silliness
drorzel | December 6, 2007John Scalzi is talking a big game:
I was just taking one of those Internet tests to see how much of a geek I am, when I suddenly thought, what the fuck am I doing? I'm a published science fiction writer. Do not pass "go," do not collect $200, you know? Just go straight to the geek win.
That's right, I win at geek. Tell me I'm wrong.
All I have to say is, "Enjoy it while you can, Heinlein boy."
I'm writing a book based on talking to my dog about quantum physics. Scalzi holds the title for the moment by virtue of actually being published, while my book is still pending.
But he's just keeping…
drorzel | December 5, 2007The building where my office is is one of those 60's era brick buildings with lots of basically identical little offices arranged along indistinguishable hallways. Tenured professors are known to get lost in there trying to find specific offices. To make it a little easier, some of us decorate our doors:
The key identifying the numbered items is below the fold, but as this is a fairly general phenomenon in academia, I thought I'd try making this a Bonus Photo Edition Dorky Poll:
What's on your office door?
(If you don't have your own office, then what's decorating your workspace? If you're…
drorzel | December 1, 2007"Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!"
"Stop that! What in hell are you barking at?" I look out the window. "It's a squirrel. Why are you barking like that at a single squirrel on the tree outside?"
"It's an evil squirrel! A threat to the home!"
"No, it's not. It's little and furry and harmless."
"Dude, you're wrong. Squirrels are dangerous. They're like ninjas. Haven't you seen that video?"
"What video?"
"See! See!"
"OK, fine, there is at least one squirrel somewhere in the UK that has been trained to have ninja skills by somebody with way too much free time."
"I told you!"
"…
drorzel | November 30, 2007Via Kate, a story from a legal blog about a decisions in the case of a messy professor:
"Clean your room or get out!" Words from a frustrated parent to a messy teenager? Not quite. The mess-maker in this case was a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, who ignored repeated warnings to clean up his dangerously cluttered lab space. When University officials decided to clean it themselves, the professor caused such a disturbance that campus police had to lead him away in handcuffs. The professor was eventually fired, which prompted a lawsuit claiming that the University retaliated…
drorzel | November 25, 2007... or, Emmy's Best Thanksgiving Ever!
We did the traditional turkey-and-trimmings dinner Saturday with both sets of parents. Again, we brined the turkey overnight, following the Good Eats recipe, and other than a small glitch with the thermometer placement, everything went very well. The turkey was nicely roasted, moist, and juicy.
And that's where the problem started. Or, if you're the dog, that's where this started to be the best Thanksgiving EVER...
Neither Kate nor I really eat gravy, and it has the reputation of being fiddly to make, so we didn't do anything with the juices that…
drorzel | November 24, 2007It turns out that there's a Facebook group for quantum information types called the Church of the Larger Hilbert Space after a remark by John Smolin (Facebook link here), which I thought was the nerdiest thing I ever saw. Until I looked at the "Related Groups," and saw "I support the right to choose one element from each set in a collection" (here, if you have access), which is, of course, a political group for people who are Pro-(Axiom-of-)Choice. Who are, of course, opposed by "The Axiom of Life (aka Negation of Axiom of Choice)" (here). Both of those are nerdier than the Church of the…
drorzel | November 14, 2007Over at the World's Fair, Dave is asking people for their scientific eponyms, that is, the formula they would like to have named after themselves. These are, of course, entirely made up.
Here's my contribution, from the scientific study of pick-up basketball: the Orzel Teammate Desirability Factor (TDF):
The Factor ranges between positive and negative infinity and is a quantitative measure of how much I want to have a given player on my team. The components going into this are:
P is the average number of points scored per game
ρ is the player's career shooting percentage
A is the average…
drorzel | November 14, 2007Dave Bacon watched "Judgement Day" last night, and has a question:
It's not like, you know, there aren't people who think quantum theory is wrong or that quantum theory is somehow related to the Vedic teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. So why is it that quantum theory (which after all is "just a theory" wink, wink, nod, nod) doesn't illicit courtroom battles of such epic scope as the Dover trial?
The answer: Because quantum physics involves math, and Math Is Hard.
If you want to construct a cockamamie theory that can pretend to be an alternative to quantum mechanics, it needs to have…
drorzel | November 7, 2007Mark P. comments on particles and waves:
I think it can be argued that a particle is a "thing" while a wave is a "behavior", so it's like asking: bicycle or running?
Yes, and? Why wouldn't that work as a poll question? Here's let's try:
Bicycle or running? Pick only one, and leave your answer in the comments.
I'd have to say bicycle, because running for its own sake is just annoying. Running in the service of a game of basketball is great, but running just to be running stopped being fun in grade school.
A bicycle, on the other hand, is shiny, expensive, and cool. I'd rather have a bicycle…
drorzel | November 1, 2007Well, so are all the other Presidential hopefuls-- not one of them has responded to my offer to endorse any candidate who will play me in basketball-- but I particularly want to address Colbert. After all, he's supposed to be the unconventional maverick candidate here, tooling around in a bus stolen from John McCain...
