entropicon

Shakespearian questions

2005-12-02T02:39:00.000Z

Our brain forms a million new synaptic connections for every second of our lives. How many connections are opened by that thing called love?

NewScientist.com

Hazy vs Hasty

2005-11-26T01:15:00.000Z

According to the two-heads theory[1], sexual arousal and propinquity to bliss is a harbinger of bad rational decisions. Until recently, the theory remained just that - a theory, that is, based only on anecdotal evidence.
Now empiricists are designing experiments to test the theory: and the first findings, by Dan Ariely and George Lowenstein, are, indeed, in line with the theory.

What about the relatively sizable subset of high stamina, long lasting ones? That's left for future empirical research. We'll keep you posted.

The Guardian, Improbable.com

[1] "God [or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever] created women and gave men two heads, but just enough blood to keep only one of them functioning at any given time"

Being significant

2005-08-30T14:14:00.000+01:00

It turns out a large portion of scientific papers are, statistically speaking, BS.

NewScientist

Ein Mann, ein Warum

2005-08-23T15:09:00.000+01:00

Web wanderings

2005-08-17T14:09:00.000+01:00

It's old news, but it appears that our favourite drug has counterintuitive effects on spiders, more so than other high-inducing chemicals, as you can see in this diagram.
Mmm, guess we've all been privy to its erratical effects on humans.

Nasa, NewScientist (via Cecilia's Blog)

Why doing a PhD is good for you

2005-08-11T19:14:00.000+01:00

You sometimes get to delve into interesting research topics.

Wired

The next insanely great thing

2005-08-11T10:05:00.000+01:00

Some people have imagination and vision, and behave like round pegs in square holes[1]. The past nine years - nine years I have spent mostly in various academic institutions - were the years of the coming of age of the Internet. For all the handful of mistakes he makes every now and then, it's amazing how many things Steve Jobs got right nine years ago in this Wired interview, when he was still just CEO of NeXT and Pixar.

[1] Which, coincidentally, leads to an interesting transcendental equation.

Wired

Mathemagics

2005-08-09T11:15:00.000+01:00

An article in this week's Nature examines the apparent chasm between mathematics and storytelling, and concludes that it is just that - simply apparent.

Nature

It was sixty years ago today

2005-08-06T10:52:00.000+01:00

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

Robert Oppenheimer, Interview from the documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, NBC, 1965

Nomina sunt consequentia rerum

2005-08-05T17:57:00.000+01:00

˜You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage"

John Von Neumann to Claude Shannon,
from M. Tribus, E.C. McIrvine, Energy and information, Scientific American, 224 (September 1971)