This past two weeks…

Lately, things have been rather slow over here… i don’t intend this to be the case, it’s just been a bit overwhelming.

So, without further ado…

Science:

• The J/Ψ particle original papers
• Harrison’s Geometric Calculus
• Electric-Magnetic-Duality and Hodge Duality Extended to Differental Cocycles
• Convenient Categories of Smooth Spaces
• Gravity and its Mysteries: Some Thoughts and Speculations
• Quantum mechanics and umbral calculus
• Path integration and perturbation theory with complex Euclidean actions
• HIM Trimester Geometry and Physics, Week 1
• String theory and the crisis of particle physics II
• Uses of Chern-Simons actions
• Knots as possible excitations of the quantum Yang-Mills fields
• Angular Operators Violating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
• Comment on “’t Hooft vertices, partial quenching, and rooted staggered QCD”
• E₈ Quillen Superconnection
• 285G, Lecture 10: Variation of L-geodesics, and monotonicity of Perelman reduced volume, 285G, Lecture 11: κ-noncollapsing via Perelman reduced volume, 285G, Lecture 12: High curvature regions of Ricci flow and κ-solutions
• A string field theory based on causal dynamical triangulations
• The Eastwood-Singer gauge in Einstein spaces
• How quantum is the big bang?
• Black holes in loop quantum gravity: the complete space-time
• The QED beta-function from global solutions to Dyson-Schwinger equations
• Quantum Knots and Mosaics
• Heisenberg algebra, umbral calculus and orthogonal polynomials
• Physical state condition in quantum general relativity as a consequence of BRST symmetry
• Sidney Richard Coleman
• Structures of Scientific Collaboration
• String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction
• Science without borders
• Theorems Into Coffee, Theorems Into Coffee II
• Quantum Mechanics in Your Face

General:

• Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live
• ‘De quem é a Amazônia, afinal’, pergunta ‘NY Times’, Análise: Três razões por que a Amazônia merece atenção, The Food Crisis and Amazon Deforestation
• Written in the skies: why quantum mechanics might be wrong
• Hauser and Morris on Science and Morality
• Brasileiro assume presidência da Federação Mundial de Saúde Pública
• Brazil facts of the day
• Na Amazônia está em jogo o futuro do Brasil, diz Mangabeira, Falta incentivo para preservar Amazônia, diz príncipe Charles, Amazon challenge
• Woman power at the LHC
• Bye Matlab, hello Python, thanks Sage
• Open science
• Scientists get training to run for public office, Opinion: Scientists need to toughen up and get involved in politics
• International workshop on science writing and broadcasting
• How the NSA took Linux to the next level
• The most extraordinary mathematician of the 20th century celebrated his 80th birthday, crazy and alone
• Gigante da América do Sul está acordando, diz jornal
• Patent Attorney On Why We Need To Rethink Intellectual Property
• The science behind the sitcom The Big Bang Theory
• The Tao of programming
• The Cost of Smarts
• In the Air: Who says big ideas are rare?
• Brazil, India’s Citizens Are Greenest, Survey Finds
• git vs bzr vs hg: Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide Through
• Grau de investimento do Brasil não é certificado de desenvolvimento, diz ‘FT’
• Wishing for an African Einstein
• The Roots of the Crisis
• Top 10 myths about the Ancient Romans
• OpenSolaris Indiana Released
• Brazil, Free Software and “Castrated Windows”
• Science Documentaries for Youngsters?
• We Need More Novels about Real Scientists

Core dump…

For those of you that still remember the good old days of core dumps, here’s a post that follows that philosophy. 😉

It’s been quite sometime since i last had a chance to put some content here on the blog, nor have i had time to expand on the interesting comments that have appeared and so on… time has been short lately.

