Mentioned previously, neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor spoke at TED on waking up one morning in the winter of 1996 after a blood vessel in her brain exploded. She chronicles the next four hours of her life from that point as she undergoes a massive stroke, slowly losing the ability to define the boundaries that separate one’s self from the infinite surroundings.

And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. Then I realized, “Oh my gosh! I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke!” And the next thing my brain says to me is, “Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?”

And then it crosses my mind: “But I’m a very busy woman. I don’t have time for a stroke!” So I’m like, “OK, I can’t stop the stroke from happening so I’ll do this for a week or two, and then I’ll get back to my routine, OK.”

So I gotta call help, I gotta call work.

Luckily, Dr. Taylor was able to get to a hospital, and survived the stroke. Awakening after the surgery, though, she was shocked to find herself still alive, and still feeling some of the effects of the blood loss.

Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there’s no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.

Read the transcript or watch the video above.

The end of The Wire – SADLY, sadly, sadly, The Wire has come to an end. Jason Kottke wraps it up with a collection of recaps and reviews. Despite the show’s criticisms (and this final season toeing the line between ridiculous and absurd), I would readily argue these 5 seasons have been the best 5 seasons in television history (not counting MacGyver or Wings, of course). And also, *SPOILER ALERT*.

Can Scientists Dance? – A bevy of students, postdocs, and professors perform interpretive dances for their Ph.D. dissertations. Like Simone Recchi performing Dynamical and chemical evolution of blue compact dwarf galaxies a la Daft Punk’s “Around the World”.

Quote, Unquote – There has been a bit of discussion (read: ire) over the widespread use of “dumb quotes” (straight) over “smart quotes” (curved). Straight apostrophes denote inches and degrees and minutes and seconds, while curved apostrophes are used in conjunctions and quoting. There are a number of reasons to purposely use one or the other, but anything else is just laziness. Thankfully, Wordpress has me covered.

10 trends that will define logo design in 2008 – I guess it’s already time for another makeover.

Slide Show – “Are you ready for PowerPoint karaoke?” No.

How do you build a public library in the age of Google? – Slate.com photo essay on the changing architecture and role of public libraries. As digital content becomes more and more pervasive, there’s less need for a stuffy old library filled with nothing but books. Public libraries in major cities around the country are responding to this not only with new offerings (coffee shops, movie rentals, more computers) but with new architecture as well.

The 2008 Tournament of Books

In which we would seed the year’s most celebrated works of fiction in a March Madness-type bracket and pit those novels against each other in a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence.” In honor of our favorite character in contemporary literature, David Sedaris’s brother, aka “The Rooster,” we decided to present the winning author with a live chicken.

About 13.7 billion years ago, our universe was born, and like some acne-ridden teenager going through puberty, it quickly expanded in size. Within hardly any time at all, the universe had gone from a little speck of nothingness to a vast wasteland of galaxies and Scientologists not much smaller than the universe today. (See Big Bang and cosmic inflation, respectively.)

Once we figured out the beginning, it wasn’t hard to guess the end. Inflation was done with, so it was all up to gravity. Basically, if the universe is dense enough (a lot of stuff in not too much space), then it should eventually collapse in a reversal of the Big Bang. Otherwise, space would continue expanding slowly into infinity and beyond. Or, if you’re an obsessive Albert Einstein, magical new quantities pop into existence and the universe, in turn, neither expands nor collapses.

(Un)fortunately(?), reality seems to be a little different. Instead of business as usual, or the universe heading toward the Big Crunch, expansion is accelerating. And eventually far-enough objects will be moving away from us faster than the speed of light. Ultimately, stars and galaxies will be moving away from us so quickly that light from them will never reach our eyes, as if they were never there to begin with.

Sad.

This places current scientists in a very interesting position:

Scientists in the far future, on some other planet without the benefit of our current knowledge, will see no evidence from their observations that the universe is expanding. After all, the only way that we know about it is by looking out at distant galaxies and tracing their motion. If they are out of sight, there will be no such tracers.

