Galactic Death Ray Discovered - News - OmniNerd

"Witness the power of this fully operational gamma ray burst!"

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The Hollywood Uncertainty Principle

So I had the tv on this weekend (usually to provide background noise) and happened to catch part of a movie called "A Sound of Thunder" which is based on a Bradbury story. One scene which particularly caught my attention was one character's response to being told that there is no room for error in the procedure they were setting up (something involving time travel).
His response (not verbatim):

"When I was a physics student we studied something called 'The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle' which states that there is no such thing as zero tolerance". Some more dialog followed along the lines of the inability to have sufficient information to detect all possible errors. I was ROFLing too hard at this point to pay much attention.

Hollywood science strikes again. If you want a more scientifically accurate explanation, stick with Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1.

PS If you get this, you don't need any more explanation

Q: Why was Heisenberg's wife always frustrated?
A: Because when he had the time he didn't have the energy and when he had the position he didn't have the momentum

Jarosław Przygódzki » Proof of the Riemann hypothesis

A mathematician has been invited to speak at a conference. His talk is announced as

Proof of the Riemann hypothesis. When the conference actually takes place, he speaks about something completely different.
After his talk, a colleague asks him: “Did you find an error in your proof?”
He replies: “No - I never had one.”
“But why did you make this announcement?”
“That’s my standard precaution - in case I die on my way to the conference…”


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Ben Stein and Intelligence

On a recent Glenn Beck show on the CNN Headline News channel, Ben Stein made an appearance promoting among other things a documentary titled "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". This purports to portray the plight of the poor researchers who have their grants taken away because their area of interest involves "Intelligent Design" (I have no details on this film so I'm going strictly by what was discussed on the show). Of course the conversation quickly degenerated into the "why can't we have a discussion on the two sides of the issue" with Mr.Stein using the tired example of how evolutionists would like to have us believe that out of a lightning bolt hitting a mud puddle we got something of the complexity of a 747. Well, Mr. Beck let me attempt to explain why you can't have a two-sided discussion on this issue (well non-issue, really), when one side is an accepted scientific theory with over 150 years of supporting evidence and the other side is religious mumbo-jumbo wrapped in a lab coat. Needless to say any such attempt would quickly degenerate into nothing more than an Argument Clinic sketch. I believe that's why we have a National SCIENCE Foundation, not a National Faith Foundation (well we do if you want to count the so called Discovery Institute). So Mr. Beck in conclusion let's recap: there are no two sides, there is no "controversy", just a bunch of idiotic, deluded dumb-asses who seriously believe they can take science teaching back to the 14th century.

And Mr. Stein, please, when it comes to science, stick to what you know best: "Bueller... Bueller... Bueller..."

Good Math, Bad Math : Why did Set Theory start with transfinite numbers?

Interesting, although somewhat misstated commentary on Set Theory (from ScienceBlogs)

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