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Study Tips from Richard Feynman
“Study hard what interests you the most.”
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,038 posts.
842
The Reliability of Optical Disks
How long will burned CDs / DVDs / BluRays last?
843
What happens when the public lose confidence in academic findings?
In an important new paper, Rafael Ahlskog and Sven Oskarsson show that half of the effect size in observational studies, even in conservative estimates, is composed of confounding.
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How is portable AM radio possible?
If AM radio antennas were as long as a quarter wavelength of the carrier signal, you'd need an antenna as long as a football field.
845
Old Spleens Suck (2021)
Why? We Just Don't Know.
846
The flood that filled the Mediterranean Sea - in one year
"Zanclean Megaflood? What's that, a glam-rock band?"
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Deep learning on electronic medical records is doomed to fail
A few years ago, I worked on a project to investigate the potential of machine learning to transform healthcare through modeling electronic medical records. I walked away deeply disillusioned with the whole field and I really don’t think that the field needs machine learning right now. What it does need is plenty of…
849
Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored
Aristocratic tutoring I: Explaining the decline of genius
850
Visualizing black holes with general relativistic ray tracing
Okay I ended up making this write-up waaaaaay too long, so before I get into any of the jargon, let’s take a look at the finished product:
851
Why dark and light is complicated in photographs
Choices in photographic tone reproduction
852
A beginner's guide to intermittent fasting (2012)
Considering intermittent fasting or a fasting diet? Learn the benefits of intermittent fasting and the intermittent fasting schedule I use.
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I’m not convinced by the new lab leak debunking
It’s still an open question
854
How to grow crystals at home with fertilizer
Growing crystals is easy. It's both a fun family activity and a cool science experiment. You can even dye your crystals with food coloring.
855
The claimed effect size is about a zillion times higher than is plausible
Some years ago, you blogged about a research article by Hasan and colleagues (2013) .
856
Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist (or, The Unconscious Expander)
Happy birthday to me! Recently, lots of people have been asking me what I think about IIT—no, not the Indian Institutes of Technology, but Integrated Information Theory, a widely-discussed &#…
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I used Benford’s law to analyze Covid-19 in 113 countries (2020)
Spoiler alert: I found some intriguing patterns…
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Perl Saved the Human Genome Project (1996)
The human genome project was inaugurated at the beginning of the decade as an ambitious international effort to determine the complete DNA sequence of human beings and several experimental animals. The justification for this undertaking is both scientific and medical. By understanding the genetic makeup of an organism…
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The Scientific Virtues: Stupidity, Arrogance, Laziness
Science education usually starts with teaching students different tools and techniques, methods for conducting research. This is wrong. Science education should begin with the scientific virt…
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Ice Spikes: Strange things you can find in your freezer
Temperature is certainly a factor when growing ice spikes, and we have done experiments that show that spikes are more likely to form when the temperature is just below freezing (see the graphs below). I'm not entirely sure why this is so, but I suspect that the ice tube freezes shut before the tube gets very long if…
863
Why isn't there a replication crisis in math?
The replication crisis is a major problem in medicine and social science; we know that a huge fraction of the published literature is outright wrong. But in math we don't seem to have a similar crisis, despite reasonably frequent minor errors in published papers. Why not, and what can this tell us about the fields…
864
Why Quantum Mechanics?
In the past few months, I’ve twice injured the same ankle while playing with my kids. This, perhaps combined with covid, led me to several indisputable realizations: I am mortal.Despite my se…
865
How the Soviets put a lander on Venus
Surviving Hell
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The control group is out of control (2014)
I. Allan Crossman calls parapsychology the control group for science. That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell …
867
How to grow monosodium glutamate (MSG) crystals
Dissolve MSG in water to form a saturated solution. Wait for small MSG crystals to form. Then, tie it to a string to let it grow bigger.
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An open letter on E.O. Wilson's legacy
Response to Scientific American's "The Complicated Legacy..."
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GPS
Interactive article explaining how GPS works.
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Geometry from Another Universe
You start on an enclosed lawn, surrounded by four walls with a doorway in one of them. If you go in and explore, you might begin to feel trapped. You'll find you can visit five different rooms in the house, or go back outside to the lawn, but there's no way to go anywhere else. It's not because there are walls…