In some sense, this is good news: research has really taken the best of me (as opposed to, e.g., some of the network management tasks that have plagued me in the not-so-distant-past 😉 ) — last week i gave a talk at Syracuse, and if all goes well, maybe i’ll be able to talk a bit about it here. 🙂

Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
— The Wizard of Oz

Scientific:

• Geometric Quantization of Algebraic Reduction
• Motivic renormalization and singularities
• Accelerator Disaster Scenarios, the Unabomber, and Scientific Risks
• Success is in the bank
• The Bohr paradox
• Passing of a legend, John Wheeler 1911-2008, John Archibald Wheeler 1911-2008
• Amazing Collection of Physics Video Lectures (Quantum Physics/Mechanics, Field Theory, Applied Group Theory, General Relativity. Cosmology, and others)
• Generalized Berezin quantization, Bergman metrics and fuzzy Laplacians
• Cosmological perturbation theory near de Sitter spacetime
• Effective Field Theory for Inflation
• The saga of rooted staggered quarks
• Mixed Hodge Structures and Renormalization in Physics
• What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider: Brian Cox on TED
• Is there a crisis brewing in the reporting of science in the media?
• Charges and Twisted Bundles, IV: Anomaly Canellation
• Janus Configurations, Chern-Simons Couplings, And The Theta-Angle in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory
• Supersymmetric Boundary Conditions in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theory
• A note on Infraparticles and Unparticles
• Dangerous Liouville Wave — exactly marginal but non-conformal deformation
• Exact Statistics of Chaotic Dynamical Systems
• Introduction to Quantum Mechanics
• Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity
• Is Open Access Science the Future?
• Charges and Twisted Bundles, III: Anomalies
• Self-organized criticality in quantum gravity
• Towards A No-Loophole Bell-Type Experiment?
• 285G, Lecture 7: Rescaling of Ricci flows and kappa-noncollapsing
• A draft version of the blog book
• 285G, Lecture 6: Finite time extinction of the third homotopy group, II
• Multimedia and the Journal of Number Theory
• Comparative Smootheology, II
• After graduation, fewer foreign PhD holders remain in US
• RIP Ed Lorenz
• 285G, Lecture 5: Finite time extinction of the third homotopy group, I
• CUDA, Supercomputing for the Masses
• Differential Forms and the Canonical Bundle
• This is what the Higgs boson looks like, Can the Tevatron find the Higgs?
• Big bang e grande explosão: mal entendidos em Física vol. I
• Physicists On Tape
• Rigid Surface Operators
• On the origin of the particles in black hole evaporation
• 285G, Lecture 4: Finite time extinction of the second homotopy group
• Sigma-Models and Nonabelian Differential Cohomology
• World Science Festival 2008
• Critical gravitational collapse: towards a holographic understanding of the Regge region
• Scales of science
• Locally Free Sheaves and Vector Bundles
• Non-Borel summable Phiˆ4 theory in zero dimension: A toy model for testing numerical and analytical methods
• Black hole thermodynamics from simulations of lattice Yang-Mills theory
• Quantum Fields on the Groenewold-Moyal Plane
• Particle Identifications from Symmetries of Braided Ribbon Network Invariants
• Lectures on Scattering Amplitudes via AdS/CFT
• A Pointless Model for the Continuum as the Foundation for Quantum Gravity
• Formalism Locality in Quantum Theory and Quantum Gravity
• A note on the quantum of time
• Building an AdS/CFT superconductor
• A locally finite model for gravity
• A Matrix Model for 2D Quantum Gravity defined by Causal Dynamical Triangulations
• The New Math
• Sheaves of Modules
• This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 263)
• Stony Brook Dialogues in Mathematics and Physics
• Quantum foam and topological strings
• April Fool
• 285G, Lecture 2: The Ricci flow approach to the Poincaré conjecture
• This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 262)
• 285G, Lecture 1: Flows on Riemannian manifolds
• From Pure Spinor Geometry to Quantum Physics: A Mathematical Way
• Ettore Majorana and his heritage seventy years later
• What Has Happened So Far
• Symmetry and Integrability of Classical Field Equations
• Topological higher gauge theory: From BF to BFCG theory
• Is Quantum Gravity Necessary?
• Magnetic Charge Lattices, Moduli Spaces and Fusion Rules
• Instantons beyond topological theory II
• Sidney Coleman QFT Video Recordings
• Anatomy of a Black Hole
• Nonabelian Differential Cohomology in Street’s Descent Theory
• Security is Mathematics
• Matrix universality of gauge and gravitational dynamics
• Equivariant symplectic geometry of gauge fixing in Yang–Mills theory
• This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 261)
• `What is a Thing?’: Topos Theory in the Foundations of Physics
• Geometry of the Standard Model
• IAS Conference Question Dump
• 18 Billion Suns : Biggest Black Hole in Universe Discovered
• The 50 Topcited papers from SPIRES in 2007

General Interest:

