Abstruse Goose & Maxwell’s Demon

This one’s going to take a little explanation.  Maxwell was James Clerk Maxwell, famous 19th century physicist.  He made up his demon as a way around a then-new and depressing law of physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  The Second Law said that when things are left alone and nothing’s done to them, hot things […]

REAL Mathematicians Unhindered by Laws of Physics

I think this is funny because it explains a problem I’ve had with math all along, which is that  math just makes stuff up:  makes up number, and space between numbers, and relations between numbers, and I’m not even mentioning zero.  Also I know that the horizon problem went something like, the universe shouldn’t have […]

Science Metaphors (cont.): Metastable

Metastable:  Down the block, along the street, is a steep bank on which trees have taken root and grown, slanting off the bank and over the road, balancing their holds in the ground with increasing height and occasional high winds and of course gravity.  One day sooner or later a good rain slightly liquifies the […]

Abstruse Goose: Creation

Probably not God’s fault, but very few people understand that business of hidden dimensions in string theory. http://abstrusegoose.com/235

Science Metaphors (cont.): Critical Opalescence

I’m aging.  I love too many people whose health and wellbeing is too uncertain.  I want to write about too many things, each one requiring too much time and too many brains.  I take on too many assignments and some of the most important are outside my talents and over my head.  I can’t keep […]