At Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog. Pictures definitely NSFW.
Sex and Roman coins
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Author Archives: gmcdavid
On the current Blackberry controversy….
Gulf states order Blackberry users to cover their phones in a tiny burqa
Some businessmen believe that making their phone wear a burqa can be very liberating. “It’s great,” said one, “with the veil in place I am free to walk about with my Blackberry in public without the feeling that people are staring lustily at my multi-media application. It also covers my shame for not owning an iPhone.”
The Saudi government have promised that anyone who refuses to dress their Blackberry in a burqa will face harsh punishment. “I am not saying exactly what we will do,” said their Minister for Justice, “but suffice to say that it isn’t so easy to text with your toes.”
Via BoingBoing
Don’t be a Spock!
Stepping through time
Russian photographer (and Photoshopper) Sergey Larenkov merges WWII-era photos with contemporary shots of identical locations in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Leningrad, and other European cities, to haunting effect.
For Sale
Who were the building contractors? Do they have any outstanding liens on the property? :-)>
Computing as it was
I was digging through some old files and found a wonderful letter to the editor of Datamation from 1983. Fortunately, it has been preserved for posterity on the web:
Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal.
Back then I was starting a phase of my career in which I did a lot of FORTRAN programming, which lasted until about 1990.
No Big Bang? Not so fast….
Big Bang
There have been a number of stories like
Theory
suggests universe without Big Bang in the media.
Tall Ships in Duluth
On Saturday mia_mcdavid, carpe_noctum_93 (our foster daughter), and I drove up to Duluth to see the tall ships. The crowd was huge, but the parking was not too bad for those of us who are used to big cities. The ships were impressive. I took some pictures with my Blackberry, which you can see here.
Thinking about eBooks
I have been hesitant about eBooks because of
- DRM issues
- How would I choose among the various readers out there?
However, the sheer volume of our library means the issue is always coming up. Continue reading
Superconductivity
High-Temperature Superconductivity is something I worked on at Stanford back in 1973-75. The world has changed. Now “high-temperature” means “above the boiling point of liquid Nitrogen” (77oK/-321oF). Back then it meant “above the boiling point of liquid Hydrogen” (20oK/-423oF), and it was still an unattained goal. We had to use liquid Helium. Still, some things remain the same:
- Dimensionality matters. Back then I was working with thin films, thin enough to act in some ways like two-dimensional objects. This is still important.
- The Ginzburg-Landau macroscopic theory seems to still work. The more detailed BCS Theory goes beyond G-L to a give a microscopic description of superconductivity and is very successful at liquid Helium temperatures. However, it appears to be in trouble at higher temperatures.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 