• Brasil tem perdido grandes talentos em matemática, alerta presidente da SBPC
• Brasil, nação evanescente?, artigo de Carlos Lessa
• Pistol Pete Maravich & the Invention of Showtime Basketball
• Serra da Cangalha Crater, Brazil
• News: Politically Correct: Why Great (and Not So Great) Minds Think Alike
• power discussion
• Pleasing Google’s Tech-Savvy Staff
• ‘Economist’ pergunta por que crescimento do Brasil fica atrás da Argentina
• 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex
• 10 Great Scenes from TV and Film Told Using Only Typography
• Like bash.org for bash shell-fu Command line tips and tricks
• The Secret to Happiness? Giving
• Larry Lessig’s Open Congress
• From GNOME to KDE and Back Again
• Biggest Unix Cheat Sheet
• Anatomy of a Black Hole
• Óleo de bacalhau reduz uso de analgésicos em casos de artrite, diz estudo
• Fracassado leilão da Cesp foi em ‘hora infeliz’, diz FT
• Movitz: an x86 Common Lisp OS
• Países ricos incentivam imigração de ‘alto nível’
• Membros da comunidade científica comunicam ao CNPq sua preocupação com o destino do comitê de divulgação científica
• I’m not against Windows; Unix just works better
• Search with privacy: What a concept
• Cresce número de imigrantes em busca do ‘sonho brasileiro’
• Para empresário boliviano, Brasil é ‘terra de oportunidades’
• C++ is a language strongly optimized for liars and people who go by guesswork and ignorance
• Off-topic
• Tecnologia para muitos, artigo de Miguel Jorge, Sergio Rezende e Roberto Mangabeira Unger
• Infraestrutura deficiente será desafio para nova empresa aérea, diz ‘Wall Street Journal’
• Revolution OS — Documentary of Linux
• Excesso de carros = engarrafamento
• Learn Python in 10 minutes
• Xoopit Will Turn Your Inbox Into a Social Network
• Science: monkeys were the first doctors
• Emigração para os EUA perde ‘apelo’ para brasileiros, diz ‘FT’
• Linux: Too Much of a Good Thing?
• Keith Richards
• The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class
• Bird propõe ‘new deal’ alimentar com ajuda do Brasil
• Word of the Day: Zeitgeist
• Getting it on for science
• Everything should be code
• Asking Big Questions about the universe: Stephen Hawking on TED
• Memoize: a Python replacement for Make
• Waf: A portable Make and Autotools replacement in Python (15x faster than Scons, 3x faster than Autotools)
• Einstein can dunk
• Build a quad-core, 8-gig server for $900
• Soros predicts end of the road for cheap and easy borrowing
• Beautiful Handwriting, Lettering and Calligraphy
• Reader Piqued By French Mutilations
• The Thing About Git
• Five Words You Can Cut
• The Moral Authority Behind Intervention: Examining Sergio Vieira de Mello
• Penn and Teller subverting the old ‘pull an animal out of the hat’ trick by instead producing thousands of bees, including hundreds while ripping apart a stuffed rabbit — take that, kids
• Masters of the World — England > America > China?
• Physicists On Tape
• Richard Stallman Interview: How a hacker became a freedom fighter
• Tip #195: Bash
• Tip #192: Print a random shell-fu tip
• Soros describes the $45 trillion market in credit swaps (i.e. derivatives) as a “Sword of Damocles”
• Knuth on teaching calculus
• Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Discuss Science, Science Education, Religion, Life, the Universe and Everything
• Open-source economics: Yochai Benkler on TED
• Brazil surprises markets with rate hike
• Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon by John Hemming
• Tip #216: Create a Terminal Calculator
• Grou.ps: All Your Collaboration Tools In One Place
• The Myth of the 30-Minute Meal
• 52 Million Brazilian Mini-Penguinistas
• Your genes are not your fate: Dean Ornish on TED
• 30 Adobe Acrobat Alternatives
• The Financial Crisis: An Interview with George Soros
• Princeton scientists discover exotic quantum state of matter
• Tip #232: Deleting difficult filenames
• KDE Desktops For 52 Million Students In Brazil
• Leaps of Faith
• Fruit flies trade lifespan for brain power
• Ten (mostly) false ideas about emacs
• How fast are you?
• Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented?
• Donald Knuth Rips On Unit Tests and More
• Concrete Examples Don’t Help Students Learn Math
• Patron Saint of Computing on Free Software
• Why you aren’t Donald Knuth
• What Programming Languages Should You Know? (Less Fluff, More Stuff)
• The English language is not equipped for metric spaces
• An Interview with Brian Greene on the World Science Festival
• Bunch of Computing Video Lecture Courses (C, XML & Java, Algorithms, Functional Programming, and others)
• Super addictive magnet toy. The Neo Cube
• Cray, Intel To Partner On Hybrid Supercomputer
• 50 Open Source Resources for Writers
• The ABCs of securing your wireless network
• Lawrence Krauss & Natalie Jeremijenko on the Politics of Knowledge
• Economia brasileira vive ‘tempos de Carnaval’, diz jornal
• Larry Page on how to change the world
• Argentina vê de longe ‘golaço’ do Brasil na economia, diz jornal
• Sage: Open Source Mathematics Software: Can There be a Viable Free Open Source Alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab?
• Windows in Brazil Costs 20% of Per Capita Business Income
• Denzel Washington says inner-city schoolkids have to be reminded that scientists are more important than entertainers