In other words, right now is the only time when both the expansion of the universe and its cause (dark energy) can be inferred. As the New Scientist article states, dark energy could not have been measured in the past, and the expansion will not be measurable in the future. And if we can predict that the sky will be a lot less informative for future scientists, what about today’s cosmologists?

We may never know if other fascinating and important aspects of our universe are hidden from us today, yet would have been visible had we been smart enough to evolve 5 billion years earlier.

Time travel never seemed more urgent.

The cover story in last week’s New Scientist asks, “2008: Does time travel start here?”

As you may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider – the most powerful atom-smasher ever built – will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref’eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the world’s first time machine.

Not surprisingly, the story quickly made its way to the news media. With such an exciting premise, not unlike the previous hysteria over micro black holes destroying the world, how could it not?

Unfortunately, these theories (hypotheses? conjectures? possibilities?) are more provocative than probable. Scientists accidentally creating a time machine? Or causing a reaction that devours the planet? Though backed by solid math, such scenarios are more the stuff of science fiction. And they frequently illuminate the media’s (and scientist’s) willingness to draw special attention to less significant science in the name of interest and readership.

Thankfully, New Scientist included in the same issue a commentary on the whole matter: Is Big Physics peddling science pornography?

Scientists, and people like me who stick up for science, are happy to pour scorn on astrologers, homeopaths, UFO-nutters, crop-circlers and indeed the Adam-and-Eve brigade, who all happily believe in six impossible things before breakfast with no evidence at all. Show us the data, we say to these deluded souls. Where are your trials? What about Occam’s razor – the principle that any explanation should be as simple as possible? The garden is surely beautiful enough, we say, without having to populate it with fairies.

The danger is that on the wilder shores of physics these standards are often not met either. There is as yet no observational evidence for cosmic strings. It’s hard to test for a multiverse. In this sense, some of these ideas are not so far, conceptually, from UFOs and homeopathy. If we are prepared to dismiss ghosts, say, as ludicrous on the grounds that firstly we have no proper observational evidence for them and secondly that their existence would force us to rethink everything, doesn’t the same argument apply to simulated universes and time machines? Are we not guilty of prejudice against some kinds of very unlikely ideas in favour of others?

Believing in ghosts takes a different mindset to advocating parallel worlds or cosmic strings. But do we really believe that we are all the creations of a computer sitting in some higher-dimensional adolescent’s bedroom, or that time travellers will land at the LHC? Or are we, too, seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden?

Basically, physics has reached a point where a lot of data is wildly divergent from what is well understood, and the theories invented to explain the data are often entirely unintuitive. Even old-hat theories like the Big Bang and inflation are extremely different than the world we are used to, and probably seemed unlikely when they were devised. But they are backed by hard data, and have allowed for some beautiful predictions. Mathematical credulity aside, where are the discussions of the probability and practicality of today’s sexy science?

This all reminds me of the (surprisingly mainstream) coverage of Boltzmann’s Brains. In explaining the silly idea in The New York Times, Dennis Overbye casually mentions this point:

Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however.

And as Sean of Cosmic Variance says:

The point about Boltzmann’s Brains is not that they are a fascinating prediction of an exciting new picture of the multiverse. On the contrary, the point is that they constitute a reductio ad absurdum that is meant to show the silliness of a certain kind of cosmology.

Or to put it another way, “It’s kind of an old-fashioned argument. Take a theory, use it to make a prediction, the prediction isn’t correct, and therefore the theory has been falsified!”

I appreciate Overbye mentioning that Boltzmann’s Brains are not believed to be how things really are, even if it was mentioned only in passing at the beginning. Many of the other ideas that make their rounds through the mainstream media are similarly insubstantial to most people in the field, and reporters should do more to make this point obvious. Sure, maybe the LHC will create a miniature black hole that destroys the world, but is the 0.0000000001% chance worthy of coverage?

Isn’t the real science titillating enough on its own?

