Random Thoughts

I have a few cephalopod ornaments to hang on the boughs, but nothing like these ninety-nine beautiful hand-sewn octopuses! Esty has a number of options when it comes to festive cephalopods. This is my favorite:

In honor of Scientific Blogging physics fave Tommaso Dorigo's inside-referenced-named "Say of the Week" I would, just this once, like to mimic him as best I can, because this was just too good to pass up. "It is very sad to see some valuable minds writing such a pile of unmitigated bullshit" - Dr. Tommaso Dorigo of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics and also A Quantum Diaries Survivor on the Nielsen-Ninomiya hypothesis that the Higgs boson could be rippling back in time and sabotaging its own creation, thus explaining the problems at the LHC with clever maths instead of more likely…

Before the tobacco industry gave up the fight over the health effects of smoking, it was common for major cigarette manufacturers like Phillip Morris to fight advertising restrictions on their product in every possible way--even if that meant designing softball regulations that didn't regulate anything. Now researchers are reporting that alcohol manufacturers in Sub-Saharan Africa are following big tobacco's lead. In a study published in the January issue of the journal Addiction, researchers compared  proposed national alcohol policies in Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, and Botswana and…

4797047001   bente tuesday noon union square

Be sure about one thing: in my very humble opinion it is not like Berlusconi would not deserve some kind of punishment, for the damage he has caused to my country. But violence is not the way. Yesterday's attack to the Italian premier by a deranged person with mental problems would not deserve much commentary, were it not for what really brought the hand of the assailer up and forward. There is, indeed, a climate of hatred in Italy these days. But who is responsible for it ? And what can we expect next ? Politicians are used to employ strong words to distinguish their at times minimally…

People who like sausage and people who trust 3-sigma peaks should not ask how these are made. T.D.

A recent LiveScience article "Americans Believe in God, Astrology, and Ghosts" indicates that the beliefs people hold may actually be contradictory and a mix of a variety of themes. This tends to confirm the view that people will believe almost anything regardless of whether it is consistent with what they profess.  After all how does one reconcile the fact that 22% of those identifying themselves as Christians also believe in reincarnation?  Nearly one in five has had an encounter with a ghost, while 25% believe in astrology. While all this can be somewhat entertaining, I was…

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” That sentence from American journalism’s best-known Santa Claus editorial (the New York Sun’s “Is There A Santa Claus?”) is still so popular that 112 years after it first ran, Macy’s is basing its holiday advertising campaign on it for the second consecutive year.  This year, Macy’s and the CBS television network are co-sponsoring an animated children’s program about Virginia O’Hanlon, the eight year old girl who sent her inquiry “Please tell me the truth. Is There A Santa Claus?” to the Sun in 1897. Due to its popularity now, people assume the…

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. - Richard Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think?, p. 245 Men are born soft and supple;dead they…

A political scientist from the University of Alberta has uncovered a dastardly ploy by the producers of Thomas and Friends, a popular children's TV show, to turn their innocent audience of youngsters into  socially intolerant conservatives.  After analyzing 23 episodes of Thomas and Friends, a show about a train, his friends and their adventures on a fictional island, political scientist Shauna Wilton was able to identify themes that she believes are incompatible with the egalitarian world society her and her social scientist friends are planning for our children.  "While the…