Posts
Met her in a club down in old Soho
April 3, 2021
Washington, DC
Their Eyes Gazed Straight Ahead
September 25, 2020
Eisenhower Memorial, Washington DC
I Was Rolling Down The Road In Some Cold Blue Steel
March 8, 2020
Mighty Fine Wine
April 17, 2019
Previously
November 2017
September 2018
Trento, Italy, Atomic Nuclei as Laboratories for BSM Physics
Kindly State the Time of the Year
April 6, 2019
Burg Eltz, Rheinland-Pfalz
My friends and I took a day trip to Burg Eltz, a castle in Rheinland-Pfalz. We made a short hike from the parking lot to the castle grounds. After a quick look around we hiked up the road for a scenic overlook, which we took in as the passenger shuttle went back and forth.
We had an excellent picnic of home-made curry and rice, and surprise chocolate birthday cake! We played by the river bank, wandered the castle’s treasury, and took a tour of the unoccupied parts of the castleThe castle is privately held and the rear section is currently occupied by the thirty-third generation of the Eltz family. from a very peculiar guide who stuck to his very formal script even though the tour group was only us.
We returned to Köln, enjoying so-called flapjacks and selinamosas en-route and listening to 70s classics.
A Coat of Gold, A Coat of Red
March 17, 2019
Muiderslot, The Netherlands
Turn My Face to the Wall
January 20, 2019
Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg
A Band Beyond Description
September 15, 2018
Roboter-Kunst-Festival, Köln
Lasciate Ogne Speranza
September 1, 2018
Trento, Italy
I arrived in Trento on Saturday night after an all day trip through Düsseldorf, Venizia, and Verona. Next time I’ll take the train through München. I had an absolutely fantastic pizza with tomato sauce, fresh basil, mozzarella di bufala, dizzled with a reduced balsamic vinegar at Anfiteatro, a new restaurant. Sunday it rained but I did some indoor and underground archaeological tourism and visited the cathedral.
During the week I was busy with a program at ECT*, but also had a free Friday afternoon and evening. I returned to Anfiteatro to have the pizza, but accidentally walked into their grand opening! They had a free buffet with a free glass of wine, and live music. The food was delicious—some kind of roasted pork, a variety of roasted and pickled vegetables, fried dough of some kind—but I kind of wished for that pizza! The musician performed popular and classic English-language songs. He could sing but sprinkled every song with mondegreens, which I found amusing at first and distracting by the end.
A Bold Deceiver
August 4, 2018
Maynooth and Glendalough, Ireland
The Nucleon Axial Coupling
May 30, 2018
Nature, DOI:10.1038/s41586-018-0161-8
My collaborators and I are glad to announce that the Standard Model of particle physics predicts that , the axial coupling of the nucleon, is 1.271±0.013. The experimentally measured value is 1.2723±0.0023.
A Demon Cannot Be Hurt
February 7, 2018
Mysore, Karnataka, India
The Palace of Mysore still belongs to the Wadiyar dynasty, the titular monarchs of the Kingdom of Mysore, and can be toured with an excellent audioguide app. The well-kept walled grounds have two temples, a stable of elephants, and multiple large gateways. On display in the palace are a small portion of the Wadiyar traditional figurine collection, portraits, and a set of caskets used by supplicants to deliver written requests and mementos to the maharaja. The highlight is certainly the architecture—the palace, built after the previous wooden palace burned, is stone, and has enormous spaces with rich tilework, frescoes, bright colors, and stone and ivory inlay.
I walked through the nearby market, where flowers, spices, vegetables, dyes, and other everyday goods are sold in a loud, frenetic, chaos. Many vendors approached me, followed me, or otherwise tried to get my attention, though a quick pace and polite but firm insistence that I didn’t need a wooden cat puzzle box, junky souvenirs, or ingredients for dinner got my message across.
I had an fantastic onion dosa from a stall on the main market square.
The final stop was at the Sri Chamundeshwari temple, which is the main temple dedicated to the state’s local goddess. A complex of many temples, the main focus is the shrine and idol of Sri Chamundeshwari, who myth claims defeated a snake-wielding demon. This victory is commemorated annually with a 10-day festival, while other nearby regions share the festival and the vanquishing of evil is always accomplished by a deity, Mysore is unique in both celebrating and being the seat of this important regional goddess. The temple is located atop a huge hill that overlooks the whole city of Mysore, and the palace grounds and palace itself are oriented so as to face the temple, to identify the dynasty and the goddess.
From Mysore, it was a bit more than 3 hours to the Bangalore airport. My flight was at 3:30 in the morning, which put me in Frankfurt at about 9 am.
Wine For The Woman Who Made The Rain Come
February 6, 2018
Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India
I woke up early in Bandipur and my driver and I left for Ooty at about 6 am, shortly after the road through the tiger reserve opens. It was a long trip, which crossed from the state of Karnataka to Tamil Nadu and took me high into the mountains. I was warned to dress for the cold, which turns out to be a laughable concern for someone more used to a continental European climate.
My first stop was the botanical gardens, which I found to be lackluster. Very few of the flowers were in season, the grounds were poorly maintained, and some of the water was standing rather than flowing as designed. It was quiet and cool, however, and a nice way to spend the morning.
I had lunch at the Lake & Boat House, which had some amusements and rides that I didn’t ride, and also had paddle boats and powered boats for rent. A class from a local all-girls high school was there, and clandestinely took selfies with me in the background. A family gave me a “butterscotch fruit”A quick search yields only western baked goods. that was unusual in that it had a thin but inedible peel, a center with lots of little black seeds in a goop, and a mushy flesh. It was good, but messy and a lot of work.
I visited the park atop Doddabetta peak, which, as the highest nearby peak, has phenomenal view of both Ooty and the valley on other side of the ridge. On the way back into the main part of town I stopped at Benchmark Tea Factory.
Ooty is surrounded by mountains, with large tea plantations covering entire mountainsides. One of the chief employees gave me and my driver our own tour of their little plantation and took us onto the factory floor to see the machines close-up and to watch the women sort and pack the tea. In addition to an educational time, they also provided samples of green, black, white, and ginger tea.
I had a late lunch at a restaurant in the town center, where I met Tom and Sue, two older British people on their fifth trip to India. I had a nice lunch of paratha and grilled paneer and vegetables, while they shared a masala and some naan. After an hour we parted ways and I walked around downtown Ooty and the market. The most dangerous part, as always, was crossing the street.
At 5 pm we left Ooty and returned to Bandipur. The way down had less traffic, both factors conspiring for a much shorter trip on the way down. I had dinner at the lodge, and met a nice couple from California, their two children, and grandma, who had just arrived that day. I told them about Ooty, and they told me about their first and incredibly successful trip into the forest. The next morning we went into the park and ate breakfast together before checking out and saying goodbye.
What Immortal Hand or Eye Dare Frame Thy Fearful Symmetry?
February 5, 2018
Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Karnataka, India
Although Your Mind's Opaque
February 3, 2018
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
My Sweet Lord
January 30, 2018
Bangalore, India
Nonperturbative and Numerical Approaches to Quantum Gravity, String Theory, and Holography, the program I attended, had a half-day Tuesday program with a free afternoon. We arranged cabs into Bangalore, where we visited the summer palace–which could be better kept up–and followed the audiotour through the public areas, court, and private residence of the British-collaborating rulers of the state of Karnataka.
We stopped at a souvenir shop, where I spotted a lassee shop across the street. The traffic in India is controlled chaos—there are essentially no stop lights and no pedestrian crossings: one must simply cross with caution and confidence. I enjoyed a falooda, which my friend Vesna recommended before my trip. It was… weird. There were small tapioca balls and shredded rice noodles, topped with vanilla ice cream and yellow raisins.
From there we made a short stop at the Parliament and High Court en route to the botanical gardens. Parts of the gardens are very nice, but it’s very hard to ignore the abundance of litter. The highlights were the greenhouse seen above, an abundance of beautiful, wild song birds, bonsai trees, and a still lake with lotus lillies.
The cabs then took us through rush-hour Bangalore traffic to Ishkon temple, a main temple of the Hare Krishna. As I was wearing shorts, I had to put on a doti before proceeding to the shrines. As we made our way to the first shrine, we passed a special staircase for worshipers where with every step they alternate the mantras “Hare Krisha, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare” or “Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”.