There is little I enjoy more than good science writing. And as with nonfiction writing in general, I will easily expand “good” to include not just good writing, but any writing that succeeds in conveying the author’s genuine enthusiasm for the topic. The elegantly titled symmetry: dimensions of particle physics has its share of the former, but is filled to the brim with the latter.

Published 10 times per year by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, symmetry is, as professed in the magazine’s first letter from the editor states, “a magazine about particle physics and its connections to other aspects of life and science, from interdisciplinary collaborations to policy to culture.” Science has rapidly evolved into a profoundly robust and complex model of ourselves and the universe, and symmetry’s aim is to cover the role of particle physics in that evolution.

More central to my love for the magazine, though, is something touched upon in the latest issue’s editorial:

This issue of symmetry is dedicated to the imminent switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider. It can only skim the surface but presents views of the science, technology, international collaboration, and humanity of the LHC.

More than anything, symmetry manages to pull back the boring, stale, stereotypical image of science to present its warm, entertaining, and deeply rewarding reality. Shown is not, to be honest, “interdisciplinary collaboration”, but “international collaboration”; globetrotting theorists, country-spanning particle accelerators, frisbee-playing post-docs.

And did I mention subscriptions are free?

All in all, the articles may amount to little more than dressed-up press releases, but that just means the writing is clear and poppy. The level of physics, and enthusiasm, makes symmetry a perfect fit for a high school physics classroom (at only a few dozen pages, the magazine “can only skim the surface” as it tries to be somewhat extensive). I don’t know if every field has a magazine like this out there, but they should if they do not. We need to get rid of the stuffy lab rat stereotype, and focus on portraying and defending the humanity of science.

The Edge Annual Question 2008: What have you changed your mind about?

Edge.org is the website maintained by The Edge Foundation to highlight the works and ideas of “those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.” Every year, since 1998, Edge has put forth a single question to a number of such scientists and other thinkers, presenting a comprehensive look into the brains of some of today’s most forward thinkers.

When I say comprehensive, I mean it. The contributors run the gamut from particle physicist to evolutionary psychologist to philosopher to magazine editor to economist to curator (and so many more). This year, over 150 people responded, and I challenge everyone to not find at least one answer interesting.

(My favorite answer was neuroscientist Stanislas Deheane’s, who had his mind changed on the existence of a unified Theory of Everything for the mind.)

Relevant to the general direction of this blog, Douglas Rushkoff reports his mind has been changed about the internet:

I thought that it would change people. I thought it would allow us to build a new world through which we could model new behaviors, values, and relationships. In the 90’s, I thought the experience of going online for the first time would change a person’s consciousness as much as if they had dropped acid in the 60’s.

I thought Amazon.com was a ridiculous idea, and that the Internet would shrug off business as easily as it did its original Defense Department minders.

Profit has clearly become at least the cornerstone of the internet, if not the central crux; in Rushkoff’s words, “cyberspace has become just another place to do business.” He obviously does not believe all the internet has to offer is another space for business, but instead sees the capitalism overtaking the idealism. In general, the internet has not become a transformative elixir, but has simply provided new ways to do old things (e.g., share photos, find friends, make money).

I agree with Rushkoff in throwing away the belief that “the experience of going online for the first time would change a person’s consciousness as much as if they had dropped acid in the 60’s,” but disagree that the internet has (or can have, or is going to have) no effect on worldview. The specifics (e.g., description, range, stability) of any changes will take awhile to be parsed out, but just off the top of my head: imagine the effects Wikipedia and citizen journalism have had on our notions of intellectual authority.

For now, any effects seem to be beyond quantification, but I predict them emerging in palpable ways in the future. (Always good to end the year’s first post with a prediction, right?)

In January 2006, President Bush introduced the American Competitiveness Initiative, an initiative designed to help fund research in science research and education. This August, Bush signed legislation (the America COMPETES Act) toward this end, further cementing his goals of increasing research in basic science in the United States, and maintaining the country’s competitive (get it?) level of innovation. The COMPETES Act covers a lot of ground, but a clear focus was on enabling current and future researchers to tackle the fundamental questions of science.

