Random Thoughts

Berlusconi for The Times: a Chauvinist Buffoon

As elections to renew the european parliaments get closer, the political arena in Italy fails to deal with the matters that should interest voters, and instead concentrates on the behavior of Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. In a crescendo o ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Jun 1 2009 - 10:20am

Black to move: what would you play?

The following position arose from a blitz chess game played on the Internet Chess Club this afternoon. I am white, and black is to move. As you can see, material is even; white has all his pieces but the Rd1 trained against the enemy kings' shelter, a ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Jun 1 2009 - 11:22am

The Real Ira Hayes

The Real Ira Hayes The world's largest statue is a bronze sculpture 110 feet high. It depicts six Marines.  Each figure is about 32 feet tall. They are hoisting an American flag on the island of Iwo Jima. I would like to introduce my readers to an ar ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Jun 1 2009 - 1:23pm

Random Noise #14: Colorless Green Syntax

Random Noise #14: Colorless Green Syntax Formal grammar is heavily based in syntax.  It is possible to generate sentences by using word lists and rules in a computer program, but the output rarely makes much sense and can be exceedingly funny. By ignoring ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Jun 1 2009 - 5:22pm

Morning Science Quote

An educational culture where it's an embarrassment to not know the names of five plays by Shakespeare but OK not to know the difference between a gene and a chromosome isn't functional.     - Larry Summers, quoted in The New York Times April 27, ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 4 2009 - 11:02am

David Carradine's Last Stand

If you have not yet heard, David Carradine, aged 72, was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Wednesday, probably of a suicide (or perhaps something more INXS-related?).    I was in my den drinking a coffee, reading science and eating some Mini-Wheats whe ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Jun 5 2009 - 11:27am

Fraud Takes A Lot Of Brass

Fraud Takes A Lot Of Brass There have been many daring and dastardly deeds of deception throughout history.  The daring deeds of the French Maquis and Britain's SOE in the second world war are legendary. The faker and fraudster, on the other hand, ju ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Jun 4 2009 - 1:31pm

Lost in the Deluge

This can't all be good stuff: a paper I'm reading noted that "Just a few keywords (linkage, mapping, SNP, genomewide association) identified 6866 articles in the PubMed database published in 2007 alone." (Before you get too depressed, n ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 4 2009 - 5:01pm

DeCAPitating puzzles, or ways to procrastinate

Not quite as scientifically challenging as Garth's Geek Off, but still a workout for the neurons. John Tierney's "Tierney Lab" column in the NY Times features DeCAPitated puzzles, like the one below: For the first puzzle, identify the e ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Jun 4 2009 - 7:46pm

Morning Science Quote

  An essential prerequisite [for genius] is a particular skepticism. [The scientist] must have refused to acquiesce in certain previously accepted conclusions. This argues a kind of an imperviousness to the opinions of others, notably of authorities.- Erne ...

Blog Post - Michael White - Jun 5 2009 - 6:00am