That’s all folks! 🙂

[]’s.

Testing blogging from Emacs…

If this works, it shows that Emacs’ weblogger mode (see more at Blogging with Emacs) is working just fine! 🙂

Ultimate geekdom sorcery! 😈

[]’s.

Interesting bits of the week…

If you’ve done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway’s, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
— Douglas Adams, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”

• First coca find in Brazil Amazon
• MCT completa 23 anos de existência
• MCT cria Conselho Científico Consultivo sobre Assuntos de Cooperação Internacional
• Nova ação do CNPq vai investir R$ 36 milhões em jovens doutores
• From BFS to ZFS: past, present, and future of file systems
• Unscientific
• A Brazilian in Goa

Today’s fortune and the interesting bits of the past two weeks…

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
— William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”

• Brazil exchanges in global party mood
• Brazil moves to top of emerging market index
• BRAZIL’S ECONOMY: The biggest emerging market, sort of
• BETTING THE FAZENDA: A different kind of risk-taking
• US diplomats ‘should pay more attention to science’
• Indian government boosts science spending
• The Copyright Emperor Has No Clothes
• Creators of The Wire: “If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented.”
• The unlikeliest gangbanger
• Who’s Your City?
• Following Singapore’s Lead
• Creative collaboration: ideals and reality
• Mr. Gates Goes to Washington
• 11 Greatest Basketball Commercials Ever Made
• After a classic ‘rm -rf ~’ on ext3, Carlo Wood succeeded in recovering most of his data. Here’s how.
• Security guide to customs-proofing your laptop
• The University, the Next Multinational Corporation
• Brasil ‘se tornou ator econômico de peso’, diz ‘The Guardian’: Inside Brazil
• March 14: PI DAY! But what is Pi?…watch the first minute, trust me., Happy Pi Day!, A non-trivial holiday
• Debian Cluster Replaces Supercomputer For Weather Forecasting
• Panel Finds Faults in America’s Math System

Today’s fortune cookie and interesting bit…

Here’s the fortune cookie:

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
— Sam Brown, “The Washington Post”, January 26, 1977

😈

As for the interesting bit: Architecture is politics: community building and the success of Wikipedia.

I found this post (by Michael Nielsen) quite interesting, but maybe not for the reason people normally would: I just thought the “thesis” of this post was something well known. What I mean is the following: a framework like Wiki, Zope/Plone, Drupal, etc, they all have different modus operandi, i.e., they were all designed to harness the power of the collective in slightly different ways. That means that each of these designs follows a different “policy” of community building; while some may think that every single user should have the same “weight”, some may adopt the policy of ‘roles’, where different groups of users have different tasks within the community.

This is not a judgement of value of these different frameworks. However, each of them imply certain “choices” that were made with a given “community building ideal” in mind. So, in this sense, it seems clear to me that the particular architecture of the software used should reflect the “politics” behind it.

But, maybe this is clearer to me because of all those years listening to RMS… 😉

[]’s.

Updated (24-Feb-08): This piece at Slate may have something to add to this discussion: The Wisdom of the Chaperones: Digg, Wikipedia, and the myth of Web 2.0 democracy.

Testing Scribd…

Let’s see if this works… if so, i’ll come back in a bit to explain it better. 😉

Scribd Poster 14-Nov-07.