When we reached the main shrine, a monk or priest had us touch flower blossoms and sprinkled us with perfumed water. Then we joined a group of worshipers as another monk rang a bell and sprinkled the blossoms around an idol. He swung incense and chanted, and finally sprinkled the crowd with the remaining perfumed water. As worshipers leave the shrine, they put their hands over the flames of candles and touch their faces with their warmed hands.
For dinner the different cabs split up before heading back to campus.
Things That Didn't Suck 2017
December 23, 2017
TTDS 2011
TTDS 2012
TTDS 2013
TTDS 2015
TTDS 2016
BOOKS + SHORT FICTION
- The Man In The High Castle, by Philip K. Dick
- The Ice Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, by George R.R. Martin
- The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
How Many Wonders Can One Cavern Hold?
December 12, 2017
København, Danemark
On the way home from Technical Advances in Lattice Field Theory I stopped in Copenhagen. The city is beautiful, although it doesn’t get much light in early December. I made some nice friends at a hostel, enjoyed some walking tours, and had a great hotdog. Tivoli Gardens is open for Christmas-time. We rode the roller coaster while wearing virtual-reality headsets, which was phenomenal and so obviously the future it’s hard to overstate.
Everything Is Awesome
December 3, 2017
Billund, Danemark
On my way to Odense for Technical Advances in Lattice Field Theory I flew through Billund. LEGOLAND itself was closed for the winter, but the recently-opened LEGO House was great. Very interactive, with lots of creative opportunities and amazing exhibits.
I'll Meet You Any Time You Want
November 25, 2017
Trento, Italia
I was invited to Axions at the Crossroads: QCD, Dark Matter, Astrophysics at ECT*, the European Center for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas in Trento, Italy. It was a productive, educational workshop and Trento itself is beautiful and full of interesting history. We ate an absurd amount of carbs—the most delicious pizza I had included gorgonzola, pears, and thinly-cut strips of lard.
Orangutans are Skeptical
July 22, 2017
If you’re going to guess the name of an animal in German, the best strategy is to think “What kind of pig is this?” and guess the most naïve adjective-pig compound word that fits. If it doesn’t look like a pig, try again for a horse, bear, chicken, toad, fish, or mouse. You’ll probably get it.
His Tears Fall And Burn The Garden Green
June 25, 2017
Alcazaba, Málaga, Spain
If We Travel By My Dragonfly
June 18, 2017
Alhambra, Granada, Spain.
I'd Forsake Them All for Your Sweet Kiss
June 17, 2017
Granada, Spain
All the King's Men
June 4, 2017
Koblenz, Germany
Be Like the Squirrel
June 3, 2017
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Be On My Side, I'll Be On Your Side
June 2, 2017
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Your Technicolor Motor Home
May 28, 2017
Aachen, Germany
The Hush of Falling Leaves
May 12, 2017
Den Haag, The Netherlands
Just A flower I Can Help Along
May 7, 2017
Longer Boats Are Coming
May 6, 2017
Leiden, The Netherlands
Stray Cavaliers
March 24, 2017
Brussels, Belgium.
METAQ
February 22, 2017
Tasks of one sort naïvely bundled, wasting a substantial amount of cycles
Tasks of many sorts bundled with METAQ, wasting far fewer cycles.
METAQ is a small suite of bash scripts I wrote to increase the ease and efficiency with which my collaborators and I use supercomputing resources.
Supercomputing time is almost always awarded through a competitive proposal process, and there’s usually not enough to make everybody happy. So, if you receive an allocation, you want to be sure you use it as best you can.
METAQ helps you avoid wasted cycles, by making it simple to group computational tasks together and to slot smaller and shorter tasks into otherwise-wasted cycles.
I wrote up a description of METAQ for the arχiv.
Update 2017-03-21: METAQ was covered by The Next Platform!
The Heat Came 'Round and Busted Me For Smilin' On A Cloudy Day
February 14, 2017
There's a cryptographically signed version, too.
There is a war coming on general-purpose computing. It starts with, of course, forcing child pornographers to provide evidence against themselves and fighting terrorism. We have progressed into demanding a scientist’s telephone and passwords at the border, demanding access to citizens’ social media, and using log files from a person’s implanted medically-necessary heart monitor to indict them. It creeps in as Hollywood and the RIAA search for ways to make your web browser obey them, rather than obey you.
A Modern Major General
December 31, 2016
Minack Theatre, Porthcurno in Penzance, Cornwall, England.
Live and Die a Pirate King
December 30, 2016
Porthchapel Beach, St. Levan, in Penzance, Cornwall, England.
Things That Didn't Suck 2016
December 15, 2016
TTDS 2011
TTDS 2012
TTDS 2013
TTDS 2015
I kept track as the year progressed, so preparing this was substantially easier than in the past.
BOOKS + SHORT FICTION
- The Slow Regard of Silent Things, by Patrick Rothfuss - This book will make no sense to you unless you’ve read The Name of the Wind / The Wise Man’s Fear (TTDS 2015), and even then… It’s a weird book. There’s only one alive character. But there are plenty of not-alive objects in the story. IDK, just read it. Also, I love that Vi Hart and Patrick Rothfuss are friends.
- Animal Farm, by George Orwell
I feel like I read more than this, but I cannot remember! I worked a lot this year.
Don't the Sun Look Good Going Down Over The Sea?
November 27, 2016
Hannover, Germany
I traveled to Hannover to see a friend from grad school and to have ex-pat Thanksgiving, which was great. Turkey, cranberry sauce, delicious veggies, and only a small amount of beets.
I stayed with a friend of a friend who showed me around Hannover on Sunday before my train back to Köln. We walked by a very sharpSeriously, it is awesome looking natural gas processing plant, over a bridge with terrifying aquatic animals and inviting mermaids, saw the Nanas, the Opera House, and the Rathaus.
The Rathaus is open to the public and the main, vaulted room houses models of Hannover at different eras—1639, 1939, immediately post-war, and today. It sits a short walk from the end of the Maschsee, a huge artificial lake built as a public works project during the Nazi era.
Hannover’s Weihnachtsmarkt is different from the others I have seen—there is a part that is more Renaissance Fair than others: a temporary forest of evergreens, rope-making demonstrations, axe throwing. I shot crossbow bolts for a few Euro with decent accuracy—only to notice that there were fletched bolts available.
The Weihnachtsmarkt is very close to the Hannover HauptbahnhofCentral Station, abbreviated Hbf , a bustling station with many open-on-Sunday shops and quick bites to eat. The train back to Köln was very crowded—I stood for an hour of the three-hour journey. But the ride was relatively smooth and I listened to Heavyweight.
Back in Köln, I walked from the Hbf, which is right at the cathedral, through the Christmas markets at the cathedral, in Neumarkt, and Rudolfplatz.
Heavy Horses, Move the Land Under Me
November 19, 2016
Stetternich, Germany
Somebody Holds the Key
November 18, 2016
After Tuesday’s predicament things started happening fast.
Wednesday afternoon I met with the International Employees Officer again. This time she was extremely warm. She basically said there was no hope to expedite anything, and the only route to starting my contract at FZJ was to accept the offer on the beet farm. She walked me through the health insurance application.
I sent my future landlady an email during that meeting.
Stuff that's scuzzy
November 16, 2016
Well. I had a bit of a day on Tuesday. When I was hired I was told “You’re American? Just come on a tourist visa and we’ll convert you to a work visa when you arrive.” OK, seems easy enough. I went to the ForschungszentrumResearch Center last week to sign the contract, and I scheduled a meeting with the International Employees Office (which is just 1 person) for the first day (Monday). Nobody said “Do you have a work permit? Where are you registered?”
Thinkin' and drinkin' are all I have today
November 9, 2016
I believe in reason. I believe in facts. I believe in a shared, underlying reality. I believe in the Enlightenment. I believe women are as smart as men. I believe in listening. I believe that my experience is not the only valid one. I believe in trying to understand another point of view. I believe in changing my mind. I believe it is valuable to admit ignorance.
Where Your Gentle Wing Rests
August 3, 2016
Bonn, Germany
A Golden Winged Ship Is Passing My Way
May 28, 2016
Santa Cruz, CA
We drove down on Saturday, through the hills west of Palo Alto to the coast.
We knew of a secret beach campsite, where you leave your car on some nearby private property with a friendly donation and short hike down from Highway 1 to the beach. The site is on public grounds, but not visible from the road and the segment of beach is disconnected from the beach to the north by impassable rocks.
