Here's an interesting article from "Symmetry Breaking". The comments are equally interesting (most of them anyway!)
Bee are smarter than you, (in one case anyway and it's a doozy!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/bees-route-finding-problem s
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}"Despite their tiny brains bees are capable of extraordinary feats of behaviour," said Raine. "We need to understand how they can solve the travelling salesman problem without a computer."
I was thinking, after watching a video on an ant colony, that estimating an insect's intelligence by the size of the brain of one insect is possibly misleading. I seem to recall that when insects such as ants are in close proximity, their closeness allows for electro-chemical communication between the various insects, which creates a 'group mind' sort of effect. So, the analogy that occurs to me is that estimating a social insect's intelligence on the basis of one insect is possibly like estimating a person's intelligence based on one brain cell, or a small group of brain cells.
This article spills over between here and Net
Neutrality, which spilled over into regulation vs free ma
rket concepts.
http://www.truth-out.org/understanding-instability-mandelbrot-fractals -and-financial-crises64723
His book "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" is a classic.
Fun with neutrinos....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bchCGnHGz4
From Fermilab.
There are a couple of other videos from Fermilab that are interesting as well, with links on that page.
A story about Dr. Alan Sandage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/science/space/23sandage.html
Here's a phenomenon over which all the astrologers will have a field day!
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/17dec_solsti ceeclipse/
Michael, do your best interpretation of Feynman over this! ![]()
And, Oh MY!! (Wringing hands) Mercury is retrograde as well!!! (Wringing hands)
I've always been a fan of science, although only as a layman. I like those documentaries on astronomy, archeology, paleontology, nature/ecology, and as far as I can understand, the freaky stuff where Stephen Hawking talks about other dimentions and the like. There was an interesting movie some years back that gives a sort of dumbed-down explanation of some of the egghead stuff called What the Bleep Do We Know. It was entertaining, and a bit informative.
When my astronomy friend came to St. Louis, we went to the Planetarium where they have a much better star projector than he has at his university. Astronomy is pretty cool.
Michael Gianino wrote:
Although I still have both of my testicles, it might be worth freezing one of them off to see this. I have a friend who used to run a university planetarium, so I should get his thoughts on this. Thanks for the heads-up.
I'm thinking I might drag myself out of bed at 2:30 in the morning to see the eclipse, weather permitting. At the moment I think it's looking hopeful.
I suppose it will look just like a 'regular' lunar eclipse, but it's still cool that it's a one in 450+ year event.
The trial of Galileo was in 1633. The alignment of the planets last night and this morning during the eclipse happened 26,000 years ago.
Almost as good, almost as good.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317526,00.html
From that story:
Humans possess a sophisticated repertoire of mathematical capabilities unmatched anywhere else in the animal kingdom.
-IM El Aiche
I Like Monkeys
The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece.
I thought this was odd since they were normally a couple thousand.
I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth so I bought 200 of them.
I like monkeys.
I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one of drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in the genitals. I laughed. They punched me in the genitals. I stopped laughing.
I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech and hurl themselves off the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into it's third hour.
Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive; they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sort of dropped dead. Kinda like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later.
Damn cheap monkeys.
I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room; on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs.
I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and one hundred ninety-nine dead, dry monkeys.
I tried to pretend that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for awhile, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad. I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in my toilet and I didn't want to call a plumber. I was embarrassed.
I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortuntely there was only enough room for two at a time, so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't go bad.
I tried to burn them, but little did I know that my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and one hundred ninety-seven dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed,
The odor wasn't improving.
I became agitated at my inability to dispose of the dead monkeys and I really had to use the bathroom. So I went and severely beat one of the monkeys. I felt better.
I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said the city was not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him I had a wet one. He couldn't take it either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.
I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't quite know what to say. They pretended to like them, but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.
I like monkeys.
Physics is sooo mind boggling!
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2011/01/18/the-physics-of-sco tch-tape/
Here's a link to an interesting interview with physicist Brian Greene on NPR's Fresh Air. He talks about multiple universes (the multiverse). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4495488
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