There, I’ve said it. If you live in the United States and want to fight the national debt, then buy and use Sacagawea dollars. The potential savings to the US is apparently 500 million bucks. Ok, that’s paltry when compared to the actual national debt, but it’s nothing to sneeze at. Don’t think about the […]
Author Archive | weeklyrob
Einstein
I’m reading a biography of Einstein, by Walter Isaacson. There are lots of “didja knows” throughout the book, but the theme seems to be how Einstein’s creativity and irreverence were the keys to his scientific life and success. A few notable items that have nothing to do with that theme: 1. He had an illegitimate […]
Failure to Communicate
Sitcoms are Stupid In the world of sitcoms and dumb movies, a guy going to a foreign land is bound to say something completely idiotic in the strange language. While shaking hands with a possible business partner, he says, “your rhinoceros is very snotty.” Or “your mother is pregnant with my baby.” Then, either everyone […]
Small Slip for Man
I remember reading a while back that maybe Astronaut Armstrong really said: “A small step for a man…” instead of what it sounded like: “A small step for man….” (link) Obviously, that would make a little more sense, and the idea was that maybe the “a” got lost somewhere in the miles between the moon […]
Guy Rules
Are these people gay? THEN: A few years ago, I was out at a restaurant/bar with three guys. It was early in the evening, the bar hadn’t really gotten started, and we just wanted some food. We could have sat in these sort of high stool-chairs, very close to blaring speakers near an empty dance […]
Are We Getting Heavier?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the earth’s rotation is slowing. So I have some questions. 1. As the earth rotates, don’t we, just a bit, sort of want to fly off the face of the earth in a straight line heading east (or what’s called East on earth)? That is, our inertia would […]
Unkindest Cut: Dementia and Auschwitz
I’m reading, The Day the War Ended, by Martin Gilbert. It’s a bunch of personal accounts of the days leading up to, and after, V-E day. It’s filling in some blanks in my knowledge of those days, though there’s a lot of repetition (and sometimes the details are too narrow to be interesting to me. […]
Eat Your Words
Which shape above is the bouba? BBC News has a medium-length article (with videos!) about some science showing that we all have the ability for some kind of synesthesia. Some words just SEEM to represent a rounded shape rather than an angular one. Others just seem to represent a sour taste more than a sweet […]
Math and Computation
If that subject makes you want to run for the hills, then you and I can hang out. Another way to look at it is that we need people like Stephen Wolfram around. Here’s his latest project. Plug in stuff and get stuff back. [Link found on boingboing]
New Dating Technique
Sucker! You thought I was going to tell you how to go from movie and dinner to breakfast in bed? No. But scientists have found a way to tell the age of ceramics, which are impervious to carbon dating. At the moment, they can only date back a couple of thousand years, but they’re trying […]