education is for whom?
Is education a public good? Does someone else’s learning algebra or Shakespeare make you better off? Well, there are network externalities — in reading this you benefit not only from my learning but from that of anyone from whom I’ve learned. But I would guess that most of the benefit of learning goes to the learner, in enhanced earning power and in the ability to enjoy thoughts not available to the ignorant. (I’ve seen that stated as unsupported fact, somewhere or other.)
The question has many aspects, not all readily quantifiable, but at least it appears that spending on schooling is not correlated with economic health.
let’s get Physical
A few months ago, a grad student at MIT asked permission to use my illustration of a diamond crystal in an article for Physics World. I got the December issue in today’s mail. Wow — my modest doodle (re-rendered, for higher resolution, from my Povray source code) fills a page as the first illustration in the cover story!
The article is “Sound Ideas” by Taras Gorishnyy, Martin Maldovan, Chaitanya Ullal and Edwin Thomas.
refractin’ back atcha
A few of my Povray scenes include objects with negative indices of refraction; I’ve said of this one that three-quarters of it cannot exist in the real world. Now I read in The Economist that, because a negative-refractive slab could make a “perfect lens” (for obscure reasons), there’s an active effort on to create such a chimera; indeed the effect has been demonstrated but only with microwaves.
Plutinos, Twotinos, Cubewanos
John Baez gives (among other things) a handy summary of transneptunian objects.
Merlyn the rocket scientist?
J R Stockton collects a lot of useful tidbits about orbital mechanics and the like.