From Bad Astronomy:
…. it’s generally best to look at the evidence. In this case, I doubt strongly that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush Administration. For one thing, it would involve intelligence, planning, and an ability to actually think things through. Trying to pin that on this Administration is ridiculous. C’mon! We have a President who has a hard time eating pretzels here.
2%: The US Civil War, mathematics, and why we have already lost in Iraq
Solitudinem fecerunt, pacem appelunt – They made a desert and called it peace. (Tacitus)
From a well-intentioned Washington Post column:
Some evangelical churches offer confession and weekly communion. They distribute ashes on Ash Wednesday and light Advent calendars at Christmastime.
Via GetReligion.
As long as I can remember I been aware of this famous quotation from Isaac Newton
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
and thought of it as a distinctly modest remark by one of the three greatest mathematicians in history.
However, there is more to it. Newton chose that image at least in part because of his feud with Robert Hooke, who was physically rather short.
From “On the Shoulders of Giants” or, Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten Cold Edition at The Inverse Square Blog, which I learned about from Cosmic Variance.
As mia_mcdavid forecast, we had a busy weekend. colgaffneyis basket making workshop yesterday was interesting and fun basketmaking
Irish Class, March 3, 2008
The first part of class was a translation exercise, with a twist: We were given 12
simple sentences in Scottish Gaelic, and asked to produce the Irish
equivalent, and the English translation:
A crew from the city came by a few weeks ago and trimmed our front yard tree–the branches were hanging way out over the street. We saved the branches to see if I could make anything out of them with green woodworking techniques using only hand (non-electric) tools. After a couple hours of hard work with saws, splitting wedges and a maul, and other tools, the answer is yes: Firewood (if we let it dry for a couple years). The branches were just too knotty and bent to get any useful length of straight-grained wood. Perhaps I will be able to carve a few spoons. This was about what I expected from the literature; you really need wood from the tree’s trunk, and from the trunk of the right tree. My selection here in a first ring suburb is limited.
I kept trying for quite a while, and it was with some difficulty I tore myself away from the effort. However, that was the right thing to do. I was tired, and might have made a mistake. So I quit while I still had ten fingers, and all of my blood was still inside my body. Well, I certainly got my exercise today.
We saw Tom yesterday. We decided to treat this like our regular visits since he moved out of our house back in 2006. So we picked him up from where he is now staying, the crisis center in West St, Paul, and took him to lunch at the Highland Grill. This worked out very well, although Tom was very hungry. We saw once again that Tom likes quite spicy food, and despite his food allergies, has a much wide range of taste than his brother. Afterwards we took a walk around the neighborhood, a very pleasant part of St. Paul. It had a delightful sense of normalcy. Tom was in good spirits and seems to be doing very well at the Crisis Center.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 