and boys as young as thirteen living in the compound had been forced to practice triangulation and other forms of polygony. In many cases, even young children had been exposed to quadralaterals, pentagons, and even dodecadons, often by adults several times their age. Because so many of the children had been exposed to the same polygons, generic geometric testing may be required to sort out the damage to each. Authorities believe that the children are too indoctrinated to cooperate with police. Many are willing only to state name, rank of symmetry matrix, and cereal preference. Lawyers for the cult state that the public has yet to hear their sides of the dispute.

Modern fads in math teaching tend to lean heavily on so called manipulatives - the theory being, apparently, that the hands are the window to the math brain. Kenneth Chang reports in The New York Times that Ohio State U reseachers have cast doubt on this theory. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.) “The motivation behind this research was to examine a very widespread belief about the teaching of mathematics, namely that teaching students multiple concrete examples will benefit learning,” said Jennifer A. Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State. “It was really just that, a belief.” . . . In the experiment, the college students learned a simple but unfamiliar mathematical system, ess...

You don't have to be a historian to notice a nasty monarchist streak creeping into American politics. Kennedies, Bushes, and now Clintons, each with their enthusiastic partisans. The unsophisticated, so I suspect, cling to monarchy out an attachment to a real or imagined past, and some sheep-like devotion to a leader symbol. Watching James Carville, Lanny Davis and Terry McCauliffe slime their way across the tube the other day, I felt sure that I saw something more sinister at work: the naked lust for power. Of course that's the kind of creatures they are - you can't really blame a snake for being slithering or a cockroach for scuttling in the dark. I really expected much better from Paul Krugman, though, but I surely didn't get it. I have often proclaimed him the best of columnists, but his offering today is both shallow and dishonest. His latest attempt to help resurrect Lady Voldemort offers this: Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an ...