Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A roguelike I can enjoy

Dungeon Crawl is a roguelike that I can actually enjoy over a coffee break (i.e., I don't have to dedicate years of my life to it). And you can play it over ssh.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Latin phrases

  • "Nil carborundum illigitimi" - don't let the bastards get you down.;
  • "Nullius in verba" - take no-one's word for it (motto of the Royal Society, apparently suspended for climate related issues);
and my personal favourite:
  • "Sic biscuitus disintegrat" - that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Probability

There's an interesting discussion on probability at William Brigg's blog.

Briggs claims, and is supported by some of his readers, that given

  • I have some six sided object in my pocket
  • Exactly one face is inscribed with '6'

we can conclude

  • P(a '6' shows uppermost after a roll) = 1/6.


I, and some other readers, contend that no such statement can be made. The discussion is interesting because some, like myself, see probability as a description of reality, whereas others see probability as a description of a state of knowledge.

I'll be fascinated to see how this one turns out.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Nuclear Power and Sustainability

This is excellent: all the costs and numbers in context. If there's one good thing about AGW madness, it's that nuclear power is back on the table as a viable option.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Global temperature reconstructions

This is an interesting and large collection of temperature reconstructions derived from various proxies. There is a pronounced Mediaeval Warm Period in most of them.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Homeopathic dilutions

This is a hoot!

A quote from the full article:

Molecules are tiny: it takes about a billion of them to cover a standard metric full-stop. To put homeopathy in a medicinal context, if you wanted to consume a normal 500mg paracetamol dose you would need ten million billion homeopathic pills. Where each pill is the same mass as the Milky Way galaxy. There is actually not enough matter in the entire known Universe to make the homeopathic equivalent of a single paracetamol pill.