Listics

Think of this as a little scavenger hunt.  We’re looking for a cedilla, but not just any cedilla.  We’re looking for the one that the CBO used today while explaining about the vicissitudes of his relationship with the phone company.

First one back here posting in my comments the (correct) word from the CBO’s 5/26 post will win a lovely prize.  On your marx, get set, GO!

(Update:  We have had complaints from the usual lamers that we did not include a link to the post that we are referencing.  Why make it easy?  This is, after all, a contest with valuable prizes to be awarded.  if you want to go ripping up the lawn at the College Bowling Organization, well, how clueless of you.  You won’t win the prize.  Now hurry off and see what you can find).

Like so many things mathematical, the very number of the beast seems open to recalculation.  This will have profound consequences, including - as the Right Reverend Adam points out - an immediate impact on heavy metal bands. 

Among other universal constants called into doubt is the number 137.0359…. or "α."

Calling the calculation of constants into doubt isn’t new.  The Planck Constant, long considered an absolute (like Newton’s gravitational constant or the speed of light) was visited by revisionists quite recently.  For example,

See: Details of the 1998 watt balance experiment determining the Planck constant. by Williams, Edwin
source: Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, January 1, 2024.
via: HighBeam™ Research

COPYRIGHT 2024 National Institute of Standards and Technology

The current issue of Scientific American has an article by Barrow and Webb ("Inconstant Constants") that describes an earlier time when the fine structure constant was different from today, a time when matter behaved differently, when the universal laws governing our very existence had not yet been written. 

Somehow this news about alpha is particularly disturbing when coupled with Reverend Adam’s news about the number of the beast, heretofore thought to be a constant.  If we set the number of the beast equal to omega (and why shouldn’t we?), then it follows that the absolute condition that the christian’s guru Jesus is said to describe in the Book of Revelation ("I am the alpha and the omega") is subject to changing conditions.  As our universe moves from the radiation dominated era of the big bang through our own matter dominated era, out into the end times of what many claim will be an era of dark energy there is no longer any comfort to be found in mathematics or in physics.

1/137.03599976 is turning out to be just another number, much like 42.

Alex Golub shares with us, "Shooting Snowy," a farce of post-modern anthropological proportions… and a good shaggy dog story too.

Back in 1999 they slowed the speed of light down to 38 miles per hour or so.  Lene Hau, the woman who led the a team that translated the theoretical existence of the Bose-Einstein condensate into our physical world works in a place called the Cruft Laboratory.  If this kind of thing gets you off, you’ll want to read the recent paper from Hau’s lab titled, "Detection and Quantized Conductance of Neutral Atoms Near a Charged Carbon Nanotube."

(There’s been some cavilling in the comments below by an anonymous science politician about the implication that she did it first…  Given the politics of the Nobel, one certainly can’t know, but one can give credit where credit is due and there are lots o’ physicists slowing down atoms these days.  Talking about science politics, one would almost wonder why Bose himself didn’t get the coveted Nobel prize, wouldn’t one?)

Keep up the good work JILA.

How might the computing and communications world be materially different in 10 to 15 years, and how might we define a research agenda that would get us to that world?

In 10 years, any physical object should be able to tag itself in a way that links it to relevant information and functions in cyberspace. A context of scanners and online viewers will allow users to see this information in a convenient and interactive manner.

That’s just one of the more accessible conclusions found in the report of the End-to-End Research Group, part of the Internet Research Task Force.

When I was…
… a San Francisco Bay Area resident (1971 - 1990), the Bay Conservation and Development Commission represented an ideal of regional politics, a chartered body working to restore and preserve the environment while protecting property rights and economic development.

Andrew Tanenbaum had a hand in that.

When I was…
… enrolled for graduate coursework at MIT (1985), Professor Gallagher’s text was Computer Networks (Prentice Hall, 1981). I’ve dragged the 1st edition of that text with me everywhere and I always keep it nearby. Spooky, I turned around and found it on my bookshelf just now, within easy reach.

Andrew Tanenbaum wrote the book. (Now in its 4th edition. Time to re-order).

When I was…
… looking for good projections on the Presidential election, I found that Bruce at The River had linked to the Electoral Vote Predictor. This site was a labor of love by someone stylizing himself as The Votemaster. Yesterday I found out.

Andrew Tanenbaum is the Votemaster.

Small web.

The oil’s all burnt, the oxygen’s either poisoning us in it’s free radical form, or vanishing as it combines with carbon and iron all around the planet. The surface temperature is rapidly approaching that of Venus, all the water is boiling off and the ocean floors will become vast deserts, dessicated clumps of death the only sign of earth’s marvelous biodiversity… okay, that’s the bad news.

The good news is the Plasma Beam transport system will cut the passage to Mars to a mere 90 days! This is the stuff of legend. Nina, Pinta, Sanat Maria… hoo boy, look out Mars! here we come.

In fact, with magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or mag-beam, quick trips to distant parts of the solar system could become routine, said Robert Winglee, a UW Earth and space sciences professor who is leading the project.

Currently, using conventional technology and adjusting for the orbits of both the Earth and Mars around the sun, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their scientific mission and return.

“We’re trying to get to Mars and back in 90 days,” Winglee said. “Our philosophy is that, if it’s going to take two-and-a-half years, the chances of a successful mission are pretty low.”

David Isenberg ponders the imponderables of a telco network poised to squeeze as much as one percent of the potential out of its fiber. I think they’re doing it as a public service, dude. Like, fiber is way fast, right? Faster than cable even. Wow, man.