Monthly Archives: February 2009

Wurtzite boron nitrides are forever!

http://www.sciam.com/blog…says-2009-02-19 In addition to being the traditional token of marital intent, the diamond has long provided the—ahem—gold standard for super-hard materials. But physicists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, say that two lesser-known … Continue reading

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Valentine’s theorem

[video:youtube:UTby_e4-Rhg] Yes, it’s a bit late, but i’ve always been a bit slow with mathematics.

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Basketball’s biggest geeks

http://www.nytimes.com/20…&pagewanted=all A great article by Michael “Liar’s Poker” Lewis about Houston Rockets forward, Shane Battier. Battier is a complete and utter basketballing anomaly, his stats are dreadful but every team he plays for seems to do miles better with him … Continue reading

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Taking a Toddler to the zoo – again

In the very first days of my PhD, I tried to explain the difference between how philosophers study concepts (mainly by looking things up in dictionaries) and how psychologists might go about it by running experiments, such as taking a … Continue reading

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Atheist Bus Generator

http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus People living in London will have seen the atheist buses roaming the streets, courtesy of my good friends at the New Humanist and the generous donations from the public. Now thanks to the generous generator of rule the web, … Continue reading

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Hulk code! Hulk get compile error! Hulk smash!

Having to install XCode for some geekery-pokery at work and sitting through the install of many, many gigs of files I had time to notice the icon. I’m not sure that a great big hammer is imagery I’d want to … Continue reading

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SciTopics

http://www.scitopics.com I’m not sure if self-appointed experts are the best people to decide what are the hot topics in any given field, for that i’d prefer something slightly more democratic but they may be the best people to write about … Continue reading

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The consequence of surveillance?

via Londonist See also their cheerful map of the V2-rocket impact sites in London. It’s the sunshine version of Gravity’s Rainbow.

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What kind of sick bastard…

chops up books to make jewellery? ‘Artist’ Jeremy May that’s who. DEPLOY demi-couture presents the debut exhibition of artist JEREMY MAY’s bespoke ‘LITERARY JEWEL’ — where each ring is individually hand-crafted and lacquered from vintage books for those thoughtful and … Continue reading

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LEGO Turing machine

For ages it’s been possible to build anything with LEGO. Now, thanks to Anders Nissen at Aarhus University, it’s also possible to compute anything [video:youtube:cYw2ewoO6c4] how long before we have self-replicating Von Neuman machines built in lego?

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