Ramblings & ephemera
From John D. Barrow and John K. Webb’s "Inconstant Constants: Do the inner workings of nature change with time?" (Scientific American: 23 May 2005):
One ratio of particular interest combines the velocity of light, c, the electric charge on a single electron, e, Planck’s constant, h, and the so-called vacuum permittivity, 0. [...]
Posted on March 25th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | No Comments »
From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
Game theory began with the logical proposition that in a strategic two-player game, either player may try to obtain an advantage by bluffing. If the stakes are low, perhaps you can take a chance on trusting your opponent when he makes a seemingly fair and decent offer; [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics, science | Comments Off
From Edward Felten’s “Acoustic Snooping on Typed Information“:
Li Zhuang, Feng Zhou, and Doug Tygar have an interesting new paper showing that if you have an audio recording of somebody typing on an ordinary computer keyboard for fifteen minutes or so, you can figure out everything they typed. The idea is that different keys tend to [...]
Posted on April 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: security, writing ideas | Comments Off
From “Man recites pi from memory to 83,431 places“:
A Japanese psychiatric counselor has recited pi to 83,431 decimal places from memory, breaking his own personal best of 54,000 digits and setting an unofficial world record, a media report said Saturday.
Akira Haraguchi, 59, had begun his attempt to recall the value of pi - a mathematical [...]
Posted on March 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: cool stuff, science | Comments Off
From "The History of the Equals Sign", at The Science Show:
In 1543, [Robert] Record published The Ground of Arts, the first ever maths book in English, which ran through over fifty editions … Until 1557, mathematicians had finished off a calculation by laboriously writing out the words, is equal to, which was sometimes abbreviated to [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, science | Comments Off
I wish Mother Nature would decide if she wants to snow or rain or what.
Added a product to their wishlist:
Good God a'mighty but that big man positively.WAILS on the geetar!
The amazingly loud & good Tony Campanella is just starting. This guy rocked the house last year.
On my way with Robin to the annual Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute show at the Pageant. $15 for a kickass 3 hour + show. Awesomeness!
Daniel Craig = best James Bond ever. Good flick. Amazing fight scene among ropes & flying scaffolding!
About to see Quantum of Solace. I'm just expecting a popcorn movie, so I'm gonna be happy.
Just signed up for Mint to track my finances. http://www.mint.com. So far, it seems great. Really slick interface &easy to use. And free!
Awesome way to search Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, &more: http://keyboardr.com. VERY impressed, I am.