So when the omnibus spending bill for Fiscal Year 2008 finally passed Congress last week, there were not likely to be any surprises. Given the previous commitment of Congress and the various reports contributing to the COMPETES Act, the spending bill was likely to simply put money behind the mouths of all those politicians. Unfortunately, what Congress signed was far from expected.

• Plans to double funding at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy Office of Science have dissolved
• 1% increase for the NSF
• 0.5% increase for the National Institutes of Health, which is effectively nothing
• Zero funding for the US contribution to ITER, the international fusion reactor in France
• Zero funding for NOvA, a neutrino facility under construction at Fermilab, placing it in limbo until at least next year
• $15 million ($45 million less than requested) for the ILC, the International Linear Collider, which (being three months into FY08) has already been spent, so the bill grants effectively no money for the ILC
• 10% slashing of funds for Fermilab, $65 million less than FY07 and $94 million less than requested

All of which comes soon after the news that the UK will be withdrawing a massive amount of investment in large physics projects (see also: saveastronomy.co.uk).

I would be remiss in not mentioning the increases in funding for applied sciences (for instance, increasing R&D money for renewables, energy efficiency and nuclear energy by 30%, to nearly $1.3 billion). And it is almost certainly tunnel-vision to focus on a single area of science, but it is difficult to see the silver lining past the dark clouds, especially when so many promises had been made. Furthermore, Dr. Leon Lederman, former director of Fermilab, writes in NY Times letter to the editor:

After a string of lean years, the 2008 cuts will result in a major contraction of our country’s basic research ability. The intimate connections among biology, chemistry, technology and fundamental physics make the penalties unpredictable and hurtful in the long term.

This is a big blow to fusion and high energy physics, both on a national and international level. As JoAnne at Cosmic Variance points out, pulling out of ITER is not without its consequences:

Let me remind you that ITER is the large international fusion reactor that is currently being constructed in France and is funded by international treaty. The US has signed that treaty and was set to contribute roughly $160 M this year. Apparently Congress just doesn’t understand that there are serious ramifications in backing out of an international treaty. Even one dedicated solely to science projects. This jeopardizes future international projects and provides yet further proof that the US is not a reliable partner.

The Fermilab cut means that 200 of the laboratory’s 1900 staff members will have to be laid off, and the remaining staff will be forced to take unpead leave twice a month. Notably, Senators Brack Obama and Dick Durbin, and Representative Judy Biggert are trying to get more funding for the High Energy Physics program, which supports research at Fermilab.

As Sean at (again) Cosmic Variance notes:

Lurking behind the debate over the high energy physics budget is a meta question that rarely gets addressed head-on: in a world with many things that we would like to do, but limited resources to do them, how do we decide what questions are interesting enough to warrant our attention?

There are a number of issues that get tied up in such considerations. One is that certain activities simply require certain resources, so if we judge them sufficiently interesting to be pursued then we need to be prepared to devote the appropriate resources their way. A colleague of mine in condensed-matter physics was fond of complaining about all the great small-scale physics that his community could do if they only had half of Fermilab’s budget. Which is undoubtedly true, but with half of Fermilab’s budget you wouldn’t get half the science out of Fermilab — you wouldn’t get anything at all. If that kind of particle physics is worth doing at all (which is a completely fair question), there is an entry fee you can’t avoid paying.

Obviously, $344 million (half of Fermilab’s budget) is a lot, but that big of a loss would be devastating to pure science. Hopefully we will never have to put Sean’s statement to the test and find out what slashing 50% of funds really would do to Fermilab. But unless Obama and company have some magic up their sleeves, this coming year we could be getting a taste of that potential devastation.

TED: Technology Entertainment Design

An annual conference held in Monterey, California and recently, semi-annually in other cities around the world. TED describes itself as a “group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value”. Its lectures cover a broad set of topics including science, arts, politics, global issues, architecture, music and more. The speakers themselves are from a wide variety of communities and disciplines and have included such people as former US president Bill Clinton, Nobel laureate James D. Watson, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

The list goes on, but even more noteworthy is the TED Prize, introduced in 2005. Every year, TED awards three individuals $100,000 and grants them “a wish to change the world”. Past winners include Larry Brilliant (with a name like that…), E.O. Wilson, and Bill Clinton.