😈

Scribd has launched its iPaper solution. For more information about it, check out their Documentation. 🙂

[]’s.

Atualizado (23-Feb-08): I believe i have found a solution to embedding Scribd/iPaper documents into WP. Check this out and see if it works 😉 :

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.scribd.com posted with vodpod

The interesting bits of today…

• Is This the PDF Killer? Scribd Launches iPaper
• Run Linux inside Windows
• BBC programmes go on iTunes

Today’s fortune and the interesting bits of the past two weeks…

Firstly, the excuse for this hiatus in our current program:

BOFH excuse #172:

pseudo-user on a pseudo-terminal

Now…

• Ensino público de qualidade, artigo de Fernando Haddad e Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Um convite à boa educação, artigo de Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, 200 anos de história, A introdução do ensino superior no Brasil, artigo de João Augusto de Lima Rocha
• Um lógico na ilha da fantasia: Pensador brasileiro com mais reconhecimento no exterior, Newton da Costa tem seus livros reeditados
• Shuttle Discovery from ISS, The Blackness of Space
• I’m a nude dancer trying to finish my Ph.D., Protect Yourself from Sexually Transmitted Intelligence
• SciBarCamp
• Inverse Symbolic Calculator 2.0
• The Free University
• Finally, a Web-based PDF Viewer That Does Not Suck
• 25 Incredible Skins and Tools for the Gmail Power User
• Running the Internet — All of It – on GNU/Linux
• The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner
• The 6 Cutest Animals That Can Still Destroy You
• Mobius Battle
• Jayme Tiomno e o mecanismo das interações fracas
• Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand
• Intellectual property, automated contracts, and the free flow of information
• Surveys in Latin America find high interest in science
• Science and the Public

Tomorrow’s fortune and a few interesting things…

It’s almost tomorrow and the Patriots just lost their one and only game this season… 😯

So, here we go…

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when
you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
— Poul Anderson

Aside from that, here’s what was interesting this weekend:

• Science in the 21st Century: Science, Society, and Information Technology
• Em perfil, NYT chama Mangabeira de ‘ministro das idéias’: ‘Minister of Ideas’ Tries to Put Brazil’s Future in Focus
• 100 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Beautiful Art
• José Leite Lopes (1918-2006) e a unificação das forças fundamentais

Enjoy the last 45min of today! 😈

[]’s!

Physics, Second Life e a Educação Brasileira…

On the Second Life front, these 2 newspieces appeared today:

• Doing physics in Second Life: What is there for physicists in this virtual world?
• Second thoughts: Doing physics in Second Life.

I must confess that i’ve tought about this (to do physics in Second Life) many times. In fact, my mom gave me this idea way back in 30 May 2007 10:17:34 (BST). Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, Second Life’s support of GNU/Linux client’s is only in alpha stage. (If anyone has more info on this, i’d appreciate it. 😉 )

But, maybe it’s time that i try their MacOS client… 😎

Now, changing gears…

Dois artigos interessantes sobre a situação da educação brasileira:

• “O calcanhar-de-aquiles da educação brasileira”; artigo de João Grandino Rodas
• “País ameaçado”; artigo de Cristovam Buarque

And, to sum up, National Geographic has a video about the carnival in Brazil: Video: Rio Carnival Honors Japanese.

[]’s.

Update (01-Feb-08 @ 17:23h): Ainda falando sobre educação, esse artigo de hoje também é bastante interessante: Alexandria – Revista de Educação em Ciência e Tecnologia.

Update (27-Feb-08 @ 07:33h): Mixed-reality conference.

Real Programmers…

Ah, the truth can be hilarious [sometimes]…

• XKCD: Real Programmers

This is for the fans of anything else (but Emacs): Never forget C-x M-c M-butterfly!

😎

Some random bits of today…

Let me start off with one of these real men catches: Real men don’t attack straw men — by RMS. 🙂

But, let’s move to more down-to-Earth things…

• Caçador de plágios
• Brasil e França farão acordo estratégico
• Universidades Federais: “Por falar em verdades”; artigo de Ronaldo Mota
• Pós-graduação: Excelência em Ciências Humanas puxa diálogo com exterior
• Pós-graduação: Universo de cursos em Ciências Exatas e da Terra está em expansão

And now, let’s see some Math…

• 254A: Topics in Ergodic Theory
• 254A, Lecture 1: Overview
• 254A, Lecture 2: Three categories of dynamical systems
• 254A, Lecture 3: Minimal dynamical systems, recurrence, and the Stone-Čech compactification
• 254A, Lecture 4: Multiple recurrence
• 254A, Lecture 5: Other topological recurrence results
• 254A, Lecture 6: Isometric systems and isometric extensions
• 254A, Lecture 7: Structural theory of topological dynamical systems
• 254A, Lecture 8: The mean ergodic theorem

This business of “topological dynamics” really gets to me… need to learn more… much more about it! 🙂

[]’s!

