reign of thunder

wow

2009-12-22T18:43:58Z

this problem's kinda hard.

ATTN PHYSICISTS: holiday Contest (SPIDERMAN)

2009-12-22T14:25:30Z

okay
so call me a bernoulli, but i've got a mechanics problem that i'm going to start hobbying on, and i think it'd be fun to set it as an open contest. Lots of you have free time around now. there's a prize for the first person who gets it done right.

SO the QUESTION: given a starting point and altitude "MJ", and an ending point and altitude "DO": what's the shortest amount of time it will take SPIDERMAN to get from "MJ" to "DO" USING ONLY HIS WEBBING (he can swing from the ceiling which is at a given height)?

THE SPECIFIC PARAMETERS: spiderman's webshooters shoot out a rope which will stick to the ceiling, on which he can swing. the web-ropes is made of some kind of protein that contracts after coming into contact with air, so it kind of tugs him in the direction of tension right after he shoots out the webs. We'll model this by imagining that the web is a massless spring (spring constant k) which starts out stretched by distance D=L*s where L is the length of the web and s is a provided constant. So the longer the web is, the stronger the force. spiderman also has a mass 'm', which pulls him towards the ground.

We imagine Spiderman in a 2-D box, of height H, and width L. he's got to go from h_i on the left hand side to h_f on the right hand side by swinging. he's able to shoot webs multiple times, and he can choose where on the roof to shoot them, and he can choose WHEN along his swing to shoot off another web. the web takes no time to go from his hand to the ceiling. he can't use the webs to projectile slingshot shoot him across the room (he's gotta swing).

Is that clear? Just imagine that spiderman is swinging, and that his webs are springy.

THE CONTEST: write up your solution so that everyone can understand it and send it to me and i'll send you a totally awesome prize.

THE PRIZE: if you figure it out i'll give you an awesome prize.

GLaDOS

2009-12-22T04:50:18Z

T___T i want my computer to sing to me.
how do i make my mac sing to me like GLaDOS??

this just in: young neil plays scott pilgrim

2009-12-18T16:29:13Z

this isn't just in.
we've known for a while.

modern day pacman

2009-12-16T06:14:11Z

so like, occasionally you see attempts made to modernize pacman.
usually in the "super discount bin" at the back of zellers.
ah, but pacman exists in the minds of modern gamers as survival horror games.
think about it, you're running around a maze gathering items.
ghosty-monsters chase you
occasionally you find a weapon that lets you kill some of the monsters
but it's never enough.
pacman +20 years =resident evil.

copenhagen

2009-12-10T16:17:08Z

i just read an article in the globe:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/copenhagen-climate-rage-whos-the-villain/article1395002/
to summarize "left wing CRAZY PEOPLE want US REGULAR PEOPLE to pay spearchuckers because of an earthquake. well fuck them. they'll just spend it on dictators anyway."

in short, the article is implying that the developing world irrationally wants reparations from first world countries. the author thinks that this is a crazy idea. I feel like she's either misrepresenting the complaints of the developing world, or she doesn't understand what's going on.

Thanks to that 'climate wars' program on ideas, i have some opinion on paying the developing world money with regards to climate change. but before i express them, i'd like to preface what i'm about to say by noting that the costs of fossil fuels are in the middle of being recontextualized. up until now, we've been tallying up the cost in terms of how much, in terms of manpower and hardware, it costs to extract and refine and distribute... just the way they price a loaf of bread. Currently, and by this metric, coal and oil are the cheapest forms of exploitable energy. But in the near future we might be including the costs of damages caused by their use into the price of these fuels. Kind of like how we pay a deposit whenever we buy a can of pop: in addition to the costs of production, it takes into account the costs of reclaiming the materials.

so the deal is that the developing world, as it develops, will be consuming more and more energy as they develop. Now, we in canada can imagine a future where we use solar or wind power to run our ipods and autocars. But I maintain that we can only imagine this because we already have most of our infrastucture, and we subsidized our growth spurt of infrastructure using fossil fuels. the difference between using renewable energy to subsidize growth and using fossil fuels is the difference between working for a living while trying to go to school; and having rich parents who can pay for your school. If you have to work for it, your progress is a lot slower and easier to derail.

So it makes some sense for the developing world to use fossil fuels. why shouldn't they go to school by getting their parents to pay for it? that's what we did!

of course, the extension of this metaphor given our more recent understanding of the effects of fossil fuels is to say something like "that's not a parent who is lending you money. it's a loan shark. and it'll wander around hitting things you like with a hammer if you take it's money".

so in this metaphorical context, why should the first world pay the developing world money? here's a list.