We somehow left the hotdogs at the grocery store (after purchase) so we had a light dinner of lousy salad and delicious, albeit a bit sandy, artichoke bread. We drank beers and sat around the fire.
The morning brought biologists looking for a nearby dolphin carcass, which was pretty interesting—they took samples, poked and prodded, and made some measurements.
We had brunch at the Main Street Grill in Half Moon Bay on the way back to San Francisco.
Steal Your Face Right Off Your Head
December 27, 2015
Things That Didn't Suck 2015
December 27, 2015
TTDS 2011
TTDS 2012
TTDS 2013
I was delinquent in 2014, so this contains approximately twice as much as it should.
BOOKS + SHORT FICTION
- Thinking In Pictures, by Temple Grandin - Explains what it’s like to be autistic. Helped me figure out that I’m not autistic.
- What is Life? (1944), by Erwin Schrödinger - Tries to explain what it could mean to be alive.
- American Gods, by Neil Gaiman - Weaves a story whose premise is that all the gods of the Old Country migrated to America with their believers.
- In The Beginning… Was The Command Line, by Neal Stephenson - covers the history of computers.
- The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss - A story about an unreliable narrator orphan who goes to magic school and (maybe?) nothing really happens, but it’s really fucking good.
- A Canticle for Liebowitz (1960), by Walter M. Miller Jr. - Tracks a post-nuclear-apocalypse society coming out of a technological dark age. Motivated me to give to the Internet Archive.
- Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Anathem (TTDS 2012)) - What happens if the moon suddenly explodes? Went to a reading / Q&A and got my copy inscribed.
- What If?, by Randall Munroe - Tackles bar-room speculation with research and physics
- Our Mathematical Universe, by Max Tegmark - Proposes a serious and compelling form of Mathematical Platonism.
- The Secret Number (TTDS 2012) was made into a 15 minute short.
ARTICLES + SERIOUS VIDEO
- The Greatest Juggler Alive Drops Everything
- The Knowledge - Uber Ruins Everything.
- Sisyphus Kinetic LEGO Sculpture
- Update to Could Conjoined Twins Share A Mind? (TTDS 2011)
- The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work - Seriously, though, all this nonsense about outlawing strong crypto is scary.
- The Great Paper Caper - Counterfeiting is legitimately interesting. Canadian man counterfiets $250M USD and essentially gets away with it.
- The Great Chain of Being Sure About Things - This title sucks, but it’s about the consensus technology behind bitcoin
- 8 Adults, 3 Kids: Modern, Intentional Families are on the Rise
- The Secret Life of Yo-Yos
- The Case of the 500-Mile email bug - Computers are hilarious.
- One Man’s Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake - This article is comprised of hilarious anecdotes, grammatical arguments, and Wikipedia palace intrigue.
- John Horton Conway: The World’s Most Charismatic Mathematician
- The Wall of Sound - The Grateful Dead’s crew were sonic pioneers.
- How the Talmud became as Best-Seller in South Korea
- Nick Offerman at the Congressional Radio and TV Correspondent’s Dinner
- The Press Your Luck Scandal (1984) - Unemployed Ice Cream Truck Driver beats Press Your Luck
- God, The Universe, and Everything Else (1988) - Hawking, Sagan, and Clarke shoot the shit.
PHYSICS - SERIOUS
- Stealth Dark Matter - What experimental constraints can we place a particular kind of strongly-interacting dark matter?
- Axions - We offer the first constraint the mass of the hypothetical QCD axion from SU(3) Yang–Mills, and I show that constraint should get tighter with a complete calculation from QCD by studying properties of the strong force at Big Bang temperatures.
- Nucleon-Nucleon Scattering - We calculate how protons and neutrons interact, in a modified version of reality. We employ new techniques to go beyond the spherically-symmetric interactions previously studied, crucial for studying parity-violating interactions.
- LATTICE 2014
- Bay Area Science Festival
- Organized LLNL Beyond the Standard Model Workshop
- LATTICE 2015, Kobe, Japan
- Numerical Approaches to the Holographic Principle, Quantum Gravity, and Cosmology, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- INT-15-3 Intersections of BSM Phenomenology and QCD
- INCITE Proposal was funded (Page 20)
PHYSICS - FUN
- Is The Universe A Simulation?
- I got an acknowledgement in second printing of Quantum Computing Since Democritus (TTDS 2013)
- Best Math Puns Contest 2014
- Fermat’s Little Theorem
- Computational Hydrographic Printing - The with-computers version of The Art of the Marbler (TTDS 2015).
- The Best (and Worst) Ways to Shuffle Cards
- LISP as the Maxwell’s Equations of Software - Swim in the purity of quantified conception and of ideas manifest.
- In Mathematics, Mistakes Aren’t What They Used To Be
- This philosopher has a new definition of “nature,” and it includes traffic jams - At once totally trivial and deep. I’d go further and put culture inside of nature, too.
- Too Many Worlds - The absolutely dumbest possible objections to the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but the author doesn’t know that.
- The First Light of Trinity
- A Career In Science Will Cost You Your Firstborn - Seems about right.
- A Few Goodmen - Goodman, Goodman, Goodman, and Goodman explore the phenomenon of coauthorship by economists who share a surname.
RELIGION
- Truth, Provability, and the Fabric of the Universe
- Our Mathematical Universe (also under BOOKS)
- Physicists and Philosophers Hold Peace Talks
- SPECTRAL GAP is Undecidable - And Aaronson’s take
TV SHOWS
- Man in the High Castle
- Would I Lie To You? - I don’t understand why there isn’t an American version of this. Could be a podcast. Also I identify with David Mitchell.
- Black Mirror - The Twilight Zone for the technological era.
- Only Connect - Another British show that could be a podcast.
- Silicon Valley - Seems eerily accurate.
- Connections (1978)
MOVIES
- The Lego Movie
- Particle Fever
- Tim’s Vermeer
- The Theory of Everything
- Interstellar
- The Martian
- Ex Machina
- Predestination
- Stripped - Feature-length documentary about comic strips, with a good interview of Bill Watterson.
- Ecstasy of Order - Tetris is the best video game ever.
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
MUSIC
- I went on a kick of listening to Tuvan throat singing for like two weeks. I was in a weird place. I still can’t do it. I think you probably have to be alone on the steppe with only your herds to get really good.
- Miles Davis improvises over LCD Soundsystem
- Fredrika Stahl
- Merry Clayton’s part in Gimme Shelter
- 2015-05-01 The Decemberists at The Greek Theater - They can really put on a show.
- 2015-07-03 and 05: Grateful Dead’s Fare The Well Concerts, in Chicago - This was really unbelievable.
- 2015-12-27 Dead & Company at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - THIS IS TONIGHT!
THEATER
- Improv 4 Humans Live Taping at SF Sketchfest - 2014, 2015.
- Mortified
- Nerd Nite (both East Bay and SF) - The best one I went to included a guy who draws realistic dinosaurs for scientific publications and museums using the best knowledge available.
- Emperor Norton’s Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine - A historial interpreter gives walking tours of SF as an 1800s San Francisco eccentric who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States
- Festival of Bad Ad-Hoc Hypotheses (SF 2014)
- Festival of Bad Ad-Hoc Hypotheses (Seattle 2015)
PODCASTS
GAMES
- Kye (1992)
- Portal - I know, I’m late to the game on this one.
- Mini Metro
- Super Mario Maker
- Ducktales Remastered - The NES game was remade for Wii U
- Terra Mystica - Only played it once, but liked it.
- It might be that I didn’t Settle Catan once this year, which would be the first time since… 2004?
- Dominion expansions
- Twilight Struggle - I’ve only played as the USSR.
- Space Alert - It’s a real-time board game. It’s kind of like the Space Team App (which is also super fun) but more serious and gamer-esque.
- Pandemic
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
- Munchkin
- Last Will - This was very fun, and it’s extremely confusing that the goal is to get rid of as much money as you can as quickly as possible.
TRAVEL - 2014
- Minnesota for a wedding. - Nye’s Polonaise Room with live piano karaoke and The World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band. I sang Charlie on the MTA, to tremendous applause.
- Big Sur
- Zion National Park for some excellent canyoneering. I ran into a rock climbing instructor I had in college in Springdale.
TRAVEL - 2015
- DC ⟶ Boston ⟶ Fermilab / Chicago - Organized around going to the Fare The Well Dead50 concerts.
