Nov 18
During the summer, a friend of mine and colleague at Texas Tech appeared on “Who wants to be a Millionnaire?” I recorded it and have been meaning to post it, so here it is (finally).
Apr 03
This was fascinating: A photographic list of all the bodies in our solar system that are larger than 200 mi in diameter. By the way, I particularly like the name of the objects beyond Neptune: “Trans-Neptunion Object (TNOs)”
See here: http://tinyurl.com/2l2gn4
powered by performancing firefox
Feb 27
Try this:
You swing from wires to try to go as far as you can. You fling them by click on the screen and the wire shoots towards the direction of the click. It will stick to the brightly colored regions for a few seconds but then release. Very Tarzan-like, AHH-ahh-ahha-haahhha! (FYI: That was my Tarzan voice)
UPDATE: My record is 70.46 91.74 137.36
HT: Tumbleo
Feb 15
Are you flush with free time or procrastinating on some big important project?
Try out the Bulbous Blob Puzzle.
Professor Albert von Braun, noted food researcher and author of the Chinese Laundromat Cookbook, has just made a major breakthrough on his long sought after Grand Unified Meal Theory. Working in his laboratory late into the night he has, at long last, proved the mathematical link between the five foundation sauces of French cuisine and the thirty-one basic flavors of ice cream.
Unfortunately, AvB is getting very tired, and has accidentally dumped the jelly beans he is using as a flavor model into a vat of universal sauce. The mixture has reacted violently, and resulted in the jelly beans swelling up into menacing (but tantalizingly flavorful!) Bulbous Blobs of hissing mutated gelatin!! Even worse, the Sizzling Cinnamon (red) blob has swallowed up AvB’s lab notebook and favorite set of measuring spoons. AvB needs to get his notebook back, but the red blob is stuck behind the other flavors of blobs blocking the doorway.
Your job is to free the reb blob from the laboratory. Can you accomplish this task before the tasty blobs of death make a meal out of you?
Plus, if you really enjoy yourself you can order the low-tech version that you can play without a computer!
Nov 10
You may have noticed this but there are some changes in the works here at my blog. If you experience some problems such as broken links, I apologize.
Although it was fun while it lasted, I decided that maintaining my own server with my limited knowledge of such things was just something I didn’t have time for.
Again, I am sorry for any inconvenience this change may cause.
Mar 05
I’ve seen this in a video on Google video before but this Java Applet version is well done and worth another look.
I’ve heard often people wonder at how BIG God must have been to create a such an expanse as the Universe and yet, as this demonstrates, he must be incredibly small. Infinite and infinitesimal, at once.
Feb 17
This one’s a new one for me. It is definitely intuitive but I would have never thought of name for it!
You cannot comb a hairy ball.
The Hairy Ball Theorem states that if you take a ball that is evenly covered with hairs, no matter how you comb the ball, there must be a part somewhere. In other words, the orientation of the hairs must be discontinuous. Compare this to a hairy cylinder which you could comb all the hairs in on direction around the outside of the cylinder with no part. Sorry, I have no picture of a hairy cylinder.
To think of the theorem in another way, let the hairs represent the velocity of the wind blowing across the surface of the Earth. Then, if the wind velocity is continuous, there must be a point where the wind speed is zero.
Koosh!
Feb 16
Click on the image above to play a video, from Multitouch Research at NYU. HT: Gaussian Nodes
So now that they’ve got a “Star Trek”-like interface, I’m ready for the Holodeck and the replicators!
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