While we all await Marty McFly coming back to the future on 21 October 2015, we can gaze upon Alex Jones’ (Orion Pax) lovely Lego diorama of the future Hill Valley.
Category: Items of Interest
On days like this I wish I was a mathematician
Titles of the references on the Hawaiian earring Wikipedia page, clearly designed to make math actually seem fun:
“The big fundamental group, big Hawaiian earrings, and the big free groups”
“Anomalous behavior of the Hawaiian earring group”
“The fundamental groups of one-dimensional wild spaces and the Hawaiian earring”
“The singular homology of the Hawaiian earring”
“The topological Hawaiian earring group does not embed in the inverse limit of free groups”
Most inappropriate sentence ever written in a biophysical chemistry textbook
In fact most of our modern interest in the structure of biological molecules and systems is the foreplay related to our passionate interest in function.
– P.R. Bergethon, The Physical Basis of Biochemistry
Eric Lander knows the secret to success
He reveals it in today’s NY Times:
After his morning workout, he sometimes goes to a local bakery where he can work quietly
Sometimes the key to getting things done is knowing where to hide. The other secret to success is luck:
“I feel like it’s so incredibly lucky to end up here,” he said. “I could not have planned this. What if I hadn’t met David Botstein? What if I hadn’t gone to a meeting where the human genome was discussed? I have no idea. This is as random as it gets.”
It’s frightening just how random it is, particularly if you’re outside the inner circle. (There’s always that inner circle, the one I’m never inside of, even though I’ve also met David Botstein.) There is no doubt that Lander is exceptionally talented, and skilled at sniffing out key opportunities, but part of the story is being lucky to find yourself in those circles where opportunities are offered. The name of the institution where you work matters a great deal when it comes to making first impressions, regardless of your other qualifications.
Darwin on how to be a scientist
Great prostrate silicified trunks of trees, embedded in a conglomerate, were extraordinarily numerous. I measured one which was fifteen feet in circumference: how surprising it is that every atom of the woody matter in this great cylinder should have been removed and replaced by silex so perfectly that each vessel and pore is preserved! These trees flourished at about the period of our lower chalk; they all belonged to the fir-tribe. It was amusing to hear the inhabitants discussing the nature of the fossil shells which I collected, almost in the same terms as were used a century ago in Europe,–namely, whether or not they had been thus “born by nature.” My geological examination of the country generally created a good deal of surprise amongst the Chilenos: it was long before they could be convinced that I was not hunting for mines. This was sometimes troublesome: I found the most ready way of explaining my employment was to ask them how it was that they themselves were not curious concerning earthquakes and volcanos?–why some springs were hot and others cold?–why there were mountains in Chile, and not a hill in La Plata? These bare questions at once satisfied and silenced the greater number; some, however (like a few in England who are a century behindhand), thought that all such inquiries were useless and impious; and that it was quite sufficient that God had thus made the mountains.
– Voyage of The Beagle, Chapter XVI
One of the remarkable features of this book is Darwin’s relentless commitment to a scientific point of view. He asks questions nobody around him thinks to ask, and he is unsatisfied with answers not based in observable evidence and reasoned thought.
The Finch and Pea 