Mosquito ringtones and the extremes of human hearing: Years of going to punk rock shows have wrecked my hearing; above 17,000 Hz, I can't -hear- anything, but it starts giving me a headache.
A rundown of math jokes on "The Simpsons": The episode with the fake counterexample to Fermat's Last Theorem also had a giant "P = NP" floating in the background. (via Daring Fireball)
Chinese mathematicians announce proof of Poincaré conjecture: The problem, about the nature of three-dimensional spheres, is one of the Clay Millennium Problems; if the proof stands, someone (probably Grisha Perelman, whose work on the problem the Chinese mathematicians belief they've confirmed) wins a million bucks
Engineers Help to Save and Reconstruct the Past: The University of Arizona's awesome-sounding Heritage Conservation project, in which lost technologies are resuccitated.
Bird flu ready to rumble?: "All seven people infected with bird flu in a cluster of Indonesian cases can be linked to other patients, according to disease trackers investigating possible human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus." Human-to-human transmission, of course, is how
Vision in a Complete Achromat: By Knut Nordby -- I think I read about this in an Oliver Sacks book.
A neural basis for collecting behaviour in humans: "Thirteen subjects exhibited abnormal collecting, characterized by massive and disruptive accumulation of useless objects."
How cockroaches make decisions: "'Cockroaches use chemical and tactile communication with each other,' said José Halloy, who co-authored the research." I wouldn't have expected roach behavior to be complex, although I bet they can't handle going to the video store.
Conservative columnist attempts to refute Einstein: Three guesses who the winner is. (Hint: the German with the crazy hairdo.) Don't miss his possibly more embarassing followup column, in which a he goes off on a tirade when a physicist corrects his errors of fact.
Zombies are awesome: This may be the single best comment in the history of MetaFilter.
People Who Died 2005: The Baltimore City Paper profiles YA SF writer Andre Norton, the inventor of Valium, the James Brown backup singer behind the "It Takes Two" beat, and other less worldshaking people who died last year.
Vehicle to autonomous biped robot conversion for the Mini Cooper r50.: Man alive, if these things discover energon cubes, we're toast.
How to Clean Coal: Coal gasification is going to happen in the U.S. this decade.
The Hundred Greatest Theorems: Outrage! The transcendence of pi comes in at #53, and I don't see the Ham Sandwich Theorem at all!
Eggheads and Bookies: How "Scientific" Wagers Beat Wall Street: Starring Edward Thorp, the MIT mathematician who invented card counting, and Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs genius who might lead my all-history dinner party guest list.
The Taming of the Screw: Illinois Tool's Kenneth LeVey digitizes a 1936 manual of screw design and reinvents a simple machine.
A Guide to Isaac Asimov's Essays: The late doctor was once of the great popular science writers of the twentieth century (and insanely prolific).
Mystery Bulge in Oregon Still Growing: I suspect that it's the jumping-off point for the 2009 invasion of the mole-men.
A rocket to nowhere: Macjiej on the design and political comporomises that have crippled the Space Shuttle. (via Waxy)
Why the Red Delicious No Longer Is: The rise and fall of the canonical variety of Washington apple.
How do you make sippin syrup? - Q&A: Today's "greatest page on the Internet".
The crackpot index: "20 points for each use of the phrase 'self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy'."
New mini-nuclear-plant design approved for use in Galena, AK: "The reactor unit is 50 feet to 60 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet in diameter. It will be built outside of Alaska, installed in the Yukon River community, encased in several tons of concrete and not be opened during its operating life, which is now estimated a
In Americans, Lower Levels Of Chemicals: We've got less lead and other gunk in our systems than a decade ago.
The Interstate Traveler Project: A "remarkable vision of the not so distant future!" The best thing about it, by far, is the choice of names for the "reporter".
The Passenger Pigeon Memorial: "The exhibit pays tribute to Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, who died at the Zoo in 1914." The Cincinnati Zoo was also home of the last Carolina parakeet.
