Winter’s Haven

My bicycle was stolen from the racks by the math department. Apparently, someone just walked up and cut the cable lock in broad daylight. I am not happy.

In response to this article in The Independent.

Dear Sir,
I read your recent recent article on Dawkins, ethics, and religion in The Independent. I have a question: of which religion are you a member? I wish to join. I am an atheist, but see no conflict in joining a sect so refreshingly free of mysticism and [...]

Does anyone have advice on finding prints of paintings by relatively obscure artists? I’m trying to find prints of the work of Lin Onus; Onus isn’t actually that obscure, although he isn’t a household name. I saw his painting “Gathering Storm” at the Seattle Art Museum just before I moved, and I’ve been trying to [...]

There has been far too much religion and politics on this blog lately. Here are a few sciency links to freshen things up.

Several groups have found different ways to use the Casimir effect to levitate objects. The New Scientist has a nice summary; specific papers can be found on arXiv.org.

Mike Dunford, The Questionable Authority, gives [...]

In case you weren’t aware, the vast majority of mainstream media sucks. One big problem is sensationalism bias; however, I can almost forgive them for this, since they are at least acting in their own self-interest by reporting the sensational and extraordinary. What’s truly and utterly pathetic is the media’s tendency to just transcribe whatever [...]

Commenting on the recent problems of toxic pet food and children’s toys from China, Mark Kleiman of the Reality-Based Community snarkily suggests that libertarians ought to see these events as triumphs of the unfettered market. The post basically consists of Kleiman shaking his fist at libertarians and demanding to know why our wonderful free markets [...]

Peter Williams makes an argument for the existence of god based on morality:

1. Morality is objective
2. The existence of a personal deity is entailed by objective morality

…thus, god exists.
Honestly, I’m just confused by this one; the article doesn’t have any explanation for why objective morality entails the existence of god.
But suppose (2) is correct; [...]

I spent yesterday driving from Ogden, Utah (just north of Salt Lake City) to Albuquerque. I drove past all sorts of things that I wanted to stop and see or explore, but I wanted to make this leg of the trip in one day instead of a couple weeks. I didn’t arrive in Albuquerque until [...]

That almost rhymes! Anyway, this update comes to you from Ogden, Utah. I’m told it’s pretty, but right now it’s just dark.
Yesterday I drove across Washington and Oregon, and saw my mom and brother on the way. Leaving Oregon today, I discovered that southwestern Idaho is completely blanketed in smoke from the Murphy complex fire. [...]

A couple days ago I left my crummy, utterly pointless job. I am now on my way to University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Very soon, I’ll be a math grad student, and my existence will be much less pointless than it has been lately. Yay for math!