Miscellanea
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Sponsor me!
More special pleading: I’ll be running in the Cancer Research UK 10K at Blenheim Palace on 1 October. If you’d like to do a little good (and encourage me), please feel free to donate a few of your dollars, pounds, euros, etc., to the cause, at my sponsorship page.
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Quick update
Sorry I’ve been silent… here’s a quick update: I’m in Pasadena, California, working at JPL and Caltech on various tasks related to the Planck Surveyor Cosmic Microwave Background satellite, to be launched in a couple of years (which means “soon” in this game). I’m sure you’re waiting breathlessly to hear my commentary on such crucial…
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Sinuous Titanium & Big Iron
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I’m recently back from my vacation in Bilbao. Aside from the usual “getting away from it all”, the first highlight was the amazing pintxos–Basque tapas like squid-and-ink croquettes and piles of jamon iberico. With a full tummy, I could handle Frank Gehry’s spectacular Guggenheim Bilbao, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Sheathed…
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Vacation, all I ever wanted
OK, I’m off on vacation (holiday, as they call it in the UK). Lots of time to think, very little in front of a computer. Back in a week or so. In the meantime, congratulations to Janna and the other awardees, from the fqxi, who seem to have transcended their somewhat dubious funding source, and…
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Big brother, watching me (or vice versa?)
When I left for Trieste last week, I decided to leave some vital data with the UK government: the pattern of my irises. Now, when I enter the country, my eyes are scanned by a science-fiction-ish kiosk and I get through faster than those other less fortunate foreigners. But I’m the one with the data…
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Brian Aldiss on Food and Civilization
In the years of the Han emperors in China… the Chinese perfected the crossbow with which to defeat the barbarians. The barbarians did not have the skills necessary to cast the bronze locks the crossbow requires. With the barbarians taken care of, a time of peace prevailed within the newly united states of China. So…
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I thought that was my job
“Physics Elevated to an Art Form” — Oakley‘s new tag line.
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Front Page Probability
In a bid to combine numeracy with sports coverage, The Observer presents the Poisson distribution as a headline on its front page today. Supposedly, it has something to do with predicting the number of goals a team will score in the World Cup. The Poisson distribution is P(n) = λn e-λ/n! This gives the probability,…
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Also…
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Wine: California beats the French (again). Meanwhile, wine seems to be taking over the net, with podcasts and a a spate of sites for reviewing, ranking and cataloguing your wine, some with all sorts of new Web 2.0 goodies. (More commentary when and if I get to around to actually using them.) Song: go read…
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