Ethanol, biodiesel from crops not worth the energy?: I want more details about their biodiesel figures (particularly biodiesel from soy), as this doesn't entirely square with other numbers I've heard.
On the language of prarie dogs: "Slobodchikoff believes prairie dogs are communicating detailed information to one another about what animals are showing up in their colonies..."
How the Heritage Foundation cooked the books on virginity: Slate's Jordan Ellenberg spells out the difference between sociologists doing real research and conservative thinktankers throwing their credibility in the toilet.
Build your own radar station: "This case mod project shows how to convert an old tube radar PPI display into a state of the art mini-ITX based PC driven NEXRAD weather radar."
SHA-1 broken; paper now available: Bruce Schneier is making the paper available; it won't be published until after it's presented at a conference.
Toxoplasma gondii, your friendly personality-altering parasite: "Subjects with latent toxoplasmosis had higher intelligence, lower guilt proneness, and possibly also higher ergic tension." (via Majikthise)
CITS - MD5 Collisions: The breaking of MD5 continues, as two meaningful documents have been generated with identical hashes. (via Bruce Schneier)
Air Force Had Plans to Nuke Moon: Is there an alt.nuke-the-moon the way there's an alt.pave-the-earth?
Eat toxic waste, excrete electricity: A new form of engineered desulfitobacteria could well supplement batteries in the future. (via futurismic)
Time's Up, Einstein: Like every other non-physicist in the world, I can't follow (though wouldn't the non-reversibility of time present problems?), but the marketing angle makes this interesting.
Map Reveals Wind Power Potential: A complete buildout of turbines at the world's windiest spots could generate 72 terawatts of energy.
Crooked Timber: Isolated social networkers: CP Snow's Two Cultures displayed via a nifty graph.
Inventing Our Evolution: The Washington Post on memory-enhancing drugs, cyber-prosthetics, and metabolic enhancements.
Free Online Graph Paper PDFs: Very handy to have on demand. (via Making Light)
Untested: MIT takes a look and finds that length correlates very strongly to one's score on the SAT writing test (and facts, alas, do not).
Cool Colors Project: Improved Materials for Cooler Roofs: "To the eye, they are almost the same color, but the cool brown reflects about 20 percent more of the incident solar radiation."
CRYPTOWORLD: Operation Death Worm: "Cryptoworld, a blog style journal of our adventures in Mongolia, looking for the Allghoi Khorkhoi (Deathworm). Extreme Blogging, live from the Gobi Desert." (via Hit and Run)
The American Museum of Radio and Electricity: "A ONE-OF-A-KIND MUSEUM FOR NORTH AMERICA"
"This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life.": The Hedonistic Imperative proposes bioengineering pain out of existance.
Ivory-billed woodpecker discovered in Arkansas woodlands.: The last confirmed sighting was in 1944. Says an Audobon Society scientist: "It is kind of like finding Elvis."
I'm too pretty to do math!: Advertise your ignorance on a cheap tank top.
The man who sold the moon.: Next step: Libertarian space utopia! Step after that: Bollywood musical!
Alas Ma Think Not Altitude!: Mathnet episode thumbnails. Hurrah for the Internet.
Mathnet and Square One Video Clips: Kate Monday and George Frankly 4-eva!
Teaching third graders the new math, using the Socratic method: Grade-school math is easy when people figure out how to explain things.
Artificial eyes by 2010, says EC | The Register: It involves an implantable device feeding signals from a digital camera into one's optic nerve.
Artificial eyes by 2010, says EC | The Register: It involves an implantable device feeding signals from a digital camera into one's optic nerve.
John Quiggan on Nicholas Quiggan and the "God gene": If Kristof had only saved his idea for Easter, we could have a whole series of evolutionary psychology holiday posts.
Love, Lust and Homo Sapiens: On one problem with evolutionary psychology: a Valentine's Day special.
