Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses… No, Daddy, it was three little pigs. This is a completely different story, honey. Once upon a time, there were three giant hippopotamuses, who lived together in a river in Africa. They lived in a house. Well, hippos spend most of their time in the water, […]
Category: Silliness
Quantum Musical Interlude
The title says it all: an animated video of Heisenberg singing about the Uncertainty Principle: So, you know, there’s that. It’s pretty good, but he’s no Feynman:
Wacky Football Mishap Poll
So, my Giants edged out Kate’s Patriots again in the Chateau Steelypips Bowl, in a game that was certainly not without its drama. I’m not going to gloat about it, because a couple of different bounces here or there easily could’ve changed the outcome. Also, I didn’t see the third quarter at all, really, because […]
The Best of All Possible (Football) Universes
Proving that you can find physics in everything, Sean Carroll points to a strange anomaly in the Super Bowl coin toss: the NFC has won 14 coin tosses in a row. The odds of this happening seem to be vanishingly small, making this a 3.8-sigma effect, almost enough to claim the detection of a new […]
Incredibly Serious Sunday Poll
Like many Americans, I’m going to be hugely preoccupied today. Thus, a poll for your blog-like entertainment needs: The Super Bowl is today. Who’s going to win? If you choose the last option, please arrange to have contacted me in the past to tell me who to have laid a significant bet on so I […]
Academic Poll: Day One
It’s the first day of class today (for me, anyway– classes technically started yesterday, but I don’t teach on Tuesdays this term). This, of course, means that something will go horribly wrong. The question is, what? What will go wrong on the first day of class today? This is a class for first-year students, so […]
It May or May Not be 2012 Somewhere
A while back, a reader from Bulgaria sent me a photo of a highly topical bottle of local spirits: You can either know where you are, or how much you’ve drunk, but not both… Having spent my last day of 2011 taking SteelyKid to the mall for bouncy-bounce and midway games, and then having her […]
Christmas Physics: How Strong Is One Grinch?
And what happened then? Well, in Who-ville they say That the Grinch’s small heart Grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning Of Christmas came through And the Grinch found the strength Of ten Grinches, plus two — Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas It’s nearly Christmas, so SteelyKid keeps demanding to […]
Because 4% of the Energy Controls 100% of the Photons
“I work around the clock– 1043 Planck times per second– providing the gravitational attraction to hold this galaxy cluster together. And some baryonic cosmologist wants to explain me away as a modification of Newtonian gravity? “I have been silent for 13.7 billion years, but no more. “I AM THE 96%” (Original Pandora Cluster image from […]
Sing Along Time
Twinkle, twinkle Have you any wool? H I J K L-M-N-O-P Up above the world so high One for the little boy who lives down the lane Now I know my A-B-C’s Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full