Super holiday post…

Well, as you may have noticed, the blog has been a bit slow lately. Largely, this is due to the holidays… and some “other” stuff. 😉

But, let’s focus on the business here: although i haven’t been posting, i did keep a record of everything that should be here. So, in this post, i’ll bundle it all together. 😈

arXivs…

• Putting M theory on a computer
• From the Nambu-Goto the Sigma-Model Action, Memoirs from Long Ago
• Stochastic representations of Feynman integration
• A Higher Order Non-Linear Differential Equation and a Generalization of the Airy Function
• Idempotent and tropical mathematics and problems of mathematical physics (Volume I)
• Planckian Birth of the Quantum de Sitter Universe
• Integration of Superforms and Super-Thom Class
• Heisenberg Algebra, Umbral Calculus and Orthogonal Polynomials
• Remarks on the Friedman equations
• Differential Forms on Riemannian (Lorentzian) and Riemann-Cartan Structures and Some Applications to Physics
• Spectral resolution in hyperbolic orbifolds, quantum chaos, and cosmology
• Boundary conditions: The path integral approach
• Phase transitions and configuration space topology
• Formal Maurer-Cartan structures: from CFT to Classical Field Equations
• Towards lattice simulation of the gauge theory duals to black holes and hot strings
• Numerical solution to the hermitian Yang-Mills equation on the Fermat quintic
• Scalar Field Theory with a Non-Standard Potential
• Ricci flow deformation of cosmological initial data sets
• Hitchin integrable systems, deformations of spectral curves, and KP-type equations
• Supermetrics on supermanifolds
• Chaos in Partial Differential Equations, Navier-Stokes Equations and Turbulence
• Random and Integrable Models in Mathematics and Physics
• From Data to Probability Densities without Histograms
• Basic differential geometry as a sequence of interesting problems
• The flat FRW model in LQC: self-adjointness
• A note on quantum field theories with a minimal length scale
• Quantum fields, nonlocality and quantum group symmetries
• Geometric structures of the classical general relativistic phase space
• The Mobius Band and the Mobius Foliation
• Hermite expansions and Hardy’s theorem
• Heuristic Derivation of Blackbody Radiation Laws using Principles of Dimensional Analysis
• Unified geometric description of black hole thermodynamics
• Information is Not Lost in the Evaporation of 2-dimensional Black Holes
• Einstein-aether gravity: a status report
• Quantum Mechanics with Extended Probabilities
• Emergent physics: Fermi point scenario
• Gravity and Matter in Causal Set Theory
• Measurement of Quantum Fluctuations in Geometry
• Fractional Loop Group and Twisted K-Theory
• Towards the topological quantization of classical mechanics
• Freud’s Identity of Differential Geometry, the Einstein-Hilbert Equations and the Vexatious Problem of the Energy-Momentum Conservation in GR
• Spin — or, actually: Spin and Quantum Statistics
• Spectrum of Λ
• (No) Eternal Inflation and Precision Higgs Physics
• Energy, entropy and the Ricci flow
• From the Einstein-Cartan to the Ashtekar-Barbero canonical constraints, passing through the Nieh-Yan functional
• Killing Vector Fields, Maxwell Equations and Lorentzian Spacetimes
• Quantum charges and spacetime topology: The emergence of new superselection sectors
• Clifford modules and twisted K-theory
• Stable cosmological models driven by a free quantum scalar field
• Spacetime foam: from entropy and holography to infinite statistics and nonlocality
• Path Integral Quantization of Self Interacting Scalar Field with Higher Derivatives
• Modern space-time and undecidability
• On Tree Amplitudes in Gauge Theory and Gravity
• What is the entropy of the universe?
• Critical Review of Path Integral Formulation
• STRINGVACUA: A Mathematica Package for Studying Vacuum Configurations in String Phenomenology
• On the spectrum of pure Yang-Mills theory
• Monster symmetry and Extremal CFTs
• Quantum Graphity: a model of emergent locality
• Hitchin’s equations and integrability of BPS Z(N) strings in Yang-Mills theories
• Vacuum Structure and Boundary Renormalization Group
• Liouville gravity from Einstein gravity
• Asymptotically Flat Ricci Flows
• Sobolev of the Euler School