- Japan for a month - Kobe ⟶ Kyoto / Nara ⟶ Fuji ⟶ Tokyo ⟶ Osaka ⟶ Mineyama ⟶ Nagano Prefecture ⟶ Tokyo
- Backpacking at Devil’s Postpile
- Road trip to Seattle for INT 15-3 workshop - Berkeley ⟶ Lassen Volcanic NP (2 days) ⟶ Crater Lake NP (2 days) ⟶ Mt. Rainier ⟶ Seattle ⟶ Cape Disappointment ⟶ Eugene ⟶ Redwood NP ⟶ Berkeley
- Sequoia
FOOD + DRINK
- Sushi Dai, Tsukiji fish market
- Russian River Brewing Company
- Mammoth Brewing Company
- Falling Sky, Eugene OR
- Growler USA, Eugene OR
- Steak and brussel sprouts at Mikkeller Bar
- Toast
- Umami Burger
MISC
- A one-off glassblowing workshop that was fun.
- I tried to bike to work, and discovered a crucial mistake in Strava’s maps at the top of an 1000+ft climb instead.
- Bay to Breakers was zany.
YOUTUBES
- Master Blacksmith Forges a Knife
- Meet the Mennonites Behind One of the World’s Best Syrups - I still don’t really know what sorghum is, but I want it.
- Weird Canadian Guy Works Wood
- Physics GirlSometimes she goes by Girl and sometimes by Woman. , especially Crazy Pool Vortex - Apparently she and I were at MIT at the same time? How did I not know her then?!
- How Money is Made and Printed
- What if Episode III Were Good? - The final installment of What if the Star Wars Prequels Were Good (TTDS 2013) - If Star Wars is ever rebooted, I hope they do it like this. Also I hope that Jar Jar is actually a Sith master.
- The Seinfeld Situation - Indian Comics make a Seinfeldesque video about Seinfeld’s Mumbai Performance being cancelled. It’s spot on. It helps to know that Tatkal is an Indian website for booking train tickets.
- The Engineer Guy - Especially his dive into aluminum cans
- The 8-Bit Guy - Especially the Graphics episode Learn how old tech works.
- Truth or Drink - It’s a whole series (people dating, parent/child, exes, etc.)
- Adam Sandler’s Channukkah Song (Part 4)
- Coldplay’s Game of Thrones: The Musical
- Jožin z bažin (1978) (Joey the Swampthing) - I don’t know. I like it. Made me realize I dance like a Soviet from 1978. Also why does that guy show us the inside of his mouth?
- Crows Understand Water Displacement
- Hot Bagels
- Satanists Unveil Statue - The best acting I’ve ever seen is in this video.
- The Triangle - Macarthur Genius Michael Moschen juggles inside a triangle.
- Treehouse Bicycle Elevator - Some day.
- Nick Offerman’s Shower Thoughts - Once you have a PhD, every meeting you go to is a doctor’s appointment.
- Serial Parody
- Synchronized Juggling
- The Art of the Marbler
- Numberwang
- Amelymeloptical Illusion - Beautiful contact juggling.
This World Was Made For All Men
October 17, 2015
Show the Bastards Up With Our Divine Light
October 16, 2015
Seattle, Washington
Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old
October 4, 2015
Mount Rainier, Washington
Tore Me All to Pieces, Nothing Else Remains
October 3, 2015
Salt Creek Falls, Oregon
See the Colors Floating in the Sky
October 3, 2015
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
The Deep Forbidden Lake
October 2, 2015
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
Wild Mountain Honey
October 2, 2015
Mount Shasta, California
Flame From Your Stage Has Now Spread to the Floor
October 1, 2015
Lassen Volcanic National Park, California.
In the morning I moved from the Manzanita Lake Campground to the Butte Lake campground, which is towards the other end of the park. It has substantially less infrastructure and is less scenic, resulting in a substantially smaller crowd—there were only two other occupied campsites.
Take a Whole Pail of Water Just to Cool Him Down
September 30, 2015
Bumpass Hell, Lassen Volcanic National Park
I Set Out Running But I Take My Time
September 7, 2015
Devil’s Post Pile National Monument, Mammoth Lakes, CA
Eat them up, yum!
August 7, 2015
¥4000, or (at the time) about $30. Easily the best sushi I ever had, breakfast or otherwise.
Let Me Wander In Your Garden
August 6, 2015
Besso Onsen and Ueda, Japan
Wrapped In The Old School Song, We Fly Our Colours High
August 5, 2015
Matsumoto, Japan
The Locomotive Jumped The Gun
August 4, 2015
Yudanaka, Japan
Its Ribs are Ceiling Beams
August 1, 2015
Osaka, Japan
Oh, Mountain of Our Eyes, What Do You See?
July 25, 2015
Mt. Fuji, Japan.
A Tingling Recognition
July 19, 2015
Nara, Japan.
The Ink Is Black, The Page Is White
July 16, 2015
Himeji Castle, Himeji, Japan.
They're A Band Beyond Description
July 5, 2015
Soldier Field, Chicago IL
Dust off those rusty strings just one more time…
First Set:
- China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
- Estimated Prophet
- Built to Last
- Samson and Deliliah > Mountains of the Moon > Throwing Stones
Second Set:
- Truckin’ > Cassidy > Althea
- Terrapin Station > Drums > Space > Unbroken Chain > Days Between
- Not Fade Away
Encore:
- Touch of Grey
Encore:
- Attics of My Life
Where Little Cable Cars Climb Halfway To The Stars
January 31, 2015
San Francisco, California, and Emperor Norton’s Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine.
Rainbows End Down That Highway Where Ocean Breezes Blow
October 18, 2014
Big Sur, California
The Lunatic Is On The Grass
October 8, 2014
I left the house around 1:30 and made it to Ocean Beach by 2. Unfortunately, contrary to the prediction of a clear night, it was quite foggy. Moreover, the parking at Ocean Beach is weirdly 100% restricted between 2 and 5 a.m. I thought I might try and leverage Twin Peaks’ altitude, but the fog unfortunately thickened as I ascended.
It's Stormin', Stormin' Rain
June 7, 2014
Spotted jellies at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey CA.
Listen to Those Rails A-Thrumming All Aboard
May 24, 2014
To convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius and back again is often a pain in the neck. Do you multiply by 5/9 first, and then subtract 32? The other way around? Add 32? How does it go, again?
Another Brand New Day
April 27, 2014
San Francisco, CA.
A Cave Up In The Hills
April 26, 2014
Smiles Await You When You Rise
April 6, 2014
The golden ratio \(\phi = \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}\approx 1.618\ldots\) can be represented by a beautiful repeated fraction and a beautiful repeated square root. This leads to the mystical-looking identity:
\[1+\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+\ddots}}}} = \sqrt{1+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{1+\sqrt{1+\cdots}}}}}.\]Let’s try to understand the origin of this identity.
California, Preaching On The Burning Shore
March 23, 2014
Ain't Gonna Stop Until The 25th Hour
March 22, 2014
2048 is a game by Gabriele Cirulli based on 1024 and similar to Threes. More than one person I know has likened it to a mind virus.
My Will Is Prophecy, My Own Mythology
March 17, 2014
Whispering Hallelujah Hatrack
March 16, 2014
They Carry News That Must Get Through
March 15, 2014
One heat up, and one cool down
February 15, 2014
Grandma Betty’s Chopped Liver
- 2 lbs. chicken livers
- 3 hard-boiled eggs
- 4 large onions
Dice up onions and sauté in pre-heated oil on low flame.
When onions have turned light brown add livers, season with salt.
Drain off the oil.
Put onion/liver combo and hard-boiled eggs into a chopping bowl and chop.
What Shall We Say, Shall We Call It By A Name?
February 2, 2014
An aptronym is a name that serendipitously reflects the character of its referent. Familiar examples include Chris Moneymaker, Anthony Weiner, Marilyn vos Savant, Price Club, Usain Bolt, and almost everybody who worked for Car Talk.
There May Be Many Others But They Haven't Been Discovered
January 24, 2014
Your Golden Sun Will Shine For Me
January 18, 2014
San Francisco, California
A Marvelous Night for a Moondance
January 10, 2014
Hexagonal ice crystal in a 22˚ halo. CC BY-SA 2.5 from Wikimedia Commons.
When it is cold enough for hexagonal ice crystals to form in the sky, you can sometimes see the 22˚ halo. Its angular radius, as the name suggests, is about 22˚, which means that it is about half as wide as a rainbow (which has an angular radius of around 42˚).