Chad Orzel on Gregg Easterbrook's latest venture into popular science writing: "Of course, it doesn't really matter to Easterbrook that he's mangled the description of the experiment, as it's really just a springboard for some Luddite windbaggery about antimatter bombs."
The Blaschka Marine Invertebrates at Cornell University: Blown glass replicas of undersea creatures for educational purposes. Gorgeous.
Wired shills for nuclear power: I even -agree- with the thrust of the article, but the relentles strawmanism in the face of real problems and sneering contempt for people who don't get it turn the piece into Tech Central Station meets "The Long Boom".
Tim Lambert on pro-DDT op-eds and white papers: I remember getting into an argument about this subject on MetaFilter a long time ago, but I suppose no topic ever dies on the intarweb.
Statisticians and the Panzerkorps: A statistical analysis of captured German tanks' serial numbers produced better estimates of total unit strength than military intelligence.
Our Intelligent Companions, the Plants: "There are indestructible cosmic seeds or germs -- monads -- behind the soul's growth in the plant kingdom and in all things, each learning by experience through successive forms on the ladder of evolution." (via Mileece)
Pokemon causes cancer!: Damn that Charmander! (via Hello Nintendo)
Howtoons: Sort of "The Way Things Work" meets "Mr. Wizard", from building air cannons to making ice cream
Understanding how a gecko clings: "The possibilities for future applications of a dry, self-cleaning adhesive are enormous. We envision uses for our discovery ranging from nanosurgery to aerospace applications."
Intel makes a silicon-based laser: The move to optical computing is one way chipmakers can keep proving Moore's Law.
Longhand: "A calculator built from the ground up to facilitate calculation": "As your equation is entered, Longhand dynamically calculates the answer." (via rentzsch.com)
A New Interpretation of Information Rate: A 1956 Bell Labs paper tying the problem of gambler's ruin to information theory, via received information on a noisy channnel. (PDF)
Liquid lenses for camera phones: Millimeters-across lenses made out of a drop of water, a drop of oil, and a bit of circuitry.
The Itgel Foundation: Saving Mongolian reindeer and traditional nomadic life
EM-DAT, the Emergency Disasters Database: It can also help answer questions such as “[The site] can also help answer such questions as 'In the North African region, which countries are most affected by disasters or a particular disaster?'"
Mystery object orbits earth: Yay! Santa's back! From space!
Trekker Palm Microscope: An ickle little microscope designed to drag out with one on hikes. Cool!
Greetings From Earth: MP3s of the Voyager messages to our alien brothes, or "why is the Ukrainian from Ithica"?
Stirling engines, the future of solar power?: Extra points for the Man with the Golden Gun reference.
The Cuban Biotech Revolution: A sugar daddy in Castro, a well-educated population with few opportunities, a decent health system, and a weird relationship to the profit motive
Hiroshi Sugimoto's stereometric model photography: Plaster + craft + equations + black and white film + vision = art
The lonely whale sings a lonely song: The song doesn't seem to belong to any known whale group; the migration pattern doesn't follow any herd.
The Universal Whistling Machine: I want it to make friends with Blendy.
PowerFilm portable solar panels: All we need now is the rollable organic LCD monitors
The McCulloch Effect: An optical illusion that lasts for hours. "There are neurotransmitters involved."
Applying game theory to shipping: Mars (of M&M fame) has 1,000 shippers participating in a tricked-up reverse auction, all trying to maximize their payoff.
we make money not art: A fabulous design blog
The Real Moon Landing Hoax: Were Russians trying to reach the moon in 1968?
Aging octopus finds love: Awww. Also, ewww.
Squid now the dominant large animal on the planet: Global warming has caused a population explosion. It's all downhill from here, human race. I've seen this movie. (via)
FLIP, the Floating Instrument Platform: I think some GI Joes used to live on one of these.
Genetically-engineered alergen-free cats: I've seen enough monster movies to know how this will turn out.