interesting bits…

• A Passion for Discovery
• Basic Bundle Theory and K-Cohomology Invariants
• The trouble with five
• South American countries join forces to boost biofuels
• USP traz de volta ao país nova geração de doutores
• Affine Varieties
• Vogan on the Orbit Method
• The Orbit Method
• From Einstein to Homer Simpson: Books of the Year
• East vs. West: The First Round
• Wikipedia Goes Open
• At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star
• RMS Tells It As It Is
• IBM e Universia Brasil firmam parceria para apoiar a formação acadêmica e a pesquisa científica na América Latina
• Insomniac Fish: Science Sensei 8
• Go Ahead, Put that Preposition at the End!
• Pootling Around with PDFs
• The Four Horsemen: Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens
• John Maeda named next president of RISD
• Jovens talentos e a ciência no Brasil, artigo de Adriana Maria de Aquino e Cristina Maria Carvalho Delou
• Roytenberg on Weak Lie 2-Algebras
• ‘Test tube universe’ hints at unifying theory
• Two constants to rule us all
• If Google ran the arXiv: prospects of data mining in academia
• The QG-TQFT Blues
• An Economist Questions Intellectual Monopolies
• Búzios para 2008
• Two Cultures in the Philosophy of Mathematics?
• A War on Science
• The Trouble with PDFs
• The Best Man vs. Woman Explanation I Have Ever Seen
• Macaque monkeys ‘pay’ for sex
• 5 Unbelievably Cool Research Facilities
• The reading cure
• ‘The Science of Leonardo’
• Product rules for more complicated products
• Gradings of Rings and Modules
• The Hilbert Polynomial
• India aims for ‘quantum jump’ in science
• What does a blind mathematician do? (No, this is not a joke.)
• Bezout’s Theorem
• Rumors: milling
• J. Lucks’ comments regarding the arxiv.reddit.com
• The Enduring Art of Computer Programming
• Scientific American Magazine: Brazil’s Option for Science Education
• Open Politics
• Freeing the future of ideas
• Free Knowledge Institute
• A Mathematician’s Apology available online
• Scientific American Magazine: The Future of Physics
• People ask why I still use Pascal. Here’s why.
• Blogs in the classroom
• Google CEO says NASA should become more ‘open source’
• Why is Finland Europe’s technology leader? The prime minister explains
• Demimonde
• “If you don’t know how compilers work, then you don’t know how computers work”
• Brazil Amazon deforestation soars
• How the world invests in R&D
• Mario Schenberg (1914-1990): Física, Política e Arte
• A Call for More Dialogue Between Science and the Humanities
• Large cardinals and knot theory
• Probability paradox
• Uselessness of set theory?
• Open Students
• Book version of the blog
• arXiv now complete at the Academic Reader
• Monday Musing: Replying to Euler
• The Fibonacci Sequence in Tool’s Lateralus
• Pink Floyd: The Wall Screenplay
• 254A, Lecture 7: Structural theory of topological dynamical systems
• Machine-readable Open Access scientific publishing

What’s interesting this week…

• xkcd’s Randall Munroe speaks at Google and Don Knuth shows up!
• Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste
• Why we should teach philosophy to kids
• dawkins says “happy newton day!”
• Save your OpenOffice.org docs to Google Docs and vice versa
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007
• Building the Zotero Commons
• Science Sensei 7
• Open Teaching, Learning & Certification
• The e-Primer on Open Content
• Sleep, Attention, and Memory: Not (Maybe) What You Thought
• Culture Speeds Up Human Evolution, Modern times causing human evolution to accelerate

Today’s tidbits…

• Brasil adota fundo ‘para conter real’, diz Mantega ao FT: Brazil creates SWF to curb Real
• Open Source Society