To make the 22˚ halo, light only gets refracted, which just means that it gets bent when entering and leaving the ice crystal.
Water droplet in a rainbow. Public domain from Wikimedia Commons.
In contrast, to make a rainbow the light also has to reflect off the back surface of the water droplet.
This has a few effects:
- You can only see a rainbow if you look in the direction opposite the light source. Instead of being centered on the position of the sun (or moon) in the sky, like the 22˚ halo is, a rainbow is centered 180˚ away from there.
- The colors are reversed, so that red is on the outside of the primary rainbow, but the inside of the 22˚ halo.
- Rainbows are much larger than the 22˚ halo. The reflection explains why it’s roughly a factor of 2 larger.
On 2014-01-10 there was a magnificent lunar halo in Tahoe.
So that you can see the reversed colors and dramatically larger size of a rainbow, here is a photo I took in 2009 of a brilliant rainbow in DC. You can also tell from the shadows that the sun is behind me in this photo, in contrast to the halo.
STAR Struck
January 8, 2014
STAR is one of the experiments at RHIC, which collides heavy nuclei to study the ultra-hot quark-rich medium called the quark-gluon plasma (or QGP) that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
Things That Didn't Suck 2013
December 27, 2013
THE BOOKS
- Quantum Computing Since Democritus, by Scott Aaronson
- World War Z, by Max Brooks
- Word Freak, by Steven Fatsis
- I Am A Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter
- The Mind’s I, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C Dennett
- Chesapeake, by James Michener
THE MOVIES
- Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Best of Both Worlds - OK, it’s really a TV show, but it was a 2-parter played back-to-back in a theater.
- Oblivion
- World War Z / Man of Steel double feature at a real-life drive in theater - Man of Steel was stupid, WWZ was great, until I read the book, and then I thought it was bad.
- Deceptive Practice - Ricky Jay is the most interesting magician alive.
- Catching Fire
- All is Lost - I was stressed out the whole time. I learned a lot about sailing that I didn’t already know.
- American Hustle
- The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug - I saw this last night. I liked the dragon, was largely unimpressed otherwise. WTF is a Tauriel? And was there a character briefly mentioned named Elros? What?
THE ARTICLES
- Apollo Robbins is a Pickpocket
- North Korea
-
- Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi - Japanese man makes sushi for Jung-il and Jung-un
-
- The Forbidden Railway - Turns out you can/could until recently take a train from Vienna to North Korea.
- It Takes Planning, Caution to avoid being ‘It’ - High school friends play a game of tag spanning 2 decades.
- This Russian family was lost in the taiga for 40 years.
- How the Chess Set Got Its Look and Feel
- On Getting Drunk in Antarctica
- How Does Copyright Work In Space?
- The 150 Things The World’s Smartest People Are Afraid Of
- The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist
- A whole bunch of Aaron Swartz stuff, none of which in particular stand out to me.
- Similarly for Edward Snowden.
- Similarly for BitCoins, except this one
MATH & PHYSICS FUN TIMES
- Chain of balls jumps out of container - I am working on doing the physics of this on the side now. Lots of smartness.
- The Big Move - There was a magnet at Brookhaven on Long Island that they needed at Fermilab outside of Chicago. So they moved it. The magnet is 50 feet in diameter, and weighs 700 tons, and needed to be kept within a quarter inch of its true shape during transit to do science.
- Helium (P)reserved -The government established a strategic helium reserve in order to flood the sky with dirigible warships. Even though that didn’t pan out, the helium reserve is incredibly important.
- The Dwarves Delve Deeply and Greedily. You Know What They Hope to Find in The Darkness of Khazad-dum - dark matter.
- Magnetic Putty is Super Weird.
- Professor Team Teaches With A Recorded Video of Himself
- Water & Sound - It’s as though there were a strobe light, but there isn’t.
- Many Worlds & The Copernican Principle - You sort of have to read back and forth between Aaronson’s blog and Landsburg’s blog to understand the discussion.
- Nobody Agrees what Quantum Mechanics Means, but Everyone Agrees What it Predicts.
- Feynman explains what a computer is and how it works.
THE TV SHOWS
Mostly just the Red Wedding over and over again. I was sitting at home, reading a book. I heard a scream, and immediately recognized it as Catelyn’s. I ran downstairs and my roommate was just staring at the TV with wide eyes and agape.
THE YOUTUBES
- Triathalon Juggling World Record - If you don’t yell at your computer when he gets in the water…
- No Direction, Period - Bob Dylan wrote every pop song since 1965.
- NYC Subway Train Conductors are obligated to point at the black and white ///////////// sign
- Crazy Combination of Sculpture, Machine, and Movie
- Marble Adding Machine - This is how your computer works, basically.
- Interesting People Who Make Fonts
- What if the Star Wars Prequels Were Good?
- Louis CK Tells The Classics
THE MUSIC
- Heart performs Stairway to Heaven at the Kennedy Center for Led Zeppelin
- The Takoma Park Folk Music Festival
- Katie and Joe - The Revolution
- Sheltered Turtle - Runaway Sketchbook
- A whole bunch of classical music and a whole bunch of CDs I brought home from India got me through my thesis.
THE THEATER
- Louis CK live at the Kennedy Center
- American Utopias, by Mike Daisey - Let’s go to Burning Man!
- Romeo and Juliet in the round at Signature Theatre in DC.
- Punderdome 3000
- Second City
- The Neuroscience of Magic - A magician and neuroscientist team-teach a lecture, where the magician does a trick, the neuroscientist explains why you don’t understand what happened, the magician re-does the trick, explaining to you how he fooled you, and then the magician does some more tricks using the same kind of technique that you can’t catch even though you know exactly what to look for.
THE PODCASTS / AUDIOBOOKS
- True Story
- The Lord of the Rings, by BBC Radio
- The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
- A Game of Thrones
THE GAMES
- Thurn & Taxis - Spiel de Jahres 2006
- Dominion
- Qwirkle Cubes
- Quoridor - It’s a maze game.
- Lost Cities
- Liar’s Poker - I played it a lot in India. My grad school friends a lot like it now.
- Ginkgopolis - I played this in Seattle at a game store.
- Boardgame Remix Kit - I haven’t actually played with this, but I want to.
- Gerrymandering Puzzle
- Geoguessr
- Color Zen - It’s a fun, beautiful puzzle app.
TRAVEL
- India & Nepal
- DC ⟶ CA Road Trip
- Camping at Pismo Beach and seeing the monarch butterfly grove there.
THE OTHER MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
- Sugru - Magical, moldable rubber that cures in 24 hours.
- DCist Exposed 2013 photo gallery.
- My roommate got a dog, which was fun.
I'm As Free As A Bird Now
December 20, 2013
Is this place at your command?
November 17, 2013
Oceano Dunes, CA
It's Not Hard, Not Hard To Reach
November 16, 2013
This Dichromatic Vision
November 16, 2013
The Monarch Grove at Pismo Beach.
Lake Ogallala, We Hold You In Our Hearts
October 8, 2013
To call the Lake Ogallala Beachside Campgrounds civilized is only true to the most fundamental requirements of the word. There are some fire rings, a few picnic tables, a toilet, and a suspicious fresh water source that you manually pump to get water, I feel certain, from the lake.
Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
October 3, 2013
Lake Calhoun, Minneapolis MN.
It's A Light And Tumble Journey
September 14, 2013
I've Been Stretching My Mouth
June 12, 2013
My friend Brian posted on social media:
On a brief break from proposal-ing, I was pondering the statement in computer science that “a function is entirely defined by its inputs and outputs.” At first I thought, “yep, that sounds about right. In the sort of idea of function-as-mapping, two identical mappings should be the same function. I think. But then I thought, “but I can write two functions to compute the fibonacci sum up to a given integer, and they may have vastly different orders of computation time. And, at least I think in principle, I might be able to write two algorithms with the same order of computation time but different memory needs. Are those all really the same function? Is the input-output mapping sufficiently descriptive to stand for the entire DNA of a function?”
I’m not sure if all of the words I wrote were strictly necessary to convey my point, but I love computational complexity and I found that once I got going I was making connections that weren’t obvious to me when I simply stated what my opinion was.
Once In A While You Get Shown The Light In The Strangest Of Places If You Look At It Right
May 24, 2013
While giving an introduction to the amplituhedron:
We can also generalize a triangle in a different way. Consider a square…
See also: 57 - The Grothendieck Prime.