Graham Leuschke on Alexandre Grothendieck: "Agree with it or not, this is the most clearly imagined thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about the practice of mathematics, and one of the most poetic as well."
A new winning strategy for the Prisoner's Dilemma: Cheating -- that is, coordinating your strategy with other players -- beats tit-for-tat. (via)
Isaac Newton, the last of the magicians: I was thinking about his Leibniz-bashing just the other day.
Mathematicians Against Terror: Using game and network theory to study the makeup of terrorist organizations -- and where the weak points are.
symmetry, the magazine of particle physicists: The first issue is coming in October; I kind of want to sign up and put it out on my coffee table to scare my guests. (via)
Rejoice, Yinzers!: To hell with studying the Zapruder footage! A physicist claims to have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Immaculate Reception was legit. (via)
Attack of the Grape Tomatoes: The rise of and legal battle over America's favorite sugary bitesize tomato variety.
InvasiveSpecies.gov: Cool (and horrible) photos, interesting information, and a domain name that will be in huge demand when the Martians land. (see also)
DC Treemap: A tool from the Casey Endowment for mapping the surprising number of urban trees in Washington.
What use are devils?: A Tasmanian devil FAQ (and check out the video of a devil roar-yawning -- surprisingly cute)
British Science Museum opens its storehouse: I wonder if they have the Ark of the Covenant in there?
The Strange Case of Lous de Branges: It's as if Galileo had been suppressed for claiming that the earth is borne through the heavens on a great sky turtle; he may still be a great mathematician, but de Branges is a crank, and his crankishness has been increasing steadily for years.
We, the kidnapped two-headed albino snark: "'I missed the snake,' Sonnenschein responded. 'I love him.'"
Bruce Schneier says SHA-1 needs to be put down: Schneier is both the world's best writer on computer security issues and a very smart man, so I take him seriously on this. The MD5 collision fallout has begun.
A Million Random Digits: If you can show that the RAND Corporation predicted the Kennedy assassination in their "Million Random Digits" project, you've got a best-seller on your hands!
"There are six known different hyperspace library models or 'Omni Dimensional Networks', all of which can be used for data compression or different learning modes.": "Isn't 'Meaningless information' a contradiction in terms ?." Read about Autosophy's revolutionary technology and decide for yourself!
MD5 collisions generated!: This is potentially a huge development in practical cryptography (and very, very irritating for people who use MD5 as an authenticity check). (via)
The social network of high school dating: What you need to understand is that everyone at Jefferson High dated Kevin Bacon.
Synthesis, a biological systems modeller: Build your own virtual slime mold!
The science of the Dim Mak death touch: One thousand steps: deadly! Nine hundred ninety-nine: totally safe! (via)
The history of phrenology: I can't find the "neuro-linguistic rhyme hypnotist" bump.
"The situation will only grow more complex, Mr. Beard said, if virtual actors gain artificial intelligence and become autonomous.": I can think of very few situations for which this sentence is not applicable.
The requiem for blobdom: "'I'm crushed,' he said. 'It's a blow for people who continue to want there to be great and scary monsters out there.'"
Why can't doctors be like scientists?: And why does the plague get more love than the measles? (via)
Creation Safaris: "Creation Safaris™, now in our 20th year, take you to unusual and beautiful places where you can have fun, fellowship and worship God while enjoying the Great Outdoors. And while you’re at it, you will learn important evidence for creation and against evolution."
Help Graduate Student Girl with an experiment: If you liked the umbrella dress (as seen on Boing Boing), give a little back. Also, it involves a wombat-crating scheme.
Return to the Mountains of the Moon: The effects of global warming on one of the most remote environments in the world.
Need a cruise missile?: Almost certainly a hoax, but if not, a wonderful present for the homicidal madmen on your Christmas list. (see also) (via)
The history of probability as a single Excel spreadsheet: Wow. Just wow. There's a lot more fabulous game theory stuff at Roll the Bones, too.
