Category Archives: sciences

physics games

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 28 by Anton

Greg Egan’s moving story “Border Guards” mentions the game of Quantum Soccer, which he demonstrates with an applet. See also Ruth Chabay‘s game Electric Field Hockey.

Posted in prose, sciences | 3 Comments

precision ≠ accuracy

Posted on Wednesday, 2002 February 27 by Anton

Go get ’em! The LP responds to the notorious infamous “if you buy dope you’re supporting terrorism” spot with this newspaper advertisement. (Thanks to Ananda, who credits Declan McCullagh.) Pet peeve nº 17000: false precision. When you write “boosts . . . … Continue reading →

Posted in drugwar, mathematics | 1 Comment

hyperbolic, baby!

Posted on Friday, 2002 February 22 by Anton

Pretty things: hyperbolic planar tesselations by Don Hatch. Presented in the conformal Poincaré disc mapping, which is the most common; it’s analogous to stereographic projection of a sphere. Another favorite mapping is the half-plane, which has no analogue that I … Continue reading →

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | 2 Comments

it’s a dog-trade-with-dog world

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 21 by Anton

Peter Hollo cites an interview with Richard Dawkins, at an address which has unfortunately gone bad since January 15. Hollo writes: . . . you can read Dawkins distancing himself from a kind of Thatcherite, “Darwinian”, dog-eat-dog world of the … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | 2 Comments

guns, butter

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 21 by Anton

Steve White scores a good one: Can someone explain to us why we expect the military budget to scale linearly with the GDP? Isn’t it the whole idea of a federal government that it will scale sub-linearly? Are we just … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, militaria | Leave a comment

specialize!

Posted on Sunday, 2002 February 17 by Anton

on Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait writes In praise of renting and to hell with owning: In general, the relationship between owning-or-renting and freedom is surely the opposite of what it is so often said to be by British Conservatives. Renting equals … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, futures | Leave a comment

activities

Posted on Sunday, 2002 February 17 by Anton

One of my friends is thinking of organizing an ‘activities day’ for our circle, and invites me to run a workshop relating to my most visible hobby, mathematical beauty. Okay, I said, but what would we do?

Posted in mathematics, me!me!me! | Leave a comment