This year’s winners?

Neil Turok – Cosmologist and education activist
Dave Eggers – Author, philanthropist and literary entrepreneur
Karen Armstrong – Authority on comparative religions

It is great to see the organization so strongly focusing on education this year. Turok and Eggers have both done great work in Africa, and Eggers also has wonderful educational philanthropy throughout the United States (love or hate his books, it is hard to discredit his compassion and influence). Armstrong is a former nun turned “freelance monotheist” who has done much to educate others on the expansive spiritual similarities between Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Buddhism.

Further tastes of TED:

Mathemagics – In a lively performance, “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin races a team of calculators to figure out 3-digit squares in his head, performs a massive mental calculation, and guesses a few birth days. How does he do it? He’ll be happy to tell you.

Beauty and truth in physics – Wielding laypeople’s terms and a sense of humor, Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann drops some knowledge about particle physics, asking questions like, Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones? Can the fundamental law, the so-called “theory of everything,” really explain everything?

How creativity is being strangled by the law – Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of three stories and an argument. The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.

Besides looking good, the elastic list of Nobel prize winners provides a presentation that is interesting as much for the actual content as for its ability to effortlessly display information about that content. The elastic list visualizes the data in two main ways (better explained at the Well-formed data blog entry). First, the size of the cells is dynamic, and the cells change in size relative to the chosen filter. Second, brightness of the cells comes to indicate relative proportion during a filtered view, or “characteristicness” of the data when unfiltered.

I know I have made the whole thing sound unbearably boring, but even disregarding the technology the list is supposed to demo, it is worth a look. It is always fascinating to see the contributions to humanity that warranted this highest of honors.

Scientific Facts is a regularly updated compendium of scientific facts.

Facts such as the following:

Scientific Fact #5: Mixtapes Are Not Legally Binding

I know I put that Pretenders song on the mixtape I made for you but I always thought that when she sings ‘nothing you confess could make me love you less’, she probably means things like dropping out of college or admitting to a son from a previous marriage. Maybe DUI. Best case scenario is you’ve got superpowers or are a spy or something.

I’ll stand by you for that babe, but the front of your shirt is splattered with blood from a botched break-and-enter. Killing a retired accountant, his wife and their two grandchildren who were staying with them for the weekend will make anyone love you less. Or not at all.

I guess you didn’t get to song number nine, because then you’d know that when a man loves a woman, he can do no wrong. I’m not an expert or nothing, but shooting up an elderly couple and some kids, then showing up at your girlfriend’s house waving a gun in her face and screaming at her to get in the damn car probably qualifies as doing wrong.

Shit, I should’ve guessed this would happen when you put “Every Breath You Take” on one of those tapes.

(thx joey)

YouTube – Little Superstar – I know, I know, this is ollllld (in internet terms), but there has to be someone out there who hasn’t seen this little Indian guy bust a move. Whether you have or have not watched, click it. (For all those interested, the song is Holiday Rap by MC Miker G & DJ Sven.)

Top 10 ugliest fashion trends of the past 25 years – I am so thankful I never had to experience any of these.

Top 10 coolest things seen with Google Earth

Top 100 music videos of all time

Where to Go Now – SEED Magazine article back in May about seven sites to visit now, before they are ruined by global warming.

Man fixes PCs in exchange for boobs – This is the policy I need to start implementing.

UMR reader, you are mighty!

Recording Industry vs The People (blogspot) – This blog covers the cases of the RIAA versus… everyone. Whatever the motive of the two lawyers for publishing this information (nice publicity for their firm, yeah?), the information is there nonetheless. Most notably, the RIAA sued Limewire, and Limewire said “Fuck you”.

