30 June, 2008

И снова о берлинском акценте

Бог, как говорится, шельму метит. Недавно я писал о том, как мечтаю наконец-то услышать настоящий берлинский акцент. И услышал. У нас были двухдневный курсы первой помощи, где тётенька доктор обладала типичным берлинским прононсом. То есть, например, вместо "alles gar nicht gut gemacht", она говорила "allet jar nischt jut jemascht" - и это было ужасно. За два дня я ничего не понял из ее рассказов, хотя обычный немецкий на слух понимаю. Просто сидел и втыкал. Не дай бог никому пережить такое.

28 June, 2008

The world factbook

Описания всех стран на сайте ЦРУ, очень информативно, только факты, без особой пропаганды.

Нашел через сайт Студии Лебедева.

26 June, 2008

“SO WHAT WILL YOU DO IF STRING THEORY IS WRONG?”

Today I came across an interesting letter by Moataz Emam, published in The American Journal of Physics. Here is the main idea:

"...So even if someone shows that the universe cannot be based on string theory, I suspect that people will continue to work on it. It might no longer be considered physics, nor will mathematicians consider it to be pure mathematics. I can imagine that string theory in that case may become its own new discipline; that is, a mathematical science that is devoted to the study of the structure of physical theory and the development of computational tools to be used in the real world. The theory would be studied by physicists and mathematicians who might no longer consider themselves either. They will continue to derive beautiful mathematical formulas and feed them to the mathematicians next door. They also might, every once in a while, point out interesting and important properties concerning the nature of a physical theory which might guide the physicists exploring the actual theory of everything over in the next building..."

UPD: There is a preprint of this article in arXiv.

25 June, 2008

Unbreakable spaces

In the post How to make sure your paper will be rejected Daniel Lemire mentions that the paper will be definitely not accepted if "The authors have obviously never heard of unbreakable spaces." I absolutely agree with such a point, and always use a tilde in LaTeX when typing names, references, etc. However, such a rule is often violated by journals themselves. For instance, today I've got the authors' proofs of our article, accepted for publication in Jounal of Chemical Physics, where all my unbreakable spaces were broken. Afterwards I've had a look to recent articles in Physical Review and some other journals - their publishing staff also seems to be happy with breaking "Fig. 1" into two parts...

Writing papers

Here I provide a few links that I found interesting:

1) Write good papers by Daniel Lemire:

2) How to maximize citations by Peter Turney

3) Hints for New PhD students on How to Write Papers by Shahn Majid

I'm gratefut to Daniel for such a point:
"...A good abstract answers the question
why should I read this paper?, it does not summarize the paper..."

24 June, 2008

Снова об эффекте Зенона

Игорь Иванов оставил два интересных комментария к моему достаточно старому посту про эффект Зенона. Я стал лучше понимать.

Ссылки

Как следует из предыдущего поста, я решил добавлять на сайдбар блоги и сайты, которые я регулярно смотрю. Добавил блог Игоря Иванова "Что интересного происходит в науке", который я читаю давно, и несколько раз на него ссылался здесь и здесь (может и еще где-то).

Свободные исследователи

Относительно недвано нашел отличный научно-популярный блог Свободные исследователи, который ведет Алексей Тимошенко. Очень рекомендую, добавил ссылку в сайдбар.

22 June, 2008

Два форума

1) хороший математический форум - Dr. Math, via Roman Krems' webpage

2) англоязычный форум о Берлине, via Vasya Vasin

19 June, 2008

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

An exciting article by William Deresiewicz:

"Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers"

via Daniel Lemire's blog

Daniel also picks up a cool phrase: "It’s no coincidence that our current president [Bush], the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale."

Top 10 Scientists Killed or Injured by Their Experiments

Such a strange top-10 list was published at listverse.com:

"Man owes a great debt to the scientists on this list; all of them died or were injured in their pursuit of knowledge. The advances they have all made to science are extraordinary and many of them paved the way for some of man’s greatest discoveries and inventions."

Русская версия доступна здесь.

07 June, 2008

Harpstars at YouTube

Оказывается, некоторые гармошечные знаменитости стали выкладывать свои уроки на YouTube. Например, Adam Gussow:




Или Jason Ricci

06 June, 2008

Ещё одна картинка о французских забастовках


-Но Вы же не можете бастовать, Вы же безработный!
- Я тренеруюсь на случай, если найду работу...

05 June, 2008

Ne plus jamais travailler

И еще одна любимая:


"Никогда больше не работать"

"La majorité c'est vous" par René Maltête

Одна из моих любимых фотографий:


"Большинство - это вы"

На сайте René Maltête куча веселых и интересных работ.

04 June, 2008

One-page round-number handbook of physics

Это гениально:
Edward Purcell, Am. J. Phys 51, 11 (1983).

Acoustical and physical dynamics of the diatonic harmonica

Интересная научная статья о физике диатонической гармошки:
H. T. Banson, J. F. Antaki, Q. C. Beery, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 103 (4), 2134 (1998)


"The harmonica is arguably the most widely played instrument in the world, yet there is a surprising paucity of published studies of its acoustics or physical dynamics. The typical diatonic harmonica and the physical forces involved in its natural function are described, and simple observations of the harp’s functions are reported. The speaking of the reeds, naturally, when producing a bend, and when speaking as an overblow or overdraw is discussed and investigated by simple stopping of the reeds, by videostroboscopic analysis, and by recording vibration of the reeds with displacement gauges. The reeds of the ten hole harmonica can be made to vibrate at varying frequencies depending on the size and shape of the player’s vocal tract. Three different modes of speaking from each hole and its pair of reeds are revealed and studied: first, naturally in a closing mode, either blown or drawn; second, as a bend, either blown or drawn, with pitch in the interval between the two notes in the hole; and third, as an overblow or overdraw in an opening mode with a pitch outside the interval between the two natural notes of the hole. This dynamic interaction allows the player to speak with the instrument perhaps as with no other."

03 June, 2008

Three brain rules to improve your presentations.

В принципе, это очевидные вещи, но далеко не все их соблюдают:

"1) Exercise - Making your body a lean, clean, aerobic machine, besides giving you time to think, ensures that your brain gets the oxygen it needs. It also gives you some empathy for the poor schlubs that must sit through your lecture, inert brains encased in a desk. Make their time worth it.

2) The 10 minute rule – Your audience fades after 10 minutes. If you have to lecture for 50 minutes, conscientiously change-up every 10 minutes or so. Turn on the lights, show a blank screen and tell a story, have your audience stand up and stretch, anything to reset the 10-minute boredom clock.

3) Pictures beat text – We remember a good image far longer than a string of text. During your talks, show images, speak words. If you need blocks of text for your talk, use handouts."

отсюда