Linus Pauling FTW

Scientists have just imaged atomic bonds in a molecule as it changed shapes. It's particularly amazing how the shapes from molecular diagrams pretty exactly match the images of the actual molecule.

Atomic animation

IBM made their logo out of atoms when they first invented the scanning probe microscope. Now they've made a movie with atoms as pixels. That's some cool progress.

Linus Torvalds on ideology

This quote from a longer interview is about software design, but I believe it applies to Everything.

Any time you have "one overriding idea", and push your idea as a superior ideology, you're going to be wrong. Microkernels had one such ideology, there have been others. It's all BS. The fact is, reality is complicated, and not amenable to the "one large idea" model of problem solving. The only way that problems get solved in real life is with a lot of hard work on getting the details right. Not by some over-arching ideology that somehow magically makes things work.

Domination Associate

No, he's not my minion. He's my domination associate.

Tau, an improvement on Pi

I have loved Pi for a long time.  But Vi Hart has convinced me that Tau (2 Pi) is a better way to do circle math and trigonometry.  It has all the things that make Pi wonderful, but is even simpler and easier to understand.

Happy Tau Day!

Ready Player One - awesome book

I stumbled upon the book Ready Player One at my library, and I LOVED it.  It's a veritable nerdgasm of pop culture references.  (Badass scifi author John Scalzi nailed that description.)  It's a tale of a kid in the future trying to find easter eggs in a virtual world to inherit Steve Jobs' fortune.  I mean, not Steve Jobs, "James Halliday".

At one point, there's a party where R2D2 DJ's, and a Klingon bartender serves Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters.

It's a really fun ride, with very clever nerd culture references.

Happy Picard Day!

June 16th is Captain Picard Day.  It's the day when all the children on the Enterprise create a likeness of the captain to celebrate him.  Lots of nerds of the world did the same.  This one is my favorite.