1) the loan sharks that WE borrowed money from to subsidize our growth is mostly wandering around the developing world, hitting them with a hammer. If we had been dumping nuclear waste in the developing world, wouldn't we feel obligated to pay them reparations for all the polution and cancer?

2) It'll keep them from borrowing money from the loan sharks themselves. more loan sharks who are owed money, means more loan sharks hitting things with hammers. "hey, you know, that's a pretty nice victoria, BC you got there. a real shame if anything happened to it.. *smash*".

harper photos

2009-12-04T01:44:39Z

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2009/12/03/f-mcgregor-pmo-video.html

so the story is, in short, that the PMO doesn't let photojournalists come along with them to photoOps (i know right? they should call them nonphotoops). so then the PMO hires a professional photographer to take photos there instead, and then they email them out to the newspapers and tv stations.

it's a shrewd move. after all, Stanfield lost the election over this photo: http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/robert-stanfield-fumbles/
and apparently he only dropped one catch out of many at the time. Harper has a much crazier party to keep under control, and he probably never knows when one of his crazier MP's will whip it out and wag it at aboriginal people or try to bribe someone or to try to take a bribe from someone.

in any case, it's a jerk move, because it disrupts the way our media tells us about our government, and since we live in a democracy, he's got his metaphorical hand on the metaphorical jugular of our metaphorical democracy.
in any case, i believe that there should be solidarity in the media in response to this, and that the media should publish fanciful drawings of him in the papers and on TV until they let the photojournalists come back.
I mean, we don't live in a dictatorship.

yet

sandwiches and programing

2009-12-03T20:34:27Z

PROGRAMING:
why can't i program by drawing diagrams? I mean, that's how i write programs. I organize my thoughts (either on paper or in my head) in terms of a bunch of boxes with input and output flowing in and out of each other. It'd be handy if i could write the program that way. I'm tired of coming up with stupid names to assign subroutines and counter variables.

SaNDWICHES:
I heard a neat NPR podcast about how cutting sandwiches diagonally is better than sideways. and they neglected to mention that diagonal cuts are better because all the flavour is concentrated at the middle of the sandwich, so then, you end up with a nice soft, long sandwich edge that has all the flavour pushed up against it.

hahahah!

2009-12-02T21:15:59Z

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/02/lhc_power_failure_again/

hahaha! take that stupid bet i made!

in other news, today is baking day. my favourite day of the year when i make a million cookies.
a million.

off to the store!

bn

i got a little saucy

2009-11-24T14:09:29Z

i got a little sassy at this year's canadian association of physicists conference
and bet that the LHC wouldn't find the higgs boson in the next couple years.
It's my stupid "professional opinion" that the higgs mechanism is a little oversimple...
gravity is all "I'm nonlinear", and particle physics is all "LINEARITY IS MOST IMPORTANT"
and then the higgs mechanism is all "looks like a mass parameter is generated in a linear expansion"
and then it's all "wooo! we've discovered mass"
and i'm like "shenanigans! first you gotta tell me how energy works, because renormalization is a hack job that only works because of magic. once you do that, you can tell me about gravity and discovering mass."
and then i stick out my tongue and flip them off.

anyway.
i hope they don't discover the higgs boson.
and imade a bet with a particle cosmologist that they wouldn't.
in any case, they've got circulating beams
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR17.09E.html
it's only a matter of time now before EVERYONE (or me) IS WRONG!

listening to audiobooks when i sleep

2009-11-24T13:44:40Z

so ,
as often happens
i go to bed, but i'm too silly to sleep
this is especially a problem with my computer about, because I'm an information addict and there's always something to read.
so one thing i do to combat this is i turn on one of my audiobooks.
so john hodgman is very good for this, since his books are mostly nonsense,
though the "area of my expertise" is better then "more information than you require"
because his voice is more monotone.
anyway it's good because if it invades my dreams, i don't notice much.
anyway, last night i decided to listen to an al franken audiobook
and i spent all night dreaming of tax reform and republicans
blegh.
not restful at all.

sinister jerk

2009-11-21T17:53:26Z

i feel that all us unhelpful jerk physicists should be promoting the idea that,
not only will the LHC create a black hole which will eat the earth,
but that all black holes we can see in the universe were created in such a way.
and that the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies were created when a a
"star trek" type civilization got too big for its britches
and got eaten by a black hole!

hahaha
bwa ha
bwa ha ha
bwa ha ha ha
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHA
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
BWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

this just in: being powerful and evil is fun

2009-11-19T16:19:56Z

i guess...
what other explanation is there for it?

