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How we gave colors names
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 56 posts.
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What does randomness look like?
On 13 June 1944, a week after the allied invasion of Normandy, a loud buzzing sound rattled through the skies of battle-worn London. The source of the sound was a newly developed German instrument …
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Nobel Prize winning biochemist says all biofuels are nonsense
Similar posts from ClimateSanity Taking Measure of Biofuel Limits 9/24/2009 Biofuels Leading to Disasters 12/28/2011 Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on photosynthesis. …
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Elon Musk and the Hyperloop
For a while now there have been tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it again. His usual way of approaching a problem is to look at an industry, find some fatal flaw in it, fix that flaw and then leave everybody else in the dust, wondering why they didn’t do what he did. He’s one of the most interesting people on…
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The Year 2512
Usually when I speculate about the future, I stick to two areas; either the really near future (within the next couple of decades), or the really far future (so far out that signs of continental drift should be glaringly obvious). But what about the medium term?
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Restoration of defocused and blurred images
Restoration of distorted images is one of the most interesting and important problems of image processing - from the theoretical, as well as from the practical point of view. There are especial cases: blurring due to incorrect focus and blurring due to movement - and these very defects, which each of you knows very…
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A new kind of fractal?
Experimenting with the "divisibility" of complex numbers, I stumbled across this thingy. It looks like a fractal. Although the formula does not do any iterations. It reminds me of something. But I dont know what. Doing a Google image search brings up a couple of galaxies :) This image shows the region from (-1/-1) to…
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Droppings
If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it?
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Everybody Jump
What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
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Pascal's Apology, or why computer science is complicated
Blaise Pascal once famously ended a letter with an apology : I'm sorry that this was such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write you a short one. Computer science has pretty much the same problem. It's a young field, and young fields are, by their nature, messy. As we race to generate new knowledge, we also…
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Look at yourself objectively
In the 1840s, hospitals were dangerous places. Mothers who went in to give birth often didn’t make it out. For example, at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, as many as 10% of mothers died of puerperal fever after giving birth. But there was some good news: at the Second Clinic, the number was just…
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Parrondo's Paradox: How two ugly parents can make a beautiful baby
"How two ugly parents (mathematically) can make a beautiful baby"
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Bill Thurston has died
Bill Thurston, who made fundamental contributions to our understanding of low-dimensional manifolds and related structures, died on Tuesday, aged 65. Perhaps Thurston’s best known achievement…
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How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle
Now that Discovery is safely delivered to the Smithsonian, I think I can tell the story of how we nearly lost her in July of 2005, and how well-intentioned, highly motivated, hard-working, smart p…
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The Science of Serif vs Sans Serif Type
Update March 2012 See my expanded critique of Colin Wheildon’s legibility research .
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A Mole of Moles
What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place?
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Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa.
Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. A…
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Income inequality, as seen from space
Last week, I wrote about how urban trees—or the lack thereof—can reveal income inequality. After writing that article, I was curious, could I actually see
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Elsevier charges authors to make items "Open Access", then charges to read them.
[This is a long post – in summary Elsevier breach licences and charge readers for Open Access. I also ask the world to verify and amplify my conclusions].
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The Latest On Intelligence
You may remember The Bell Curve. The book was published in 1994 by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, and it argued that IQ is largely determined by genetics and little by the environment. It...