caleb walker

laika

Last night we watched My Life as a Dog, one of our favorite movies, for the third time. Ingemar, the little boy who narrates, reminds us many times that it's important to remember those who have it worse than we do. Like Laika, the dog the Soviets sent into orbit in 1957.

This morning I read a report that Laika finally got her own monument. (AP story)

best story of the year

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, lost his voice permanently a year and a half ago to a rare condition called spasmodic dysphonia. "I asked my doctor – a specialist for this condition – how many people have ever gotten better. Answer: zero." But Scott found a workaround in his brain and cured himself. He's speaking normally now.

happy birthday, einstein

It is Albert Einstein's birthday today. His discoveries led to the development of the atomic bomb. Later he said, "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."

lunation

Check out this hypnotic animation of the moon's complete cycle. I never knew it wobbled like that.

feynman letters

The Guardian has an article by the daughter of "the smartest man in the world," Richard Feynman, in which she presents excerpts from some of his letters.

I first became aware of Feynman in the documentary Ghengis Blues, in which I also learned of blind blues singer Paul Pena. But that's another story. Feynman was a brilliant scientist, adventurer, world traveller, and Nobel winner. He died in 1988. I have wanted to read his books or the collections of his lectures, but I never have.

Some choice excerpts from the letter excerpts:

I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

I was delighted too when I heard about the Nobel Prize, thinking as you did that my bongo playing was at last recognised.

multi-tasking

Mind Hacks has a new article about performing multiple cognitive activities at once. (Second link to Mind Hacks in as many days. Hm.) It reminds me of this story, told to me (and the rest of the students in class) by Herb Simon, Nobel Laureate and teacher of a Cognitive Psych class I took.

Herb flew to Buffalo (or somewhere) and was picked up at the airport by a colleague. As his colleague drove them into town along the snow-covered roads, they discussed whether the human mind could process tasks in parallel. Herb argued that it could not, and gave his driver a set of instructions. "Picture a rectangle that is twice as long as it is high. Now bisect it diagonally. Slice it vertically two-thirds of the way from the left edge," and so on. Herb told us that as the number of instructions increased, the car went slower and slower. He delivered this punchline: "Fortunately, when we went off the road we were going so slowly that there was no damage to the car."

exploding pop

Just yesterday I was wondering why it is that a shaken container of pop blows up. This morning defective yeti has the answer.

a rainbow

As I was driving south on I-79 on Sunday evening I saw a rainbow. The sun was out, and it wasn't raining. It didn't even look like it was raining anywhere in the sky. So I was curious. This story (and its links) have taught me a bit about how rainbows form. They appear around the antisolar point. That is, they form around the point opposite where the sun is - in other words, where your head's shadow would be. That's why you only see a portion of the complete circle. Its bottom half is below the horizon.

Rainbows form when rain drops are in the air in the antisolar direction. So this weekend there must have been rain off to the east. I only saw arcs, so there must have been scattered patches of rain.

Based on my new knowledge, the rainbow that ended in the street in front of my childhood home seems to have been an impossibility. It arced out of the sky and planted itself directly in front of our driveway.

the golden ratio

The Golden Ratio (GR) is defined by dividing a line into two parts, where the ratio of the length of the entire line to the longer division is equal to the ratio of the longer division to the shorter. That ratio is approximately 1.618, and some claim it's the most aesthetically pleasing ratio to the human eye. (The GR is related to the Fibonacci sequence, in which the next number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on.)

This article by Keith Devlin sets out to disprove that the GR has been used in art and architecture, but what I found most interesting was the discussion about how GR appears in the natural world:

Finally, if you take a close look at the way leaves are located on the stems of trees and plants, you will see that they are located on a spiral that winds around the stem. Starting at one leaf, count how many complete turns of the spiral it takes before you find a second leaf directly above the first. Let P be that number. Also count the number of leaves you encounter (excluding the first one itself). That gives you another number Q. The quotient P/Q is called the divergence of the plant. (The divergence is characteristic for any particular species.) If you calculate the divergence for different species of plants, you find that both the numerator and the denominator are usually Fibonacci numbers. In particular, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, and 8/21 are all common divergence ratios. For instance, common grasses have a divergence of 1/2, sedges have 1/3, many fruit trees (including the apple) have a divergence of 2/5, plantains have 3/8, and leeks come in at 5/13.

For instance, in the case of leaves, each new leaf is added so that it least obscures the leaves already below and is least obscured by any future leaves above it. Hence the leaves spiral around the stem. For seeds in the seedhead of a flower, Nature wants to pack in as many seeds as possible, and the way to do this is to add new seeds in a spiral fashion.

Cool.

a brush with yahoo news

I walk past the Roboceptionist several times every day, and now it's listed on the Most Viewed page at Yahoo News. I haven't played with it yet, though. Maybe because its face frightens me.