Thane Plambeck

Scared of Santa photo gallery

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Symmetry 454

The Symmetry454 Calendar is a perpetual solar calendar that conserves the traditional 7-day week, has symmetrical equal quarters, and starts every month on Monday.

I thought—I wonder how much vacation you get? Seems like an important question.

Fifteen months of no TV

It's been about 15 months since I hauled our TV to the dump.

I can highly recommend not having a TV. Our kids don't miss it at all. And it's not like we never see TV, anyway—TV is everywhere. It's nice to not have the option to change a channel. And when you see a really nice TV, say a large screen plasma at someone else's house, it's a real treat, not a mesmerizing, ever-present distraction. Today's high definition televisions are beautiful to watch occasionally.

I wish TV's occurred in the environment about as frequently as a full moon. It's always nice to point out a nice full moon to someone—hey, look at that! Both people then enjoy the sight for a few moments, and move on, since a full moon is just a full moon, after all.

Having a TV in your house is like having a loud, unpleasant roommate. Or maybe taking care of someone else's yip-yap dog.

How the *&^%$ does Google suggest work?

If this question hasn't troubled you, dearest reader, you're either much smarter or much dumber than I. Anyway. Here's a forensic dissection that looks good.

Is it correct? No hidden wires, no pigeons in sleeves?

Coming soon: Kasparov on Fischer

The primes go on forever...

...but your T stop is coming up soon.

[claymath] (via graham's comments)

If it looks like a duck

The angle of the wake of a body moving steadily in deep water is always 2 arcsin(1/3). Not very many people know that, but it is one of the many fascinating results proved in the Mathematical Tripos.

Also: Study Skills in Mathematics (PDF). It's come too late for me, I'm afraid.

Christmas Card from Elwyn Berlekamp

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P=NP noise

If anyone actually proves that P=NP, they're going to have to be famous already. Otherwise, no one sensible is ever going to even try to read the paper.

Here's an interesting acoustical analysis of the noisy room that a correct proof will have to shoulder its way into.

Also: Oded Goldreich on the same issue.

By the way: it has to be true that P=NP, if only because of the multiplication of ugly complexity classes that arises if P isn't NP. There's no way that stuff can be allowed a position in the ultimate platonic beauty of the universe. As I put it to an admirably skeptical Scott Aaronson—

"All the stuff in your zoo needs to DIE."

He responded calmly enough, pointing out that some complexity classes can be separated even if P=NP. OK—I don't have a problem with that, we'll allow them on the Ark and then let the flood take the rest.

(Please consider these remarks my contribution to the noise).

Guess where my tattoo is lager

The goal of the campaign is to give the beer drinker a "conversation starter" on the back label of each bottle...

..."You go into bars and you see people holding bottles of beer, and they hold them like badges," Wright says. "We can't really compete with Budweiser and say all the things about people that it does, so we have to take a short cut."

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Most accurately rated rock bands

Excerpt:

Blue Oyster Cult: The BOC song everyone pays attention to is the suicide anthem "Don't Fear the Reaper." However, that song is stupid and doesn't use enough cowbell.

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Incredibly cool site at MIT,

Incredibly cool site at MIT, the History of Recent Science and Technology, including this Physics stuff by Dyson, from 1951. Excerpt:

One of Freeman Dyson's first tasks as a newly-minted professor of physics at Cornell in the fall of 1951 was to offer a course on quantum electrodynamics that incorporated many of the new techniques which he, Feynman, Schwinger, Tomonaga, and others had been developing. Dyson wrote up the notes to these lectures, variously titled Advanced Quantum Theory or Advanced Quantum Mechanics in mimeograph form. The mimeographs of these lecture notes are made available for viewing here...

Comment Spam Load Issue

Just as I was pondering whether to upgrade to MT 3 so that I could painlessly turn on comments on this weblog:

Excerpt from an article at the Moveable Type site:

In fact, we have found that there is a fairly major bug (in terms of effect, but not code size) which causes page rebuilding even in the case of a comment submission which would be moderated and hence should have no effect on the live page. This means that even if you are using comment moderation in Movable Type and even force moderation in MT-Blacklist, your server load is impacted just as if a comment had been posted to the live site. This bug has been fixed in development...

Added later: It seems a bit odd to measure a bug in terms of "code size." I guess they mean it's a simple fix? Or that it was an ever so tiny bug, say one character? Or maybe even one bit? So tiny.

Please put your papers online!

Please put your papers online!

A valued customer

THANE: I'm seeing $20 charges on my checking account as each check clears. Why?

BANK PERSON: There's a hold on a check you deposited.

THANE: But I looked online, to see if you put a hold on that check. You didn't.

BANK PERSON: There are many issues in the check clearing process, auditing, coordination [...long winded banking BS...]

THANE: I'm not satisfied. I want to be refunded all the $20 charges. How many charges are there?

BANK PERSON: Six.

THANE: The check has cleared now, right?

BANK PERSON: There are many issues in the check clearing process, auditing [...more BS elided...]

THANE: I'm not satisfied. I want to be refunded all the $20 charges.

BANK PERSON: OK, I've refunded 3 of the charges prior to the representment [...blah...blah...]

THANE: I'm not satisfied. How long have I been a customer?

BANK PERSON: 17 years.

THANE: Has there ever been the slightest problem in my account?

BANK PERSON: No.

THANE: I want to be refunded all the $20 charges.

BANK PERSON: OK

Random numbers, reprise: His Master's Voice

Excerpt from this Lem summary:

Sam Laserowitz, imaginative loner and small-time inventor, hits upon a scheme to make money easily. He sees a market for tables of random numbers. Now, truly random series of numbers are harder to generate than you might imagine, and they are of great use to scientists in producing accurate statistics. Laserowitz hits upon the idea that he can make tables of random numbers by purchasing data on the random patterns of neutrinos which come towards the earth from our universe. He does just that, and successfully publishes a book of random numbers. Shortly after this he finds he has a law suit pressed against him for fraud…..a scientist using the tables discovers that Laserowitz made his tables last twice as long by simply reproducing the first fifty pages of numbers over again in the second half of the book...

65 Mb of vintage random numbers from 1965

link (via boingboing)

Photo by Owen

Owen took a picture of me with his digital camera after I replaced the batteries for him.

I know, I know—a first-grader with his own digital camera? Well, he's sure as hell not touching my cameras.

High Speed Book Scanning

It's as big as an SUV and lives behind an unmarked door in the basement of the Stanford University library. The Swiss-designed robot scanner rapidly turns and flattens pages of old books -- both large and small, even bound newspaper volumes -- then scans and digitizes the text faster than you can say Evelyn Wood...

more ["Evelyn Wood?"]

Also this odd remark:

"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa. Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"

Q: What can I print on M&M's candies?

A: Keep your message fun and positive