People Say We Monkey Around
April 24, 2013
People –– What Have You Done?
April 20, 2013
Send the Sunshine Down My Way Whenever You Call My Name
April 10, 2013
How Can the Wind With So Many Around Me?
January 21, 2013
Washington, DC
Come On Children, Now Learn How To Run
January 12, 2013
Sunrise over the Himalayas, Nagarkot, Nepal.
The valley is filled with music emanating from the local monastery.
Almost Aflame, Still You Don't Feel The Heat
January 11, 2013
Sunset at The Hotel At The End Of The Universe, Nagarkot, Nepal.
Near The Village, The Peaceful Village
January 11, 2013
Walking Through Forests of Palm Tree Apartments
January 10, 2013
Chitwan National Park, Nepal.
By The Ranks Or Single File Over Every Jungle Mile
January 9, 2013
We walked from our resort to the Elephant Breeding Center. For Rs. 50 you have free range over the grounds of the EBC and access to a little museum with some information about the biology of elephants, how to care for them, and their relationship with their mahouts and humans more broadly. Of course, the main attraction is being able to see the elephants!
A year or two before our visit a pair of elephant twins were born, which is quite rare. They were curious and friendly, and unchained, unlike the rest of the elephants. They came right up to the fence to interact!
The larger elephants were chained to posts that were planted in the ground. Many of them were rocking back and forth and exhibiting other behaviors that, were a human doing them, would indicate psychological disstress, which is quite upsetting. However, we did see the mahouts take them their mounts into the jungle, and were told that they would not be back for many hours, so at least the elephants are getting some time to exercise and explore.
On the way back we stopped at a factory where they make paper goods from elephant dung, which is a plentiful and renewable natural resource. They make a slurry with water and then pour that slurry over framed grates. A day drying in the sun and the sheets are ready to be cut and processed.
In the afternoon we went on an elephant ride through the jungle. We saw a rhino up-close and some other animals. Rhinos typically flee when they smell humans but the elephant scent is strong enough to cover up the scent of the riders.
Chitwan National Park, Nepal.
If I Ever Get Out Of Here, I'm Going To Kathmandu!
January 8, 2013
I Can Tell My Sister By The Flowers In Her Eyes
January 7, 2013
You're Tired Of Yourself And All Of Your Creations
January 4, 2013
It Takes A Lot To Laugh
January 3, 2013
Tinsel Tigers
January 2, 2013
Played War Games In The Woods
January 1, 2013
The train to Agra from New Delhi left very early in the morning, was quite cheap, and came with a delicious meal and tea service. We took two cabs from the station to the grounds of the Taj Mahal. We paid our entry fee and entered. The fog hid the mausoleum from view until we were quite near.
Up close it is quite something to behold, the stylized caligraphy and intricate carved panels, the geometrical mosaics and inlays, and the grandness of it all lend it a feeling of impossibility.
Unfortunately the fog hindered any good photographs, and photography inside is prohibited. The fog also made the marble slick and a bit muddy, making the sanctity-preserving booties a bit useless from a practical point of view.
We left the grounds and ate lunch at a small restaurant. For just a few hundred rupees six of us ate like kings, with pineapple lassis and a dessert of banana pakora.
Once we had left the restaurant, the day became absolutely beautiful and clear, but our tickets could not get us readmitted to the grounds of the Taj Mahal.
We walked around Agra a bit and took tuk-tuks to Agra Fort, which we kept jokingly referring to as the Red Keep. It is gargantuan, and when it was first built not only served as a palace but also as the military headquarters and as a busy commercial center.
For dinner we ate at an otherwise-empty restaurant and had outstanding biryani. We spent some time at the bar, and talked with some local construction workers who bought us some Kingfishers.
We made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare, which was a terrible mistake, because the train was delayed by many hours.
Some of us successfully slept on the train, others had a tough time. We got back to New Delhi by the hour of the wolf. A short walk to our hotel, and we passed out quite quickly.
Then A Silence That Chilled My Soul
December 31, 2012
Things That Didn't Suck 2012
December 21, 2012
BOOKS & SHORT FICTION
- The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch - Philosophy, Computer Science, Physics, and more. Deutsch is a physicist; his philosophy closely reflects this and nonetheless is not morally empty.
- Anathem, by Neal Stephenson - This book + The Beginning of Infinity turned me into a Platonist. Seriously.
- The Golden Apples of the Sun, by Isaac Asimov
- Dark Integers - What if the rules of mathematics were physical and were dynamical?
- The Secret Number - Did Dr. Tomlin discover Bleem, the integer between 3 and 4?
- The Source, by James Michener - I read this before, during, and after my trip to Israel. It was an important part of understanding what the hell was going on.
- The Information, by James Gleick
MOVIES
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Argo
- The Hobbit
- Apocalypse Now
- Up
ARTICLES
- Don’t Turn Left - Every highway intersection is obsolete.maybe
- Safety Through Asymmetry - Burt Rutan designed a plane that can lose either engine but remain completely stable.
- Fashioning Apollo - SPACE TAILORS
- Cookies, by Douglas Adams - A true tale demonstrating that quiet desperation is the English way.
- Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - Context: G+ required your real name.
- ‘Underground Railroad’ Carries Slaves From Brooklyn To Manhattan
- Glass Works: How Corning Created the Ultrathin, Ultrastrong Material of the Future
- The Heinlein Maneuver - Heinlein gives a friend ideas for stories.
- As We May Think, by Vannevar Bush - In which Vannevar Bush describes, in 1945, the internet.
- Playboy Interview: George Carlin
- Science Is Our Human Heritage
- The Bookstore Strikes Back - One can only hope.
- The Most Dangerous Gamer - Can Jonathan Blow make video games into a respected art?
- Who Is Tom Bombadil? - If you haven’t read The Silmarillion, this will not make any sense to you at all. Inside the Secret Program to Build the World’s Best Maps - The notion that Apple was going to replace or beat Google at mapping is hilarious.
- Realistic Space Combat - This guy is a nerd. His argument that belligerents in real space combat will have total situational awareness and its implications on strategy are convincing.
- The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly - Not as cool as Could Conjoined Twins Share A Mind? from last year, but interesting nonetheless.
- List of Films that Most Frequently Use the Word “Fuck” - Exactly what it sounds like.
- Unabomber lists self as ‘prisoner’ in Harvard directory - “Awards: Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.”
- French phone bill waved after 12qn-euro blunder - A woman was charged 11,721,000,000,000,000.00 euros. That is more than the economic output of the world, by a large margin.
- Manhattan Evacuation Plan Reveals Island’s Old Contours - It’s almost as though the surface of the Earth was shaped over eons by natural forces.
MATH & PHYSICS POPULAR-LEVEL THINGS
- Factorization Diagrams
- Divisibility by 7 is a Walk on a Graph - ÷7 is the first one where the divisibility rule is not “easy”. The complete rule is shown. The method promptly generalizes, though becomes more complex when the divisor has more digits.
- Just what do you mean by “number”? - Hmm.
- The Mystery of the Menger Sponge - Fractals at MoMath
- The Philosophy of Computer Science - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is what Wikipedia would be if it were written by experts.
- Advice to a Young Mathematician - Sir Michael Atiyah was the president of the Royal Society and has a Fields Medal.
- Manifold Destiny - Gregori Perelman is a crazy person; he proved one of the most difficult mathematical theorems.
- Neutrino Detector Will Be Second-Biggest Human Structure - The Mediterranean itself will be part of the detector.
- Who Needs The Higgs Boson? - Raman knows what he’s talking about.
TV
- Game of Thrones
- Louie
THE YOUTUBES
- It’s Painting It’s Pouring - Some people make really interesting looking art by pouring paint on a thing.
- The Connected States of America - You can learn a lot by understanding who’s calling who.
- Stephen Fry on The Joys of Swearing
- Social Networking in its Oldest Form - A guy throws messages in bottles into the ocean.
- Baby birds - They grew up in the bush by my house’s stoop.
- Vi Hart - Everybody should make hexaflexagons. It’s a fun project and they are zany objects.
- What Color is a Mirror? - Surprise! It’s green.
- Paul Erdős: N is a number
- Pendulum Waves - Pendula are mesmerizing.
- What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn - Hint: it’d be pretty.
MUSIC
- Dispatch - Live in concert. They were awesome. I ran into Jake Itzkowitz.
- The Cranberries had a new album.
- So did Jethro Tull.
- Punch Brothers - modern take on bluegrass.
