How many??

All of us have seen those asinine games at malls in which humungous transparent containers are full of M&Ms or table tennis balls and chaps are supposed to guess the number of the M&Ms or balls in the containers. Obviously, the scientific approach to this would be to measure the volume of one M&m/ball, estimate the volume of the container and divide the latter by the former. However, people tend to wing it and guess over several powers of 10 (e.g. 50 to 50X10^5).

Anyway, I was walking past these massive, 4 Litre, conical flasks full of Luria Broth that has bacteria growing in them (the optical density is pretty obscene as you can see in the picture) and the perfect guessing game for Biologists occurred to me; it's called "How many Coli". I think it's pretty self explanatory. Should be a big hit at biological research institutes.

Hint: It's not 50.

Sinister bike permit

I am not sure you can read it, but my bike permit advises me as follows:

"Permittee releases MTA LIRR and MTA MNR from any liability for injury, death or damages arising in connection with use of this permit. Have fun."

The "have fun" struck me as very incongruous. I think they forgot to add "at your own risk".

"Skynet" is all I have to say to this!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24drones.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=drones&st=cse

For those who weren't mesmerised by Terminator movies when they were adolescents, skynet is a computer defence system that becomes self aware, considers humans a threat, and nukes them. This paves the way for the rise of the machines. Now the USAF wants to have squadrons of pilotless aircraft of all sizes ranging from tactical bomber to nanospy planes. Makes me uneasy...

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.

To those who like to use foul language...

...Randall Munroe has something to say to you:





But Intellectual badassery is immune from the jumping hyphen. If you make the hyphen jump, you shall be hung, drawn, and quartered with an industrial laser.

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had to include a conversation with a friend about abovementioned lasers

qubit85: what kind of laser are we talking about here?
me: I don't know
the kinds that can cut you into half
the kinds sean connery faced in goldfinger
or the kind pierce brosnan faced in die another day
as you can see, my knowledge of lasers is rooted in James Bond movies

Intellectual badass-hood

So on the way to NCUR23, I met an interesting and dauntingly intelligent bloke from Johns Hopkins. He introduced the concept of intellectual badass-hood to me. This is an astonishingly appealing idea for nerds of my ilk. No longer shall we suffer under derogatory titles reminiscent of Homo unpleasantus characteristics(refer to previous post for obscure reference: http://comprehensiblecomplexity.blogspot.com/2008/10/well-theoretically.html).

So, if you are sufficiently smart, reasonably ridiculous, engagingly eccentric, adequately attractive, and compellingly competent in your field you shall henceforth be allowed to lay claim to a glorious title: Intellectual badass.

For once in my life, I am making an exception in my escewal of words with the gratuitous suffix of 'ass' because 'intellectual badass' just sounds BADASS.

P.S: There is a species barrier between Homo unpleasantus and intellectual badassery.