Until December, the complete archives of the Royal Society will be available to the public for free. “Spanning nearly 350 years of continuous publishing, the archive of nearly 60,000 articles includes ground-breaking research and discovery from many renowned scientists including: Bohr, Boyle, Bragg, Cajal, Cavendish, Chandrasekhar, Crick, Dalton, Darwin, Davy, Dirac, Faraday, Fermi, Fleming, Florey, Fox Talbot, Franklin,” and that’s just up to F.

Why I hate Zach Braff – Slate article about the (terrible? maybe?) fact that Zach Braff has come to be the voice of the indie, slacker youth.

The Citizendium Project – An attempt to make a better Wikipedia (by using Wikipedia). “It will begin life as a “progressive fork” of Wikipedia. But we expect it to take on a life of its own and, perhaps, to become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects.”

There is NO manipulation of gas prices – An explanation of the falling (or rising) gas prices by Daily Kos.

Pandoras Box – A nice add-on to Pandora which enables a little box in your taskbar to show the currently playing song, change stations, and find lyrics.

Finally, I leave you with this:

Mario Brothers cake!

As Sunday comes to an end, so too does this weekend’s Science Foo Camp. A meeting of great science and technology minds, as well as related writers and thought-leaders gathered by Tim O’Reilly, this is the first of the Foo Camps to be grounded in science. And it takes place at the Googleplex.

From Wikipedia, “Foo Camp is the annual invitation only, no-structure, no plan, tent on the lawns, hacker event hosted by publisher Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly describes it as ‘the wiki of conferences’, where the program is developed by the attendees at the event, using big whiteboard schedule templates that can be rewritten or overwritten by attendees.” Basically, 200 of the world’s greatest scientists, technologists, and writers have come together in Silicon Valley to discuss the future. It astounds me.

No full report (that I know of) has come out as of yet, but Nature’s own tech blog, Nascent, sheds light on the topics discussed over the past two days. Most notably: “controlling neuronal activity using flashes of laser light”, nuclear explosion (specifically, NASA’s old Project Orion), humanity’s evolutionary future, nanotechnology, the conservative nature of science, and 3D camera technology. And that was just Friday and Saturday. Hopefully, a lengthy recap will make its way onto the web shortly.

The blunders of AOL: If you haven’t heard, AOL recently (accidentally) released a 2GB, semi-anonymous list of what some of its users have searched for. TechCrunch has a nice post on the matter. AOL removed the data from their website, but not before it was downloaded by numerous people. And, in true 21st century fashion, that various websites have popped up in order to provide a nice interface for the search data: AOL Search Database, Don’t Delete, AOL.Yogurt Rat, among others.

Excited for the release of Snakes on a Plane? Just can’t wait? Well, you have to. But, while you’re waiting, check out the CafePress Snakes on a Plane gallery. Don’t forget the mother of all Snakes on a Plane shirts, Jeffrey Rowland’s airplane with snakes flying it.

Helvetica, the film. A documentary by Gary Hustwit, of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (Wilco documentary) fame, dealing with one of the most popular typefaces today. Visit Helveticafilm.com to learn some more about the film and watch a trailer (when available).

For some reason, bump keying has entered the blogosphere again. The story first came out over a year ago, so I’m confused as to why it’s around again, but it doesn’t always hurt to rehash old news. Bump keying, for those not in the know, is a terribly simple way to open any door by cutting a key down and then (you guessed it) bumping it. YouTube has some videos on bump keying (look at “Explore More Videos” for more), and The Open Organization of Lockpickers came out with a PDF on the subject. These are newer links, but you could always watch What The Hack’s (large large large 600mb+) video: Bumping revisited. Then, of course, there is the Wikipedia page.

Those looking for something easier to make at home, the quick vibrating lock pick for just $15 or less.

Amazing webcomic of the day: xkcd – “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Also from this brilliant mind, The Best Thing project and BestDate.

Random links:

I leave you now with Salon’s Literary Guide to the World.

One of the Internet’s first uses was as a national connection between labs and universities. The current Internet keeps with this tradition of disseminating scientific information. Also in today’s Undressing the Internet: cute dancing cats and girls getting ripped in half.

