Winter’s Haven

A paper, “Determination of Inter-Phase Line Tension in Langmuir Films”, which I wrote with Lu Zou and our many colleagues will be in the next issue of Physical Reviews E! You can grab a non-gated copy here or from arXiv.org.

Alonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist, wrote an excellent article on Epistemic Negligence in Teaching Religion. I have just one quibble.
The article over-emphasizes the epistemic crimes of experts while ignoring those committed by ordinary people (i.e. parents). Fyfe points out that in some cases, non-experts do not deserve the same moral condemnation for making mistakes [...]

A recent post on Daylight Atheism explains why Ebonmuse is not a libertarian. But I think he bungled it . Aside from Ebonmuse’s support for military draft, I see no objections to calling him a libertarian. My bio page says I’m a “consequentialist libertarian”, and I think it’s time for me to explain [...]

Two people at University of Minnesota made an excellent movie which elegantly explains Möbius Transformations. Check it out!
Hat tip to MarkCC for finding this.

I’ve made a number of changes to my blog’s theme. The header has been completely overhauled. The photograph I used to create the header image was taken by Ernst Schütz and is used with his permission (thanks!). Ernst took the photo from the slopes of Mount Vilan in Switzerland; it is entitled Peace in Blue-White [...]

Nigel Johnson-Hill has a farmer friend who received a £3000 payment from the UK government for not raising pigs. Nigel decided that he wanted to enter the business, and he wrote a hilarious letter to the Secretary of State to request information:
In your opinion what is the best kind of farm not to rear [...]

I don’t make a habit of getting excited about intellectual property law, but this proposal to resolve patent disputes via Starcraft matches is hilarious. It’s even more hilarious once you catch your breath and realize that it might not actually be such a bad idea.

From Mike the Technobuddist:

Although my blog has undeniably just hit a new low, I actually feel very liberated. No matter how wrong or inane my future posts may be, I’ll always be able to cling to the fact that at least they won’t be L0Lcats.

The New York Times compiled an enormous list of earmarks which Congress has handed out to religious organizations. This is completely unconstitutional, and it’s an outrage that the IRS is picking our pockets to fund religious groups.

Contrary to what I stated in the previous post, it is completely incorrect that DDT bans have prevented its use for vector control in third-world countries. Bug Girl, an entomologist, thoroughly debunks that claim. The agricultural use of DDT has been banned in many places (partly because more widespread use of insecticides causes insects develop [...]