Blogs / Cosmic Variance

As a diehard baker of extreme cakes, I understand the difficulty in complex cake construction. Truly, I do. But this commemorative space shuttle cake at an event to salute the achievements of women in space has gone fabulously off the rails.

I never thought the phrase “External Fuel Tank” could sound so, well, dirty.

Picture below the fold to protect the children. (From the always entertaining CakeWrecks).

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I believe that the picture below has earned a showing in every physical science lecture that discusses the importance of units:

Thanks FailBlog.

I was planning a mildly amusing joke about “Pastaeidolia,” hoping that Phil would forgive me, after seeing this map of the Paris subway system (via Bioephemera).

I mean, the resemblance is unmistakable, no?

There’s no way that can simply be a coincidence.

But then I stumbled across the Flying Spaghetti Monster page at CreationWiki: The Encyclopedia of Creation Science. This is my new candidate for Funniest Page on the Internet. Marvel as they explain, with helpful charts and a compelling level of earnestness, why the FSM does not, in fact, deserve the same amount of respect as one should show to Creation Science.

Against professionals like that, we amateur humorists stand little chance.

You can always count on the Daily Show. As John presaged earlier this month, correspondent John Oliver visited CERN to do a report on the LHC, which has finally appeared. Watch as John Ellis lays the science smackdown!

The best thing about it is that, once again, Jon Stewart and company have taken an issue that completely flummoxed most major news media — in this case, the purported danger that the LHC will destroy the world — and actually get it right. In addition to visiting CERN itself, Oliver scored an interview with Walter Wagner (”graduated UC Berkeley with a Minor in Physics”), originator of much of the hysteria and lawsuits. You’ll get to hear Wagner explain that the probability the LHC will destroy the world is — wait for it — fifty percent. You know, because when you have two things that can possibly happen, obviously each has half the probability, right? I don’t want to say too much about Walter Wagner, because, if nothing else, the guy is really fond of a good lawsuit. So I have no comment whatsoever on Walter Wagner’s competence or sanity. But I do know people who are utterly incompetent and completely insane, who resemble Walter Wagner in certain ways. I’ll stop there.

See, major news media? It’s not that hard!

His Brains, anyway. (Which he never talked about himself, but that’s neither here nor there.) Random fluctuations make an appearance in Dilbert. (Hat tip Nick Suntzeff.)

One can only wonder what Calvin and Hobbes could have done with this.

Randall Monroe (of xkcd fame) has taken on Verizon:

(via failblog)

In the progression from magazines to blogs to Twitter feeds, the tea leaves are clear. I think we need a new social network, on which updates will take the form of nothing more than a single “0″ or “1″.

We can call it “Bitter.”

Abstruse Goose, one of my favorite web-comics, has an open letter to the Higgs boson:

This is a great science-based comic strip – not only is it funny, but it’s the first time I’ve been represented as a comic super-hero.

From the National Weather Service:

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE JACKSON KY
1145 PM EST FRI FEB 13 2009

…POSSIBLE SATELLITE DEBRIS FALLING ACROSS THE REGION…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN JACKSON HAS RECEIVED CALLS THIS EVENING FROM THE PUBLIC CONCERNING POSSIBLE EXPLOSIONS AND…OR EARTHQUAKES ACROSS THE AREA. THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION HAS REPORTED TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT THAT THESE EVENTS ARE BEING CAUSED BY FALLING SATELLITE DEBRIS. THESE PIECES OF DEBRIS HAVE BEEN CAUSING SONIC BOOMS…RESULTING IN THE VIBRATIONS BEING FELT BY SOME RESIDENTS…AS WELL AS FLASHES OF LIGHT ACROSS THE SKY. THE CLOUD OF DEBRIS IS LIKELY THE RESULT OF THE RECENT IN ORBIT COLLISION OF TWO SATELLITES ON TUESDAY…FEBRUARY 10TH WHEN KOSMOS 2251 CRASHED INTO IRIDIUM 33.

(h/t Slog)

And I can’t believe I beat Phil “Death from the Skies” Plait to this! Actual Death from the Skies!

I will just mention that this guy doesn’t really look like Brian Greene. And that I’m disappointed the word “heterotic” couldn’t be worked in there somewhere.

And also that ordinary one-dimensional strings don’t form knots in higher dimensions of space, so extra-dimensional bondage requires extended objects. So really the guy in the cartoon should probably be “Dr. Polchinski.”