The Longest Now

Spaaaaaaa-aaaaace…

Volume 1: November. You can subscribe for updates.

When a date starts to go like this…

Some will say this violates Occam’s razor…

This is a project I’ve had in mind for some time. From where do you draw your favorite problems? For a bit of inspiration, here is an excellent and insightful essay on why math education is so much stronger in Russia (for instance) than in the US and Brazil (for instance), focusing on the appreciation for and use of word problems.

Word Problems in Russia and America by Andrei Toom (↬ Jacob Rus)

A lovely short policy brief on designing a better copyright regime was published on Friday – before being quickly taken offline again.  I’ve reposted it here with light cleanup of its section headings.

If you care at all about copyright and its quirks, this is short and worth reading in full.

:A pinch of poise, a twist of wit,
:    Suffice to foil the darkest fit of  pique –
:      or set the mind  at  ease when seeking
:              ancient   remedies   for  tweaking  the   e t e r n a l    drive
:                                              to make, sing, see, feel, learn, & thrive.

by David Nolan, in 1969; via Jenn Pahlka.

An excellent piece on OLPC’s tablet-based literacy experiments in Ethiopia, via the BBC World Service.

Dan is inspiring here as usual, on the familiar but awkward subject of collective cheating – and notes a strong dichotomy of positive and negative reactions among his own students around cheating.  (Now why this should be correlated to goofing off in class is not reflected on in his post, though he notes the relationship.  I have some ideas, based on how much a class is seen as being ‘for show’.  But that’s for another post.)

The 7-lesson schoolteacher.

"I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.  These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach.  Make of them what you will:"

So begins one of the great essays on the modern school system.

Via Doc Searls.

This overview of pattern-creation in the guise of science and its mob effect on whole fields must be read and relished.

The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science:

• The maximum effect observed is produced by an agent of barely detectable intensity.  The magnitude of the effect is largely independent of the intensity of the cause.
• The effect is of a magnitude close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of low statistical significance of individual results.
• There are claims of great, even extraordinary, accuracy
• Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested (with enthusiasm)
• Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment  (this may be contagious)
• The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50%, then falls gradually to zero.

Also, note that the “Allison effect” and mechanism is the most amazing example given, and may show something different than standard pathological science: it was considered good science for over a decade, and by hundreds of practitioners.

From a talk famously given by Langmuir (1932 Chemistry N’Laureate) in 1953, transcribed by Robert Hall, illustrated by Physics Today, republished and promoted by professors and authors.

The announcement | The event page

The original, and updated to modern lingo.

In some coastal waters, at least.

Via phys.org

Entanglement, Decoherence, and the Quantum/Classical Boundary

via Johannes Koelman.

I just finished reading about how bogus transmogrification conversion on an oscillating harmonic field of glass bells, with green gig and kerosene lamps for diversion, can be solved by beastly incarceration-concatenation. I was reminded of how much the great scienxplorers such as Watterson and others owe to this cloud of novel scientific inquiry from the ’60s and ’70s.

It makes me simultaneously want to immortalize Lem and Kandel in an eternally entangled quantum fringe, and to fire up a Trurlapaucius abstract-generator based on snarXiv code.