Space Elevator Oops

Tensile versus Shear Strength, from XKCD

Don't forget to click thru for the mouse-hover message!

Aurthur Benjamin and Mathemagic!

Celebrity for the math-geek, and some good advice for students (quoting from memory):

Arthur Benjamin: "The number of math courses you take in college is the single best predictor of your future income."

Steven Colbert has an answer for that too, but he always has an answer*.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arthur Benjamin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

* Always, except maybe for that time when Jane Fonda was on the show. ;-)

Why yes, that IS a severe side effect

Found via Improbable Research:

Medical attention for Tikosyn

Lord of the Hadrons

Three Particles for the Heisenbergs under the sky,
Seven for the von Neumanns in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Schrödinger on his dark throne
In the Land of Dirac where the Strange lie.
One Particle to rule them all, One Particle to find them,
One Particle to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
To give them Mass where the Charms lie.

[Hat Tip to Sir Al Dente -- Thanks Al! (What a Looney!), and of course JRR Tolkien]

PS: Anyone else remember the Superconducting Super Collider?

Richard Simmons PE Crudade Victorious!

A year ago I wrote about Richard Simmons PE Crusade , and there is recent news of considerable progress. MetaDeb tells me that the legislation is now included in this years No Child Left Behind package. This news come from a recent Today Show interview with RS, but I haven't been able to confirm this thru any other source in a casual search. I'm hopeful that it is true.

Richard Simmons' appearance on the Today Show also included this surprising appearance together with William Shatner:



I say that is surprising, because with simmons and Shattner together, I did not know it was possible to fit that much HAM into a single television studio. ;-)

Depressing News for Grad Students

From Discoblog:

Alien Math Shows Why Grad Student Doesn’t Have a Girlfriend

 PS: This is old news to most grad students.

The smell of asparagus

I like it when science and humor cross-pollinate, but sometimes it's even funnier when it's completely serious. You just can't make up stuff like this:

Br Med J  1980;281:1676-1678 (20 December),
doi:10.1136/bmj.281.6256.1676

A polymorphism of the ability to smell urinary metabolites of asparagus.

M Lison, S H Blondheim, R N Melmed

The urinary excretion of (an) odorous substance(s) after eating asparagus is not an inborn error of metabolism as has been supposed. The detection of the odour constitutes a specific smell hypersensitivity. Those who could smell the odour in their own urine could all smell it in the urine of anyone who had eaten asparagus, whether or not that person was able to smell it himself. Thresholds for detecting the odour appeared to be bimodal in distribution, with 10% of 307 subjects tested able to smell it at high dilutions, suggesting a genetically determined specific hypersensitivity.

Discoblog has a longer exposition on the topic:

NCBI ROFL: Asparagus, urine, farts, and Benjamin Franklin (Part I)