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The Science of Word Recognition
Reviews the history of why psychologists moved from a word shape model of word recognition to a letter recognition model.
There is no nanotech, stop talking about it and start laughing at it
I used to work next to the center for nanotechnology. The first indication I had that there was something wrong with the discipline of “nanotechnology” is I noticed that the people who …
Traffic Experiments -- How to clear traffic jams
Once upon a time, years ago, I was driving through a number of stop/go traffic waves on SR 520 at rush hour in Seattle. I decided to try something. On a day when I immediately started hitting the usual "waves" of stopped cars, I decided to drive smoothly. Rather than repeatedly rushing ahead with everyone else, only…
A Classic of Soviet Engineering - The Typhoon-class sub
In one of my sailing classes, one of my shipmates was a Russian ex-navyman who served on a Delta IV class (designated
S. Cook: “This appears to be a relatively serious claim to have solved P vs NP.”
An email I was recently forwarded (a couple of steps removed) from Vinay Deolalikar from HP Labs:
If the Earth Stood Still
Learn how Earth's geography and the shape of the globe would transform if its rotation stopped. ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations, generating maps that visualize the results.
A Breakthrough Cure for Ebola
Ebola is one of the nastiest, most frightening viruses known to man. Its victims suffer fevers, muscle weakness, and other symptoms that pr...
Results of XKCD Color Survey
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 int…
Sun's path June to December (Photo)
Last June I placed some photographic film into a tin cannister with a small hole punched into its side. The tin cannister was then attached to a clothes pole in my backgarden and left.
The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird
Aviator's love for the SR-71
The bitter truth about fructose alarmism.
Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco, is the star of the video above. While he presents some material that’s scientifically sound, he also makes enough errors to warrant a healthy dose of criticism. There’s a ton of material he goes over, so instead of writing a…
A retrospective of the fructose alarmism debate.
After 300 comments and counting, it’s safe to agree with Nigel Kinbrum that my recent critique of Dr. Robert Lustig’s fructose lecture “has caused a bit of a stir in the nutritional blogosphere.” The intense debate (& discussion) that ensued inspired me to re-cap some things I feel were most interesting. There was…
Scott and Scurvy: How the cure for scurvy was lost
Writing about the first winter the men spent on the ice, Cherry-Garrard casually mentions an astonishing lecture on scurvy by one of the expedition’s doctors:
Insanely deep fractal zoom
I was really into fractals in college (I know…) when I was making rave flyers (I know!) for a friend’s parties in Iowa (I know! I know! Shut up already!). Anywa
The Oh My God Particle
The Oh-My-God Particle