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The Oatmeal has an utterly superb cartoon devoted to Nikola Tesla: The greatest geek who ever lived. Normally at this point I would clip a bit of the cartoon to give you a taste of what I mean but this one really does need to be seen in it’s entirety. So go read it now.
One bit I do want to draw some attention to, though, is a remark near the bottom of the cartoon mentioning that July 10th is Nikola Tesla Day. This is the date of his birth and a date worth celebrating.
So geek out on July 10th and make something awesome.
Or, just keep an eye on Wikipedia.
Some bunch of utterly childish anti-GM crops activists have taken it upon themselves to destroy (via) years of publicly funded research into a genetically modified wheat that can repel insect pests by emitting a repellent-smelling substance.
Their reason:
Matt Thomson, from Take the Flour Back, told The Independent yesterday that action against the Rothamsted site would go ahead as planned.
“The concerns that we have are not addressed in this letter,” he said. “The way that Rothamsted have publicised this trial has been patronising. This wheat contains genes that are not naturally occurring.”
Frankly, anyone who seriously thinks that going out and vandalising years worth of research into a staple food – research that will help us avoid crop failure and famine – because they didn’t like the publicity has no sense of proportion, no idea what they are talking about and no concept if the impact of their actions.
Sense About Science has a more measured response and petition you can sign and circulate.
I saw this poster floating around on Google+ a few days ago, but without a link to the original which was a bit annoying as the text is too small to read. Thankfully, @ghostdancer found the site and linked to it.
There are three poster sizes – A1, A2 and A3 – so all I need to do now is take the PDF to a print shop and find a framer.
I haven’t mentioned Project Euler for a while, but I haven’t been ignoring the problems either. What I have been doing is building a library of reusable functions.
I noticed that a number of the problems are variations on previous solutions and was starting to find that I was spending more time finding code to copy and paste from than actually solving the problems. Having everything logically arranged in a single library should make this a lot easier.
It took a while, but seems to be paying off as I have now joined the 17.92% of people that have made it to Level 1.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster: Impact of magnetic fields on ram pressure stripping in disk galaxies
Not being an astrophysicist, I am relying on The Register’s summary, according to which the researchers suggest that certain combinations of gravity and magnetic fields can cause galaxies to leak long strands of gas.
That’s just the kind of thing one would expect of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), a deity revealed in 2005 which uses a “noodly appendage” to perform its works.
So finally, a deity for which some scientific proof exists.
Creative solutions agency Bridge 8 has released (via io9) a series of six critical thinking animations which form part of an education resource which covers basic logic, faulty arguments and the developing critical thinking skills. The animations are aimed at 8 to 10 year olds, but are also appropriate for adult audiences.
The first video is embedded below. The rest are linked underneath, or you can go straight to the Bridge 8 site to watch them all.
Critical Thinking Part 1: A valuable argument
Critical thinking Part 2: Broken Logic
Critical thinking Part 3: The Man who was made of straw
Critical thinking Part 4: Getting Personal
Critical Thinking Part 5: The Gambler’s Fallacy
Critical Thinking Part 6: A precautionary tale
The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. The appeal of this idea is obvious: it’s always nice to be saturated in positive feedback. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. Brainstorming seems like an ideal technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is a problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work.
- From The New Yorker via Tobias Buckell
And, from the same article, this:
According to Nemeth, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong. Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive. True creativity requires some trade-offs.”
There’s a lot more in there, all of which is well worth a read
Today’s XKCD comic is an inspiration. Click on the image to see the full size cartoon and then come back here to wallow in nerdiness.
Of course, I had to see whether the formula would actually work so, I plugged it into Excel and it looks like this:
=A2-(POWER(EXP(1),(20.3444*POWER(B2,3)+3))-POWER(EXP(1), 3))
Hopefully it is obvious that cell A2 contains the current date and cell B2 is the percentage completion expressed as a fraction.
It works, after a fashion, although the date acceleration is nothing like that suggested by the cartoon. More amusingly, though, is the fact that the Excel date function breaks when I exceed 72.0857% completed. This is obviously because nothing can ever be more than 72.0857% complete when Microsoft are involved.
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