Author Archives: Anton

as we suspected

Posted on Saturday, 2004 May 15 by Anton

Ellipsoids can be packed denser than spheres can. (Cited by Oliver Xymoron.) One of these days I must make a doodle of this result.

Posted in mathematics | Leave a comment

that gun gave up smoking

Posted on Saturday, 2004 May 15 by Anton

Dave Muse thinks the Michigan state lottery has a mechanical bias favoring smaller intervals. (Cited by Jon Handler.) So I wrote a short program that generates all C(50,6) = 1589 0700 possible lottery draws and counts the resulting intervals. The distribution … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematics | Leave a comment

temporal foreshortening

Posted on Thursday, 2004 May 13 by Anton

Watching Hitchcock’s Secret Agent (1936, starring John Gielgud so young that I couldn’t place him), I think I’ve spotted Hitchcock – but my first thought was “there’s Rumpole!”.

Posted in cinema | Leave a comment

in the Hellenistic age, savage warfare— no, that’s not it

Posted on Sunday, 2004 May 09 by Anton

Bill Poser at Language Log agrees with me: Greek, not Latin, ought to have been spoken in The Passion. (Cited by Prentiss Riddle in a comment at languagehat.)

Posted in history, language | Leave a comment

the guilt industry

Posted on Sunday, 2004 May 09 by Anton

Heather Mac Donald: The Diversity Taboo (cited indirectly by Eric Rasmusen)

Posted in humanities, race | Leave a comment

unconvincing

Posted on Sunday, 2004 May 09 by Anton

“Excuse me sir, I’m homeless, I got two children at home—” Run that by me again?

Posted in California | Leave a comment

the royal philatelic service moves with the times

Posted on Friday, 2004 May 07 by Anton

Tanaqui Weaver, cited here recently, reports: the UK issued a neat 2nd-class stamp with an atom of c60 illustrated. It’s thermochromic black, and a hot thumb on the stamp whitens it out to reveal a captive atom of carbon in … Continue reading →

Posted in eye-candy, sciences | Leave a comment