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091118/national/afghan_prisoners_controversy

Face-Off With a Deadly Predator

2009-11-17T05:43:45Z

man i love these stories.

@_@

2009-11-12T02:44:57Z

so i'm taking my first leaps into a literature review so that i can write a paper on my silly (serious) research.
and i'm learning about crazy "loop quantum gravity".
and i have a metaphor.

see. (a solution in) general relativity is like a player piano with a tune-scroll in it. a 4-dimensional object, complete and in need of nothing.

(a solution in) the ADM formulation of GR is like the player piano, but you take out the tune-scroll and you try to read it and poke the keys. it's a 3-dimensional object, and there's an illusion of interaction on the part of the physicist, and there's evolution.

so then there's this "loop representation of general relativity", which uses holonomies and other really strange new objects to talk about curvature. and it's like you've disassembled your player piano onto the living room floor, and it's in pieces but you know how to put it all back together. anyway so it's like that?

and then loop quantum gravity is like, you disassemble your player piano and then replace the hammers with bees. and then speculate about how to play rachmaninoff on this pile of stuff and bees (jack corrects: "speculate about how to play 'shave and a hair cut'")

jack also says "and then string theory is like a guitar"...
and i'm inclined to agree for all sorts of hilarious anti-string-theory/anti-guitar-player parallels.

Mr. Deity and the Science Advisor

2009-11-11T04:41:37Z

a delightful podcast about science

2009-11-10T21:01:19Z

okay, so there's a really fun science podcast.
"science... sort of"
http://www.sciencesortof.com/

some dudes talk about science.
i found out about them because they wanted to interview me about superman.
in any case, it's a rad podcast. i say this as a person who listens to a lot of podcasts.
it's way better than the scientific american podcast.

breaking news: jerk principal doesn't like pikas

2009-11-10T15:40:14Z

http://www.salemnews.com/punews/local_story_313233045.html?keyword=secondarystory

(meep is what pikas say)

in related news, this is a perfect example of an Ex Tempore opinion... where you try to come up with a decent logical sounding argument against something after you've made up your mind. we all do it. not just jerk, anti-pika principals. that's why politics are so stupid.

THIS JUST IN: crazy bird collects poop

2009-11-10T14:37:33Z

why are these nature documentaries so rad?

good idea

2009-11-10T05:13:57Z

so i've made bunny lunchbags
and i just realized that i can ALSO make WALRUS lunchbags
using the a similar design.

this pretty much sums it up

2009-11-04T22:44:12Z

http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20091104.html

why can't i stop thinking about stupid things??!?!

2009-11-04T18:14:20Z

so i swear, i'm trying... TRYING to do real work. but stupid things keep cropping up.
1) can a warp drive escape from a black hole?
-I say it might be able to, depending. but sanjeev says that it'll be able to all the time, because in the approximation of a large enough black hole with a small enough ship, the ship will effectively be a tachyon. now i want to do simulations but it's too silly and also very tricky. too tricky, actually. and quite not worth it.

2) key vs. importance function?
so, you know how we don't give keys to unimportant people? like toddlers? but how as you go on and get more important you get more keys? but then, really important people don't have keys either, because everything gets taken care of for them? so janitors have more keys than CEO's?

if we were to graph the number of keys a person has versus their importance, we'd see that there's a maximum at some level of importance. :p

maine

2009-11-04T13:47:04Z

booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

c'mon. jeez.

those forehead reflectors

2009-11-03T15:45:43Z

how come doctors back when i was a kid were always portrayed wearing those head reflector things?
they're still kind of portrayed with them...
http://www.hollywoodtoysandcostumes.com/0515326.html?zmae=froogle&zmam=99371410&zmas=2&zmac=2&zmap=0515326

http://www.offthemarkcartoons.com/cartoons/2008-05-09.gif

but like. when was the last time you saw a doctor wearing one?
EVER?

now i'm scared of antizombies

2009-11-02T23:44:04Z

it's an artifact of the equations, but simply put: when there are fewer than zero zombies (a negative number), every time an antizombie bites you, it makes a NEW antizombie AND a new healthy person...so the reaction rates of the antizombies attacking people skyrockets.. PLUS soon the population of healthy people skyrockets and the earth becomes overpopulated.

it's like a big rip. but with (anti)zombies.