Crash Course: The science of reconstructing car accidents.: "Drivers lie to protect themselves, and given the speed of most accidents, even the memories of honest souls can't be trusted."
Politicizing safe sex programs: The piece is terribly overheated, but then again, this is a terrible, terrible idea. (some feedback) (leave your own)
Scary Squirrel World: Squirrels, real squirrels, and there were thousands of them. (via)
The Science Frontiers Sourcebook Project: "The ashen light of Venus; The Martian 'pyramids'; Kinks in Saturn's rings; Continuing debate about the Voyager life-detection experiments; Neptune's mysterious ring...." A series of Fortean anomalies; these look absolutely delightful. (via)
Mutant toddler has giant muscles: Discovery of the mutation in humans may someday lead to treatments for muscular dystrophy and a Chris Claremont-penned mutant preschool massacre.
The Mathematical Background of Futurama Writers: Now, calculate Fry's Erdös number. (via)
Kitchens of the Future: "Her declaration that 'this kitchen doesn't need a woman' captures a central theme of this paper." An astoundingly great linkdump from Anne Galloway.
Twin-prime prime conjecture proved?: A major result, if nobody finds any flaws. And it's from a mathematician in his 70s who hasn't published anything in 11 years. If I had been any good at analytic number theory, I'd try reading this paper. (via)
Six Degrees of Ahmed Chalabi: And not in the sense you might think. More badass than Erdös numbers because we never paid Erdös three hundred large a month to feed us Iranian disinformation. (see also)
Tom Lehrer's "The Elements": Includes elements that had yet to be discaavaard.
The Mathematical Fiction Homepage: "This is a story of a love triangle with a definite mathematical twist. Henderson's roommate, Czogloz, steals away his girlfriend, Milla, when all three were math graduate students. Years later, seeking revenge, Henderson attends a conference and very impolitely points out an error in Czogloz's proof."
So very close to a Darwin award!: Although it would have been best if the chemicals turned him into a shambling hairy monster, like in a Warner Brothers cartoon.
British mammal fact sheets: From badger to weasel, everything you need to know about the critters in British children's books.
An experiment about vision: Count the total number of times that white team members pass the basketball. Do not count passes made by the black team. When you're done, visit the "inattentional blindness" link to see how you did. (via)
An American brain drain?: However will the U.S. end the mine shaft gap?
The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists: Say what you will about Stephen Pinker, but you can't argue with his 'do.
The end of extinction: Only not in a good way.
Corn syrup and type II diabetes: It is truly the devil's sweetener.
Medical poster gallery: Melanoma never looked so good. (via) (see also)
Historical nuclear weapon test films: Home movies of big, big booms.
Lauren Slater's misrepresentations of psychology: I enjoyed her Guardian piece and her description of the Rosenhan experiment was fascinating, but B.F. Skinner did not, in fact, raise his daughter in a box.
Waxy vs. the NannyChat programmer: It's hard to choose between this debunking and the Infocom bot as Waxy's best project of the month. (see also) (and this)
Parasitoids: Creepy little things -- nuke 'em from orbit, man!
The Panda's Thumb: The group blog of a pod of biologist, dedicating to whacking the tar out of Intelligent Design
Wool keyboards: The digital pashmina revolution is coming. (via)
Beating on Steven Pinker: Living with a linguist of the Berkeley school has already convinced me of Pinker's untrustworthiness, but this is a decent attack on maximalist evolutionary psychology in general. (via)
What's interesting about Martian water: It'd be nice if the headline writers could convey this sort of thing (via)
Hideous sea creatures: Thanks a lot, Skot. You've ruined trips to the beach for the rest of my life.
Female mathematicians who have been known to have teal hair: The Internet constantly demonstrates that it's even odder than I remember.
The Milk Genome Project: Deepening our understanding the commonplace. (via)
Pi = 3 and a smidge: A browser-crashing illustration of transcendance (see also) (and this)