Blogs / Cosmic Variance

It can’t be easy being the guy who has to introduce Albert Einstein. But it helps if you’re George Bernard Shaw.

You have to love YouTube, although this is only an excerpt from a somewhat longer speech. Most of the text is here.

The latest Twitter phenomenon is FakeAPStylebook, an amusing take on guidelines to proper journalistic writing. Some tips include:

• STAR WARS Episodes IV-VI are to be referred to as “The Original Trilogy.” Episodes I-III are not to be referred to at all.
• Always capitalize Satan. You don’t want to get dead goats from those people.
• The correct spelling is “Rocktober,” not “Roctober,” which is the month of giant birds.
• Replace “situation deteriorated/worsened” with “shit [just] got real.” Ex: On day three of the hostage crisis, shit got real.

Amusing enough, but I have to admit that I originally read “Fake AP Stylebook” as “Fake APS Stylebook,” as if it were the (fake) American Physical Society rather than the (fake) Associated Press that was handing out advice. After all, the real APS is quite a bit quirkier than the AP; they insist that no article title begin with “The,” and for a while there they were insisting that “Lagrangian” be spelled “Lagrangean.” (Everyone has their quirks; Nature has banned the words “paradigm” and “scenario” from its pages entirely.)

So I’m sure we can do better. Any good suggestions for improved physics style? I promise to tweet anything sufficiently amusing.

The prizes were awarded this evening at Harvard’s annual IgNobel Prize ceremony. This year’s theme was “Risk”. Among the winners are:

Veterinary Medicine: Catherine Bertenshaw and Peter Rowlinson, Newcastle, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than nameless cows. (Not sure what that has to do with risk…)

Peace: Stefan Bolliger (sp?), et al., Univ. of Bern, Switzerland, for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full or empty bottle of beer. (The empty ones work better!)

Public Health: Ilena Badnar of the University of Chicago for inventing a brassiere that can be converted to a pair of gas masks. Paul Krugman with a pink bra cup on his face…woah.

Biology: Fumiyake Yamaguchi et al. for demonstrsating that the feces of giant pandas can be used to reduce kitchen waste by 90%.

It’s great that Little Miss Sweetie Poo keeps the speeches short by running up and yelling “please stop! I’m bored!”

Hopefully the whole list and the video will be up on their web site soon!

Not sure which blogs the editors of the Onion have been reading, but I have to approve of their proposed model for explaining the low entropy at the beginning of a football game by recourse to an infinite series of downs before “first down.”

NEW YORK — Citing the extremely low level of entropy present before a normal set of football downs, scientists from the NFL’s quantum mechanics and cosmology laboratories spoke Monday of a theoretical proto-down before the first. “Ultimately, we believe there are an infinite number of proto-downs played before the first visible snap,” lead NFL scientist Dr. Oliver Claussen said during a press conference, adding that the very last yocto-down is a by-product of leftover fourth downs from this universe, as well as those from a theoretical universe running along an arrow of time concurrent to our own.

Probably some enthusiastic football coach is going to try to cash in by writing a book about the idea, while others fulminate on the sidelines about how such irresponsible speculation is destroying the game. (Thanks to Ahmet Toker and Tom Fishman.)

I would not want to live in the same house as this cat. It’s a silent assassin. Via Cynical-C.

It would be amusing to just have a contest asking people to guess what the vertical axis on this chart is supposed to represent.

The answer is, “reply rate to first-contact messages on an online dating site, as a function of words appearing in the message.” In particular, the site OkCupid, which has a handy rundown of which words and phrases are most likely to garner a reply to an initial contact. (Via FlowingData.) The average response rate is 32%, so you can see how using some specific word increases or decreases your chances of success. Apparently mentioning “God” is a big turn-off, although calling Him by a proper name is slightly helpful. But nothing works at turning a stranger’s head quite like bringing up His complete lack of existence.

Other useful hints: real words good, fake internet words bad. Complimenting personality/intellect good, complimenting looks bad. Being specific is good, especially if it involves physics, heavy metal, vegetarianism, or zombies. Hey, I’m just the messenger here.

I have no idea why Kieran thinks that this Dara Ó Briain video would be my cup of tea. We all know that I am devoted to the ideal of communicative reason between respectful parties speaking in good faith. None of that tawdry mockery and whacking at people with sticks for me, no sir.

Nevertheless, it’s quite charming; perhaps it’s the Irish accent. Ó Briain studied math and theoretical physics at University College Dublin, where he was an officer of the Literary and Historical Society, where I spoke not too long ago. I cannot speculate where the fashion sense came from.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a provocative scientific idea will, before too long, end up in the hands of villains that must be fought by superheroes. Witness Boltzmann brains. Sure, they’ve already made a cameo in Dilbert, but the stakes were pretty low. Now Jim Kakalios (author of the excellent The Physics of Superheroes) sends along sends along a couple of snippets from The Incredible Hercules #133 — in which our intrepid protagonists are attacked by freak observers fluctuated out of thermal equilibrium!

Actually here they are described as “freaky observers,” rather than the more conventional “freak observers.” That description brings to mind Smoove B rather than Ludwig Boltzmann, but who knows? Maybe unlikely thermal fluctuations tend to be pretty kinky.

And yes, before you all start in: we know that Boltzmann Brains don’t really make for a credible alien menace, if you insist on being persnickety about what they supposedly really represent. It’s not that they “perceive” a universe more chaotic than ours — it’s that they would dominate the total number of observers if the universe really were more chaotic than ours. (Which it isn’t!) Also, they would tend to dissolve back into the chaos from which they came, rather than staging a coordinated attack on our homeland. Still! What a novel challenge for the Allies’ greatest hero.

There are countless violations of laws of physics and astronomical practice, but it’s still pretty cute.

This is transcendently ridiculous.

For the many international CV readers, today is the US’s Independence Day celebration, which is in large part an excuse to bar-b-que meat products, blow up fireworks, and drink beer. If you’re tuning in from abroad, you are probable sober enough to read Daniel’s upcoming post on gravitational waves. For the rest of the drunken US crew, you can probably handle the Muppets.

PS. While we’re talking beer, I must recommend the current Full Sail Limited Edition L.T.D. (Recipe No. 3), sold in bottles with the pale blue label. Seriously. Try some.

(h/t: Again with the CakeWrecks)