Controlling the Clock

Sabermetrician Martin Manley committed suicide on August 15th (his 60th birthday), and he documented his reasoning in detail. (He included lots of details about both his life and his death.) I read the beginning blurbs about his death just to get the gist of what he had in mind, and I am writing this post and linking to his material because I think it's a fundamentally interesting document. I didn't go through the details of it, but I think there is a natural curiosity about what he was thinking. (You can call it "morbid" if you want, but I think it is natural to wonder about his train of thought. I don't consider it morbid.)

P.S. My own choice is to stay around until I am dragged away --- like the baseball player who has to have his uniform pulled off or else he'll keep trying to play forever.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Bulletproof Whiteboards

Every university should have bulletproof whiteboards, right? I hope they erase well, at least. And now maybe I can make my exams even harder? :)

This is pretty depressing. Well, my actual reaction is one of simultaneous amusement and depression: On one hand, it's really a bad sign of what our world and our lives have become. On the other hand, these are bulletproof whiteboards, and the only really proper reaction to that is LOL!.

Anyway, I could really use one of these...

Also, we totally need these for our new Mathematical Institute building! (Into which we'll be moving ... very ... soon ... now ... really.)

(Tip of the cap to Andrew Waugh. Note that I have updated this entry with additional snarky and non-snarky text from the original version.)

Draw a Stickman

The web page Draw a Stickman is pretty damn amusing. I seemed to be combining this game with The Sims and was rather cruel to my Stickman. My 'latent' violent tendencies were coming out again. :) This tends to be the case with certain types of games. (**Cough** Black & White **Cough**)

(Tip of the cap to Jason Chen.)

Seattle Police Department to Hand Out Free Doritos at Hempfest

Don't believe me? Just read the news for yourself.

As the Seattle PD's Twitter feed says (in response to some flack): "Please ignore maliciously false reports that we're giving out Bugles at @seattlehempfest. We would never, ever do that."

At least this department has a sense of humor. The LAPD tends to hand out very different things (rather than Doritos)...

Cats and Dogs

China has a really "awesome" zoo that does an impressive job of labeling its animals. Seriously.

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science.)

If You Didn't Communicate It, Then You Didn't Do it.

If you didn't write it down or tell anybody or communicate it in some other way, then you didn't do it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I proved cold fusion. I just didn't bother to tell anybody or show it to anybody or ever even mention it really, but I still deserve credit and a citation if you do it later (because that's when I'll bring it up). And a Nobel Prize. Give me one of those beauties, too. You're just going to have to take my word about my notes that I never showed to anybody.

That is now twice this summer that I have run into so-called "scholars" who apparently believe crap like this --- not cold fusion, but the notion that their idea that has never been communicated in public means that they don't have to give proper credit or (in the more extreme case) that of course they did it but they didn't bother to mention it at all in their paper, so you can't get credit for doing it and don't insult them by stating that those calculations hadn't been done in the literature. And these people are ok with stepping on other people in the process. And one of these people seemed to be ok with screwing over their own student! WTF?

National Relaxation Day

In honor of National Relaxation Day, I offer you a link to the wikipedia entry for "Relaxation (physics)". It's about time that you learned about that anyway. :) Unless, of course, you already know about it (like the physicists and many others who read this blog).

Also, according to the website Punchbowl, which appears to keep track of holidays, today is also "Assumption Day" and "Lemon Meringue Pie Day". So, if possible, find a way to combine all three. I'm just going to assume that you do that. August is "National Goat Cheese Month", so eat some of that too, and don't forget to listen to Elvis while doing so because it is "Elvis Week" (though you get to decide between Presley and Costello, even though I assume that they mean the former) and do it in a plane because it's "National Aviation Week".

OK, "Enough of that.", as George Carlin might say.

(Tip of the cap the the Dragon Con Facebook page.)

An Addendum to 'Critical Truths About Power Laws'

Here is a brief addendum to the opinion paper "Critical Truths About Power Laws that I coauthored with Michael Stumpf in 2012. I wanted to post this addendum on the arXiv, but the arXiv admins wouldn't let me post it and removed my submission. I am attempting to 'set the record straight' (or at least my perspective on it) on a specific point.

Title: An Addendum to 'Critical Truths About Power Laws'

Author: Mason A. Porter



Main Text of the Article: In Ref. [3], my coauthor Michael Stumpf and I wrote that "The power law reported for allometric scaling stands out as genuinely good" and reinforced this comment in the paper's figure. We also wrote that "... few people would dispute the reality of such a relationship." I have since learned that the "power law" in allometric scaling is in fact the subject of intense debate. Please see the discussions in Refs. [1, 2] (and in references therein) for details.



You can click on the addendum to see which references I cite.

The Signs Says What?

