Jul 05
Uncategorized Comments Off
Last night’s fireworks were a bit of a disappointment for those in Manhattan. A combination of rain and wind conspired to blow all the smoke from the detonations towards us – and obscured the fireworks. However, there was one amazing sight: the image of hundreds of people on their rooftops holding umbrellas as they strained to see the explosions. Here’s what it looked like (click the image to enlarge it):
Jul 05
Uncategorized Comments Off
Over the past few days I’ve been reading through a stack of Wired magazines that have accumulated in my apartment over the past few months. As I was reading through an article Eureka! (a photo essay on where inspiration comes from), I came across the following image:
It’s the Cornell cafeteria where in 1946 Richard Feynman watched some students spin plates in the air. Improbably, these plates would lead to a Nobel Prize:
Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air, I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.
I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate — two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?”
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.
I still remember going to Hans Bethe [1967 physics Nobel Laureate twelve years Feynman's senior] and saying, “Hay, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so and the reason it’s two to one is …” and I showed him the accelerations.
He says, “Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?”
“Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.
I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation [Paul Dirac, 1933 physics Nobel Laureate] in electrodynamics. And then the quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was “playing” — working, really — with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems [at Princeton]; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.
It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams [Feynman diagrams] and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate. (Source)
When Feynman looked back to his Nobel Prize-winning work, he wrote:
It was the first time, and only time, in my career that I knew a law of nature that nobody else knew. The other things I had done before were to take somebody else’s theory and improve the method….I thought of Dirac, who had his equation [of 1928] for a while – a new equation which told him how an electron behaved – and I had this new equation for beta decay, which wasn’t as vital as the Dirac equation, but it was good. It’s the only time I ever discovered a new law. (Source)
Why do I share this? Three reasons:
Jul 02
Random Design, Random, Technology Comments Off
A few years ago I saw the movie Dig! – a documentary about the difference between two Portland bands: the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. It was a gripping, yet ultimately tragic tale – the Dandy’s go on to success while the highly talented frontman of the BJM, Anton Newcombe, self-destructs any time the threat of success rears its head.
Both bands are still around, but I’d always wondered what happened to the former members of the BJM. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some have gone on to other bands – most notably Peter Hayes going to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. More interesting, though, is the story of Travis Threkel, now a co-founder of the technology company/agency Obscura Digital. They’ve build some incredible technology to project images perfectly on just about any surface. Here are a couple of examples:
Jul 01
NYC Food, New York Comments Off
Based on my buddy Richard’s recommendations, I waited in line at Artichoke Basille’s Pizza for about 30 minutes today just to get two slices. The verdict? It was totally worth it. The pizza was amazing: the artichoke pizza had the most gourmet mix of cheeses I’ve ever tried (can a cheese be succulent? That’s the word that springs to mind). And the Sicilian was incredible – a Margherita with some fresh basil and an olive oil drizzle.
All that for just $5.50.
One of the best parts of the meal (besides the incredible food at low price) was also waiting in line and hearing the morbidly obese man behind me complain about “it taking so god damn long because the place was full of Williamsburg hipsters blogging about their f!cking order as the stood blocking everyone else.” I am neither particularly cool nor a Brooklyn resident, but since I blog I thought this was noteworthy.
Here’s a photo of the pizza so you can get a sense:
Jun 29
Science Comments Off
A recent Wired article cites the following:
The pitches in musical scales are likely derived from language. Turns out, aspects of spoken English and Mandarin correlate to the intervals between notes in a chromatic scale (the black and white piano keys in an octave).
Unfortunately, there’s nothing more than this offered as proof. What a bold statement to make but then not back up. Anyone out there know anything about this or where to get more details on this?
Jun 26
I’ve noticed three interesting things in New York over the past few weeks.
1) I don’t get nearly as much junk mail as I used to. In fact, a few days this week I’ve had no mail at all (don’t know if that should make me happy or sad). My guess is that the credit card companies are cutting down on their marketing budgets to keep profits high.
2) There are a bunch of billboards for rent near me – including a couple down in the meatpacking district that are about as good as they get for location.
3) They just can’t seem to lease space in Chelsea Market right now. There are a bunch of shops that have gone under and not been replaced.
These are anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data, but is America’s “recession that isn’t” finally coming to NYC?
Jun 23
Science Complexity, Prediction, Science Comments Off
One of the most fascinating scientific developments of the past 20 years has been the emergence of the field of complexity. With the advent of computers, scientists can now model massively complex systems – many of which tend to form from remarkably simple interactions.
A case in point was revealed in a New York Times article on cellphone tracking. The article summarized a recent letter to Nature magazine, understanding individual human mobility patterns (PDF). Previous studies of human mobility had used the sighting of banknotes in the same geography (via Where’s George) as a proxy for human mobility. The conclusion: humanity’s movement was random, following a fat-tailed Levy distribution (a lot of movements of short distances but more long distance movements than you’d expect).
However, the new study actually tracked people’s movements based upon their cellphones (data was anonymized and from a European provider who is required by law to track). What’s the new conclusion: humans don’t actually travel too far on average and our movements are actually highly predictable (Not too surprising given how much of your time is spent at work or home).
How do you reconcile the random movement of money with the predictable movement of humans? Simple “dollar bills diffuse, but humans do not” – the dollar bills do not travel with each human daily, rather are passed on. As a result a bunch of humans who do very predictable things can cause apparently random patterns to emerge in the movement of money. This is a classic example of complexity: a series of simple actions create a ridiculously complex pattern at an aggregate level.
Fascinating science and kind of makes me want to be an undergrad again.
Jun 22
Random Analysis, Sports Comments Off
Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that the Celtics blew away the Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA finals to win their 17th championship – and first in 22 years.
A lot has been made about the structure of the team and how management built a team around the three stars of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. What’s equally interesting is what goes on away from the parquet. The team is owned by a syndicate of 25 financiers, mostly venture capitalists and private equity veterans.
What does this mean? Well, they’re fiercely competitive but also metrics driven. Maybe that’s why they crunch the numbers on every datapoint they can get about their competition and essentially model how the team should react to different teams and players.
You’re never going to win in sport without great players – but great players alone aren’t going to beat a team that hustles this hard off the court.
Jun 22
I recently went to Dublin for my brother’s graduation from med school (photos) and to visit a friend (photos). Imagine my surprise when I came upon the following map while reading the Aer Lingus in-flight magazine:
Upstate New York, Vermont and Maine have all moved a little further north than they should be. Here’s a close-up:
From what I can tell, Rochester has moved over to be Eastmain, Nunavut. Burlington is Lac Guillaume-Delisle and Syracuse is Lac Bienville (ironically, I don’t even think there’s a road within 100 km of Lac Bienville).
This map would be really funny except for the fact that Aer Lingus is an airline and there job is to actually know where places are.
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