On the international front: Straight from Russia come folk redesigns of movie posters. And from the United Kingdom, a small article on everyone’s favorite Japanese author (read: mine), Haruki Murakami.

On the web design front: For anyone out there building a website, a couple new tools have emerged to help out. Most notably, Browsershots.org lets you test your web design in different browsers. For free. No account needed. Also cool, but more informative than helpful, raketforskning.com now has a live Pagerank tool so you can check your site’s Pagerank 1-2-3. And, finally, not a tool, but a whole website full of interesting things to do with CSS: CSS Play, experiments with cascading style sheets.

On the science front: First, a quick jaunt through mathematics. The Mathematical Atlas is pages and pages and pages of introductions to the areas of modern mathematics. Lost before you even begin? Check out the Math Atlas’ tour of the subfields of mathematics for a quick overview. Getting a little more specific, scienceblogs.com has an introduction to information theory. A very good, easy to comprehend read.

As science once again encroaches on the philosophical questions of the humanists, Geoffrey Harpham argues discussion between scientists and humanists could lead to a new golden age of philosophy and science.

Small physics (e.g., particle physics, quantum mechanics, string-theory, etc.) has become increasingly esoteric. Its theories are steeped in math and explaining them in layman’s terms varies from impossible to almost impossible. Thus, it is always commendable when someone comes along with clear explanations and visualizations of a tricky physics matter. To what is all this leading? Imagining the Tenth Dimension, a website for the book of the same name, which seeks to show what the ten dimensions of (one version of) string theory look like.

On the terrible, terrible, embarrassing story front: “I attempted to lose my virginity on craigslist.”

On the OMG IT’S SO CUTE front: Dance you ASCII cat, dance!

On the (finally) random links front: Wikiquote has a collection of last words. A personal favorite: Caligula exclaimed “Vivo” as he was being murdered by his own soldiers. Translation? “I live!”

Think you’re smart? Well, test yourself with the simple intelligence test.

A complete waste of time: A clock with dots for seconds and three centuries worth of days portrayed by dots.

Criss Angel rips a girl in half. That is as self explanatory as you can get.

Have a Windows password that needs cracking? Check out Ophcrack 2, “the faster Windows password cracker.” It’s available as a Live CD, so you can burn the program to a CD, boot from it, and get crackin’. Hurray for free ways to break laws and steal passwords.

I leave you with this: The Royal College of Art Summer Show in London had a submission by Tim Simpson entitled “Natural Deselection”. What’s the idea? “Three plants compete to reach the light that feeds and nourishes them. The first one to succeed survives. The other two are automatically cut down in their prime.”

Sex is such an interesting topic. Whether you find it in orgasms during childbirth, or interviews with John Updike, it always manages to liven any dull day. Similarly, although I’m willing to bet some of you might disagree, I’ve always found the complicated doings of subatomic particles to be quite riveting.

It is important that women realize the possible benefits of child birth. Most notably, it’s orgasmic qualities.

On the other side of the orgasm: A family recently on vacation had a (not so) pleasant surprise when their children came across a porn filming at their hotel. “The first thing that the kids talked about was the fact that there were naked women getting their photos taken in the hotel,” Mr Crawford said.

(Not Safe For Work) Similarly, Penn and Teller’s show Bullshit covered the pros and cons of masturbation. Or, should I say, they covered the pros.

From masturbation to Madonna. A recent Mother Jones article discusses the world of conspiracy and Madonna. “I don’t normally gush like that but, according to WebMD, it’s common to the Madonna-shock decompression phase those lucky enough to see her live and that close normally go through post concert. Or it could be my thoughts were scrambled by a celebrity virus, a secret government-implanted psychotropic program piggybacking onto my own brainwaves, so as to mimic diva worship, while actually subjugating me to a much more sinister world domination agenda.”

Don’t worry, I’m slowly making my way to the serious.