Here are some awesome (and also "awesome") Chinese signs that got lost in translation. Several of these are hilarious, and in my opinion #22 is the best. (Number 22 made me laugh out loud. It is awesome!) I have doubts about the authenticity, though. They seem too funny to be real signs without any photoshopping or other alterations. They're damn funny, though.

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

See! I Told You That People Are Particles!

Even Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal agrees that people are particles! See! I told you so! :P

(Well, actually, they aren't --- though that perspective can be both useful and insightful. Just don't go overboard with that perspective...)

Opening Act

Thought of the Day: The Wilson-Fisher Renormalization Group ought to have opened up for The Steve Miller Band at least once.

A Local Version of Global Warming

An ice age has hit my refrigerator (and freezer), and it's reached the point that a drink is actually jammed in there and can't be removed because it's stuck in the ice. (This was a glass of vodka that a friend of mine left after my 2009 birthday party. I don't drink, so it's just stayed there for 4.5 years.) My version of global warming is now in progress, and it involves lots of towels. This is what happens if you let something like this wait several years too long.

Update (8/13/13): Operation "Local Warming" has now reached Hour 31. The heavy machinery was brought in on Day 2, and I'm also keeping the door of the kitchen closed so that it stays warm enough to actually melt the ice. The vodka is no longer stuck and the refrigerator seems to finally be out of the ice age now. Here is how things looked in April (and things were even more severe last week, when I finally got around to doing something about it). The vodka in the freezer is literally jammed. (Somebody local should let me know if they want the vodka, by the way. I don't drink, so it's free to a good home.) We have now brought out the heavy machinery.

Automatic Dissertation-Title Generator

Here is an automatic generator for titles of PhD theses. My fake dissertation title is "Vesuvius Wept: A Mechanical Analysis of Popular Drinking Songs in Dante's Inferno".

The title of my actual dissertation is "Quantum Chaos in Vibrating Billiard Systems"

(Tip of the cap to Jure Leskovec.)

Congratulations to Dr. Puck Rombach!

My Ph.D. student Puck Rombach passed her dissertation defense (aka "viva") today with "Minor Corrections". It appears to be a relatively large number of minor corrections, but they're all eminently doable and it won't take long to dot all of the i's and cross all of the t's. You can find some of Puck's work on my website, as we have coauthored several papers. Puck's thesis is on a mixture of topics from pure graph theory (equitable colorings in random graphs), networks (core-periphery structure and centralities), and a couple of things that interpolate between these two extremes. The Examiners were Colin McDiarmid (internal) on the pure side and Alex Arenas (external) on the applied side.

CONGRATULATIONS, Dr. Rombach!

Ouch!

Sorry, Cub fans. This is pretty damn funny, though!

(Tip of the cap to Ben Williamson.)

Peer Review Fail

Well, this incident sure is a beauty.

To quote a line the supplementary information of this paper, Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis.... (And also an ethics fail.) Way to proofread! This is an instant classic. (By the way, there is already an update.)

(Tip of cap to Katie Siek.)

Update (8/10/13): Petter Holme has pointed me to this link, which updates the story further. The Editor in Chief is handling the aftermath very well, in my opinion. Of course, things shouldn't ever have gotten to this point, but the situation is what it is.

And So the Axe Falls...

The suspensions from the Biogenesis scandal have now been announced. A-Rod has been suspended for the rest of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season (though he will appeal), and 12 other players received 50-game suspensions. I don't particularly like to blog about PEDs and I tend to avoid it, and I hope that this is finally the beginning of the end of this long-running era in Baseball's history. At the very minimum, it's good to know that consensus player opinion is now massively against such things, and that is a great improvement over what used to be the case.

New 'Board Game Cafe' in Oxford!

I walked a few minutes away from home to get some food, and it turns out that a 'board game cafe' called Thirsty Meeples just opened up last week. It's only about a 7-minute walk from home and right near one of my coffee places! (Though I managed not to notice it the past several days when I went to get coffee...) Sweet!!

On a similar note, I am going to a board-game group meetup today. The group is called 'Oxford on Board'. I found out about this from my postdocs right before my trip to Korea, and I really ought to have found out about this group before (considering that it has existing for a few years). Tonight is the first time that I am going to one of their events. Better late than never, I suppose.

Anyway, it looks like my board-game options have expanded a decent amount, so I'm very much looking forward to more gaming! Of course, there is still the issue of my lack of time when term is in session (and lots of travelling when it isn't --- and, often, I suppose even when it is), but it's really great to see my board-game options expanding. More gaming for me!!

Back to the Future

It's good to know that we have a few spare blank 3.5 inch 'floppy' disks under lock and key in our filing cabinet (in Dartington House) in case we ever need them.

The Noogie Heard 'Round the World

Today is the 20th anniversary of The Noogie Heard 'Round the World.

(Tip of the cap to Buster Olney.)