Now, you might say, "Why does Stephen Colbert need your endorsement? After all, his fan group on Facebook has 1.3 million members, and he's got a tv show (admittedly, on basic cable), while you're just a jackass with a web page. He's got the power to break the DonorsChoose…
drorzel | October 30, 2007I've never been one for costumes, but if you lean that way, and still don't know what you're going as tomorrow, Jennifer Ouellette offers some physics-themed Halloween costumes: Schrödinger's Cat, Maxwell's Demon, and BEC:
If you're looking for something a bit less mainstream, how about dressing up as a Bose-Einstein condensate this Halloween? That's what happens when a cloud of atoms in a gas get so cold -- practically down to Absolute Zero -- that they behave like one giant superatom. I'm not entirely sure how this would work; a bit of creativity is required. But it'd be a great idea for a…
drorzel | October 24, 2007Dave at the World's Fair has an idea for a "meme":
[Y]ou will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google (preferably google.com, but we'll take the other country specific ones if need be), you'll find that you are returned with your blog as the number one hit.
This was, surprisingly, fairly easy:
Bunnies Made of Cheese
Many Worlds, Many Treats
True Lab Story
Physics Funding Fundamentalism
"Show Me the Pony" (requires quotes)
Of course, my own name also works, but that's kind of a cheat...
drorzel | October 23, 2007I was standing in the back of the Taiko Ensemble concert tonight, when two students I didn't know came in, carrying large, elaborate Nerf guns. They had a certain... hunted look about them.
"Hey," I said, "Who's winning?"
"Oh, man," said one, "The zombies are kicking our asses. They're multiplying really fast."
Yes, it's Humans vs. Zombies week on campus. Never a dull moment in academia...
drorzel | October 22, 2007As mentioned in the previous post, Cut to the Chase offers two lists of skills to look at: The Popular Mechanics list of "25 Skills Every Man Should Know" and a new list of "20 Practical Skills Every Self-Sufficient Adult Should Have."
This seems ripe for an Internet "meme" thing, so here's a the proposed game:
Go through both lists, and determine how many of the listed skills you can claim. Compare the fractions to see if you're more of a ManlyMan or a Self-Sufficient Adult.
A quick pass at the lists gives me 14/25 from the Popular Mechanics list, and 17/20 from Chase's list. That makes me…
drorzel | October 16, 2007Via a mailing list, the Gingerbread Haka:
If you don't get the joke, there's a video of the original below the fold, with bonus shirtless ruggers:
There are dozens of other versions on YouTube, including one with French subtitles, if you really want to know what they're chanting. It's a pre-game tradition for the New Zealand All-Blacks, based on a Maori dance.
It's worth watching a couple of them, just for the "What the...?" looks on the faces of the opposing sides, who have to stand there and watch this.
drorzel | October 16, 2007OK, the monkey business may have been a little too abstract for a good audience participation entry. So let's fall back on a classic:
What science-related superpower would you most like to have?
Because this is a Dorky Poll, "science-related superpower" here means a supernatural ability that is useful for doing science. Because battling crime is passé.
Personally, I think I'd have to go with the ability to manipulate small objects remotely. I'm a big guy, and I have big hands, and you know what they say about big guys with big hands...
That's right, they have a lot of trouble turning screws…
drorzel | October 15, 2007This is the famous carving of the Three Wise Monkeys on the stable at the Nikko Tosho-gu:
Looking at that suggests a possible question for a non-dorky poll, analogous to the dork classic "what superpower would you want?":
If you could go through life either seeing no evil, hearing no evil, or speaking no evil, which would you pick?
(It's non-dorky because it's a question of ethics and morals, and there's nothing dorky about ethics and morals...)
It would sort of depend in the mechanism by which evil went unseen or unheard-- if it involved some sort of evil suppression field in your…
drorzel | October 12, 2007(WASHINGTON, DC) On the heels of reports from Oslo that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore, a White House spokesman issued a statement saying that "significant uncertainty" remained regarding the recipient of the prize.
"The President feels that at this time, it's too early to say for sure whether Al Gore has won the Peace prize," said White House spokesman Scott Stencil. "The science is just not conclusive yet. The President feels that more study is needed before we agree that this honor…
drorzel | October 10, 2007I'm running short of Dorky Poll topics-- suggestions are welcome-- but it occurred to me that a meta-dorky-poll might be worth a shot. So:
There have been many Dorky Polls here over the last year or two. Which Dorky Poll question was the most dorktastic?
"Dorktastic" is in the eye of the beholder, obviously-- it might mean "I cant believe you ased that," or it might be "I can't believe fifty people have an opinion about that." But which of the questions that have been asked so far is the epitome of the Dorky Poll?
drorzel | October 10, 2007From email, a silly fake commercial from CollegeHumor:
Why do I care? Look at 1:35.
That's our wedding picture that flashes up on screen.
I don't think I know the people responsible-- I think they probably wound up with our picture because our wedding pictures page was in the first page of Google results for "wedding picture" for a while. The ways of the Internet are very mysterious. But there's another second or so chipped away from our fifteen minutes of fame.
I just wish it had been used in the service of a better joke.