A new blog from the New York Times covers all things video on the Internet. Only two posts so far, but Virginia Heffernan’s Screens blog is off to a good (albeit belated) start. Go there for your daily update on the unendless stream of videos put online.

An interlude before the real posts kick in: iStache! Easily add mustaches to any photo! (Mac only)

For anyone who has not heard of the author Haruki Murakami, I recommend reading this article from The Age on his life and writings. Given he is one of my favorite writers, I cannot say it is an interesting read even for those uninitiated to his works, but give it a go. And, if he sounds interesting, pick up a copy of Norwegian Wood or his upcoming collection of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Also making the rounds is John Updike. In the news recently for his controversial new novel, he speaks to Nerve.com about sex, modernity, grittiness, and more.

Just one step from the science.

South By Southwest took place earlier this year, with its numerous days of music, film, and business. If you missed the show, the SXSW site now has a collection of podcasts dealing with various web and business topics. CSS Problem Solving, Tagging 2.0, The Future of Education in a Digitally Convergent World, and so on.

Now here’s the good stuff!

Seed Magazine, hip science magazine extraordinaire, discusses the present and future of nuclear fusion. The recent charter to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental reactor is a beautiful thing.

While reading the above article, you might notice mention of a certain Large Hadron Collider. This huge particle accelerator being built in Switzerland is set to open on July 1, 2007. Cosmic Variance has more on exactly how powerful it will be when it begins operating.

Creator and main poster on Cosmic Variance, Dr. Sean Carroll, recently talked with Daily Kos about physics, from the heights of cosmology and dark matter to the depths of particle physics and string theory. An informative, engaging interview, to say the least.

And, on a different note, thirty years of the Selfish Gene. Richard Dawkin’s seminal work The Selfish Gene had its thirtieth anniversary edition published this year, and the Times presents a review of it and its large influence on biology and evolution.

That’s it.

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In a very special edition of Undressing the Internet, age old questions are finally answered. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is global warming a serious matter? Can anything be geekier than using a MacBook Pro as a lightsaber?

This just in, the egg came before the chicken! In a debate put together by Disney (to promote the release of Chicken Little on DVD), experts decided that it is indeed the egg which came first. Now we can finally lay that conundrum to rest, thanks Disney.

Coney Island (see: Requiem for a Dream) has long been a not-so-nice place in New York. I’ve grown to love it, if only because it is the host of Village Voice’s Siren Music Festival. Still, love or not, its economic decline is true enough. Luckily, city officials and builders are hoping to revive the once vital area. A $1 billion amusement park renovation is planned, as well as other fixes. Hooray!

In light of recent scientific agreeance (and perhaps Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth), New York Times columnist Gregg Easterbrook finally sees the light about global warming. If you’re not as convinced as he is, Newsvine has a thread about why no one takes global warming seriously.

In lighter news, a fun article from BBC News about a nude sunbather. Nothing beats the line, “She walked back and fore completely naked – I went to get my video camera to record the incident.”

Anyone interested in skulking around at night (or day) in full invisibility will their wishes granted in no time at all. MSNBC reports on new material that will render objects completely invisible, currently in development. For the near future, invisibility will be confined to the spectrum of light used for radar. Optical invisibility, on the other hand, should be ready sometime within the millenium.

Also on the science front, Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that “people may permanently store memories in their brains, even if they cannot consciously recall them”.

And if all that wasn’t nerdy enough for you, Metamath Music Page! The sound of mathematical proofs. Lovely.

From nerd to geek: Two interesting applications were released for the new MacBook line of laptops. The first, a program which lets you turn your MacBook into a lightsaber. The second, the aptly named SmackBook Pro, which lets you change desktops by hitting your MacBook.

If you’re in the market for a new SUV, and live in California or Florida, check out the new offer by GM. Buy your SUV before July 5 (with OnStar), and you’ll never pay more than $1.99/gallon for gas.

A perfect end to a perfectly nerdy Undressing the Internet: Cracking WEP and WPA Wireless Networks. If you live in a sufficiently dense area, consider that a How-To on getting free internet access.

Later!

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