PODCASTS / RADIO
- How Fake Money Saved Brazil - cf. the onion
- A Man, A Van, A Surprising Business Plan - Turns out you can make $500/day helping the individual defeat moronic bureaucracy.
- StoryCorps - I just wish they came out more quickly.
THE GAMES
- Dream of Pixels - It’s reverse tetris. I can’t really explain it better than that. I paid for the app.
- Tigris & Euphrates - The Gamer’s Game.
- Agricola - I have played a handful of times and have systematically gotten destroyed.
- Maps Tower Defense - Play a tower defense game anywhere in google maps.
- Open Face Chinese Poker
- DrawSomething
- Scramble With Friends
- Kerning: The Game
THE OTHER MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
- Infrequently Used Punctuation Marks
- Tig Notaro’s “Live” set that I bought at Louis CK’s website.
- Trip to Israel
- The American Craft Beer Festival
- Snallygaster
- The National Aquarium
- Night Life at the California Academy of Sciences
- I caught a t-shirt at a Nat’s game.
- Wind Map
- Green Twilight Publication Party
- That time the Space Shuttle Discovery flew over DC.
- A 63-comment long facebook thread filled with puns that followed my quip “Are baking scholarships knead-based?”
I Sail Above Your Inlets and Interstates
December 8, 2012
Let It Blossom, Let It Flow
July 5, 2012
We Know We Can't Be Found
June 28, 2012
A Hiding Place Where No One Ever Goes
April 26, 2012
We noticed a robin’s nest in the bush out side of our house.
One of my roommates made a video:
They Came In Peace For All Mankind
April 17, 2012
The Space Shuttle Discovery moved to its new home at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Discovery was transported on the back of a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and was escorted by fighter jets.
Discovery is the oldest remaining spacefaring shuttle, traveled 149 million miles, and is the most-flown human-carrying spacecraft.
I went down the the National Mall and watched the Shuttle make a few passes around DC landmarks.
All the Wrong Fuses and Splices
March 7, 2012
There are a few different conventions for electromagnetism, and keeping them straight can be a headache.
Here I collect the differences between the particle physics convention
and the… other convention
The particle physics convention is the same as SI if you replace , , and , so you can use any result in e.g. Griffiths easily.
| | | | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Units | “Particle Physics” | “Gaussian” | |
| “Rationalized” | |||
| Lagrangian Density | | | |
| Hamiltonian Density | | | |
| Maxwell’s Equations | | | |
| Fine Structure Constant | | | |
| Flux quantum | | | |
| Coulomb’s Law | | | |
| Biot-Savart Law | | | |
You can see it’s just a matter of keeping track of where the goes, which is what makes it so tough to remember.
Things That Didn't Suck 2011
December 22, 2011
One of my friends suggested we each compile a list of things we enjoyed reading, watching, listening, or otherwise consuming in the past year. He titled his email “things that didn’t suck”.
Here is my list.
BOOKS
Basically in the order I read them, with quite a few books not making the list for being not outstanding
- The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder’s biography of the digital computer and the people who build it
- The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - the biography of Erdös, the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century.
- The Man Who Knew Infinity - the biography of the genius Ramanujan by My Close Personal Friend Robert Kanigel. Contains almost no math, and is an interesting story of an unusual mind.
- The Worthing Saga - if I had to recommend one sci-fi book that I read this year, this would be it.
- Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus - future- and past- historical fiction which is hard to describe but really masterly executed.
- Flowers for Algernon - I read this in less that 12 hours, and I cried at the end.
- Footfall - Space elephants conquer Earth.
- A crapload of not-the-usual Heinlein
- Game of Thrones and the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire - This was the fastest that I’ve ever burned through 2000 pages, and I loved almost every page of it. Valar morghullis.
- The Hobbit I reread this in about a week, because I had forgotten almost all of it but the broadest generalities. Now I am psyched for the movie.
MOVIES
- The Fighter
- The Adjustment Bureau - which only makes the list because Joe Biden was there, and I imagine him laughing at my laugh in response to this trailer for Paul.
- Bridesmaids - Did you know that air marshall jon and the woman who figures out he’s an air marshall are married in real life?
- Crazy Stupid Love - I really like Steve Carell.
- Contagion
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
- In The Heat of the Night
- Cool Hand Luke
ARTICLES
Roughly in reverse chronological order.
- Lockhart’s Lament - a mathematician’s perspective on math education and the value of math as a human activity.
- African American Atheists
- Many of the written works of John Perry Barlow, EFF founder and Grateful Dead lyricist
- Steve Jobs’ eulogy, authored by his sister
- The Royal Society opened their historical archives
- The Food Bubble - Goldman Sachs plays with its food. It was in Harpers, but I think it probably needs a grain of salt. Because otherwise this should be an absolutely huge story, and I haven’t really seen it anywhere else.
- Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?
- Could Conjoined Twins Share A Mind?
- The Document Which Used To Be Called The MIT Lockpicking Guide
- The $700 Million Yogurt Startup - The story of the ascent of Greek yogurt. It’s perishable, must be kept cold, &c, but this company is kicking ass and taking names nonetheless.
- Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity - This is a very long article. 50 pages, and it’s not all light. But Aaronson is a good explainer, and the essay is digestible in pieces, and harder parts can just be skipped.
- Gold Coins: The Mystery of the Double Eagle
- The Beer Archaeologist
TV
- Carl Sagan’s Cosmos - Once you get over the hokey 80s graphics, the astronomy and philosophical considerations are timeless, and Sagan’s somber awe is enthralling.
- Louie CK in all his various instantiations
- It’s Fun To Imagine, with Richard Feynman
- Tales of Mere Existence
- Game of Thrones
MUSIC
Listening to these things in a serious way was new.
- David Gilmour
- Fiona Apple
- Harry Chapin
- Johnny Cash
- Joni Mitchell
- Warren Zevon
THEATER
- Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind - 30 plays in 60 minutes. Some funny, some serious. Mostly funny. I laughed so hard the performers commented on it during the performance. If you are in Chicago or if the Neo-Futurists visit New York, I strongly recommend seeing it.
- The Story Collider - I’d never been to a story slam before. It was great.
- Various public lectures at the Air and Space Museum
- Company - the broadway show with Stephen Colbert + whats his name on the silver screen.
- You, Me, Them, Everybody - they live-record an improv, story-telling, stand-up, and music podcast.
PODCASTS
I have become a podcast fiend.
- The Moth
- The Story Collider - The Moth, but about science in some capacity
- Radiolab
- The Tobolowsky Files - The guy that Bill Murray hits in Groundhog’s day/the guy who forgets everything in Memento is a character actor with an exceedingly interesting life and a real talent for stories.
- In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg - 3 scholars and a moderator discuss a big idea, a historical figure, a cultural development, etc.
- A History of the World in 100 Objects
- NPR’s Sunday Puzzle
- Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
- This American Life
GAMES
GENERAL
- Feb-run-uary, the sequel to Veganuary - Although running sucked at the beginning, by the end I could actually run. This achievement was quickly undone by the the trees conquering my sinuses for a month and a half, making it impossible to breathe.
- Race to the End of the Earth exhibit at AMNH.
- Vi Hart’s math doodle youtubes
- Great Migrations at the National Geographic Society
- Rock climbing twice a week during the summer. - I find rock climbing to be a giant puzzle where you coincidentally have to exercise, too.
Hey Now, All You Lovers
December 4, 2011
The National Zoo puts on ZooLights every December.
Twisting Burning, My Thoughts Turning
December 4, 2011
These whirls come from accumulating numerical errors.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright
October 3, 2011
Rev. Mod. Phys. 23, 21 (1951)
hep-th/9405029
Ohanian Ch. 6+8
I first prepared these notes for a 90-minute lecture for the first semester of Graduate Quantum Mechanics in 2011.
The Factorization, Operator,
or Supersymmetric Method
In quantum mechanics we are, quite generally, intersted in studying Hamiltonians (in rescaled variables) like
In one dimension we usually mean , while in three dimensions we usually mean and where is a partial wave label, so that we just worry about the radial pieceReducing to just a radial coordinate only works for spherically symmetric potentials. .
Let us focus on a special class of Hamiltonians: those derivable from a superpotential . Let’s defineRecall \(i \frac{d}{dx}\) is Hermitian, so \(\frac{d}{dx}^\dagger = -\frac{d}{dx}\)
From these operators we can build two Hamiltonians,
and its partner
where the sign of the second term is the only difference between the two.
