Archive for August, 2006

Cats and dogs

Found this interesting comparison of people to cats and dogs this afternoon. If you can’t guess or don’t know me, I think I tend toward dog-ness.
I was looking more for software to predict the patterns formed by tiling circles (spherical particles) of several different sizes, which led me to ‘ghost diagrams’ on the same [...]

“The acceptance of evolution”

It is disturbing to think that (according to the New York Times) only around 50% of Americans have embraced the truth of evolution. That’s right — we’re only just ahead of Turkey on the number of people who have made the decision to let evolution into their heads. Of course, it’s a little [...]

Cthulhu Nation

That is not dead which… can be turned into a big browser-based RPG. A very nice one, still being tinkered with but I haven’t seen any big bugs yet. Set in the 1920s, with exotic destinations that include England, Egypt, Pitcairn Island, Peru, and even the vast Antarctic! Be a private eye [...]

Distributing incomplete information

I’ve discovered, in recent months, the fun of contributing to Wikipedia (WP). The chemistry section (analytical chemistry in particular) is sadly incomplete — there wasn’t even an article on beakers until recently, for instance. And since I like writing, and I like chemistry, and I like digging for new stuff to learn about, [...]

Physics for the rest of us

I’m a chemist. I’ve had a total of two years of physics classes in my life, one of which was in high school. Looking back, I could wish I’d taken a good bit more physics and math and less of the biology. What I remember of the latter is probably pretty well [...]