Immediately we can prove a nice theorem:
Theorem: The eigenenergies of these Hamiltonians are nonnegative.
Proof: For any state the matrix element of is
and similar reasoning establishes the claim for .∎
The two Hamiltonians differ only by the sign of the derivative term for the superpotential—does this establish a deep connection?
Theorem: They have almost the same spectrum!
Proof: Suppose are the energy eigenstates of :
Applying to the above,
but we know so the second equality can be written
so if we let then is an eigenstate of with energy !
This of course works the other way—hit
with and you will find
That’s it. The two Hamiltonians have precisely the same spectrum. Any loopholes?
Just one.
If or —i.e. if one of the Hamiltonians has a zero-energy eigenstate, then we cannot successfully do the regrouping because the state is destroyed.
Can we find these destroyed states?
Yes! and are linear, first-order ODEs:
We can use the method of the integrating factor. It is simple to check thatThe lower bounds on the integrals simply readjust the proportionality constant.
solve those differential equations, respectively.
Now we can check the normalizability of these states. For ,
so we need to go to as , so that must fall slowly or grow at large .
On the other hand, for , we find
so we need to go to as .
These two behaviors are clearly incompatible, so we conclude that and have the same spectrum except at most one has a zero energy eigenstate.∎
In one dimension, for any Hamiltonian , if you can find its ground state and adjust the constant part correctly, you can get so that and you can build . But is not generically simple, so this is not a good way of solving most problems.
In three dimensions, it isn’t always possible to perform this feat, but it is in a large number of cases. In fact, Schrödinger solved the hydrogen atom this way in the 1940s.Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. A 48, 9-16 (1940/1941).
The Harmonic Oscillator
Using the shift and ladder operator to find new higher-energy states in the spectrum of \(H_1\).
and have the same spectrum, but are only different by a constant. How could that be?
For every energy eigenvalue there must be another one a constant amount higher, because we can do the constant shift from to and then use to find a state in the spectrum of .
Going to higher energies forever in this fashion is perfectly fine. Going down is doable too, but can create issues.
Since the equation is a first order, linear ODE, it has only one solutionUp to an overall normalization. . So, if there are multiple towers of evenly-spaced states, only one of them can have a state that gets destroyed. The spectra of the two Hamiltonians still match exactly but for this destroyed state. But, since no other state can get destroyed, one can forever find states with less energy (again, by a constant amount), and this must eventually violate the non-negativity theorem we proved above.
So, these extra states cannot be in the spectrum, by reductio ad absurdum. Moreover, you cannot find multiple perfectly-aligned towers of states because of the uniqueness theorem for . The harmonic oscillator has but one semi-infinite tower of evenly spaced states.
Have we done anything new? No, not for this example. If you check you will find and where \(a\) and \(a^\dagger\) are the usual ladder operators for the harmonic oscillator.
The Coulomb Potential
Again, first presented by Schrödinger, Proc. Roy. Irish Acad. A 48, 9-16 (1940/1941).
The way the three-dimensional central potential problems tend to work is that you can, by a clever choice of superpotentials, construct relationships between and .
For the Coulomb superpotential
one finds
so there is a constant shift between different \(\ell\) and supersymmetric partners.
This method also works for the three-dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator,
but I will not go through the algebra or logic here.
Infinite Square Well
Suppose you restrict, in one dimension, to and let
Then,
a constant potential with hard boundaries—the infinite square well—and
This potential looks like it ought to be extremeley difficult to solve, except that we know its spectrum matches the infinite square well. That is,
You can figure this out more precisely.
What’s In A Name?
Caveat Lector: this section is not very precise. I welcome pedagogical clarifications or simplifications.
Supersymmetry, or SUSY, is a symmetry that theorists like for its beauty and its ability to resolve some of the theoretical problems in quantum field theory:
- Gauge coupling unification
- Provides dark matter candidates
- Solves the hierarchy problem / provides naturalness.
It guarantees that particle species come in pairsOr larger multiplets, depending on the amount of supersymmetry of equal mass called superpartners.
It is unclear if SUSY is a symmetry of nature: we know of no superpartners, even though we expected them to be produced at the Large Hadron Collider.
If you restrict to particles at rest, a state with one boson species and one fermion specied can be specified by
where is a nonnegative integer representing how many bosons there are, and are either 0 or 1by Pauli exclusion and describe how many fermions there are.
A state is bosonic if (mod 2) and fermionic otherwise.
We can partition all the states into bosonic and fermionic sectors and define the Hamiltonian of this system to be
which can be constructed out of
with a fermionic operator. One can check that , if we recognize and .
and are supersymmetry generators in the superalgebra that take us between the bosonic and fermionic sectors.
The full superalgebra is
The first lines imply that the fermion number is conserved.
I got better!
August 25, 2011
Newton’s Method is an iterative numerical technique for finding the roots, or zeroes, of a function. You pick an arbitrary point, and perform a procedure on that point using the function of interest, getting another, new point, which you perform the same procedure on, getting a new point, and so on.
This procedure is constructed so that its fixed points are the zeroes of the function you’re insterested in, and is guaranteed to yield an approximation to one of the zeroes… given enough time.
We can naturally extend this procedure into the complex plane, where we then can color each point based on which zero it approaches, and how long it takes for this procedure to “settle down”. When we make this coloring we get objects known as Newton’s Fractal.
No Straight Lines Make Up My Life
August 8, 2011
One example (\(N=6\)).
Take a unit circle, and inscribe a regular \(N\)-gon.
Pick one vertex. Draw lines from that vertex to all the other vertices (two of these lines are edges of the \(N\)-gon, the rest are interior to the \(N\)-gon).
What is the product of the lengths of these lines?
Spirals Round and Round
August 1, 2011
I saw a glassbow in the wild! That is, on the corner of 17th and Kilbourne Streets in Washington, DC.
Don't Believe A Thing They Say
November 28, 2010
If I am traveling out of Penn Station and have some time to kill before my train, I like to get a street meat gyro with tzatziki and hot sauce from the guy on the southeast corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue. If the weather’s not too bad I take it across the street and sit in front of the colonnade of the Post Office.
The pigeons were surprisingly outgoing.
Out Of Control On A Breeze
October 17, 2010
The National Mall, Washington DC
never trust a man with a typewriter between his lips
July 31, 2010
Images from the Special Collections of the University of British Columbia.
Stan
I only met you yesterday, uncle
though you did not meet me
as I poured through the endless papers
sitting in cartons
organized artificially
by a librarian named Cynthia.
Yellowed and creased I hear your words
spoken through the typewriter between your lips,
set within your bearded face,
injected between the lines by your bobbing blue fountain pen
floating on the paper and the words and the ideas
marking measuredly, unsatisfied.
We shared an original thought about the endless tombstone
fields marching forth to the factory that can only be glimpsed
from the LIE as one is lured into the city by the other
stone monuments that stick out of the ground in planned, regular rows
while ascending the hill, Manhattanbound.
I see the reflections of my father's signature in yours,
hear my grandmother's voice in the recordings of your readings
echoing through the tapes that have been sitting in the stacks
waiting
for me to request them
waiting
for 34 for years.
Your deep tone and hearty laugh and throaty cough
sound so familiar, at yet so foreign
as I record them on my laptop,
piped in from a reel-to-reel player that was dusted off upon my request.
It brags in an unmistakably 70s font of playing in stereo!
Your voice is in mono.
Nonetheless it reaches my ears and I can see you
sitting behind your desk or rocking on a cool leather chair
with a tremendous microphone, stroking your beard and inspecting
the world in your own way and your own time.
I miss you uncle, though I only met you yesterday, as
I sorted through the papers you left when you left.
Can I Step Into Your World For A While?
July 13, 2010
Seattle, Washington
Carved Like a Dwarf Tree On A Mountain
June 27, 2010
Stanley Park, Vancouver BC
It's Easy as 1-2-3
January 12, 2009
Bonaire, Leeward Antilles
Laid Back In An Old Saloon, With A Peso In My Hand
March 29, 2008
Cancun, Mexico
Come On Ye Childhood Heroes!
February 24, 2008
I first wrote this piece for Robert Kanigel’s class 21W.774 Invention and Ingenuity, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Imagine a world devoid of hate. No race to divide. No politics. Everybody and everything working together to form a better place. There’s no conflict. Everything just works out. Everything has its place. It’s not far off. It’s the world of Lego®.