The interesting bits of today…

• Astronomers Destroy Universe
• Rolling Stone: How America Lost the War on Drugs
• THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUALS
• Animaniacs: a Fun Lesson on Geography
• The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
• Why Beauty is Truth
• Finnish kids are the brightest in the world
• Search Google Like An Expert; Here are 13 Great Tips
• Use Google as Your Own P2P Network
• Google Mobile Maps PinPoints Your Location Without GPS
• Amazing Collection of Computer Science Video Lectures (Haskell, OO Programming in C++ & Java, Operating Systems, Data Mining, Networking and many more!)
• Holy Shmoly, Haskell smokes Python and Ruby away! And you can parallelise it!
• What Does Your Date’s Computer/OS Say About Her?
• Science Sensei 5
• Large Hadron Collider (1/3), Large Hadron Collider (2/3)
• Beauty and the Brain
• ONU: Brasil entra em grupo de alto desenvolvimento
• Brazil saves US$1 billion on HIV/AIDS drugs
• A Case of the Mondays: List of Most Overrated Things

The interesting bits of today…

• Shaolin: Temple of Zen
• Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law
• GNU PDF Project
• Oh, Tell Me the Truth About… the ODF Bust-Up
• Descoberta de campo de petróleo pode ‘transformar’ o Brasil, diz ‘FT’
• How to Get Things Done on Your Mac
• Brasil ‘será destaque’ em dez anos, dizem jovens em pesquisa
• What Do Brazil and Washington State Have in Common?
• Finally, MULTICS Goes Open
• India enters supercomputing race
• Research access project enters second stage
• Mathematics and Common Sense: A Case of Creative Tension
• A Comet bigger than the Sun
• Category Theory and Biology
• Lecture Search Engine
• China ranks second in S&T publication rates
• Creative Commons Discovers Dual Licensing
• Mathematical Curiosities in Futurama
• Are the Swedes Good at Everything?
• Why Public Denials May Only Fuel Conspiracy Theories
• Drupal Podcast: 50 Drupal Tips and Tricks
• Merkur “Vision” 2000 Double-Edge Razor 🙂

The interesting bits of today — last week…

• O(A) Look: Now There’s a Surprise
• Science Sensei 1, Science Sensei 2, Science Sensei 3
• Copa no Brasil poderá ser um caos, diz Financial Times
• e and π go on a blind date
• The Way It Woz, The Way It Should Be: Steve Wozniak on All Things Apple
• Learning of the day, Does the US need more scientists?
• Brasil cai em ranking global de competitividade
• Norway gives 17 million euros to protect the Amazon
• Extending Ubuntu Studio 7.10 For Everyday Work: The Perfect Desktop
• Information Aggregators
• Can a spam filter play chess?
• What is the Largest Know Star?
• There’s a science to CBS’ ‘Big Bang Theory’
• Seeing a naked singularity
• Tricks using PARI
• Drawing vs Reality (Amazing PICS!)

The interesting bits of today…

Well… this is more like “the interesting bits of this past 2 weeks”… but, hey, better later than never! 😉

• Open Source Mathematics
• The Matrix Vs. Carl Sagan: Agent Smith Tortures Morpheus W/ Science Lecture Carl Sagan Style
• Speaking Science 2.0 Going Strong… And Other Stuff
• Mythbuntu 7.10 Release Final
• Blue Man Group on Global Warming
• Crime and punishment: the economic burden of impunity
• Weekend Reading
• EINSTEIN & BOHR
• Brazil rides biofuel bandwagon to Africa
• Experts Urge Exchange of Scientific Talent
• Springer Told to Spring Off
• A Conference on Academic Freedom
• How To Use VMWare To Survive A Computer Crash
• Brazil’s Atlantic Forest Under Threat
• “The” Scientific Method
• Huge new dinosaur species found in Argentina
• 48 Classic Books to Boost Your Learning Experience
• 1800 MIT courses online for free
• Chimps more “rational” than humans

The interesting bits of today…

There are some quite interesting bits that came out today; here’s the list:

• Manifold — gravity bending action/puzzle game
• An Invitation to Higher Dimensional Mathematics and Physics
• DRM is Dead!

Quite a list, isn’t it?!

The first item is a little (flash? java?) game where the player has to create a ‘gravitational field anomaly’ in order to accomplish some tasks, e.g., jumping, avoiding sharp gears, etc. Quite neat! 🙂

The second deals with category theory in geometry and physics… but it’s a public lecture that Urs has to give. So, it’s “category theory made easy”! Maybe this can make some things more palatable to some folks! 😉

The last item is just self-explanatory: I’ll just sit and rejoice on Amazon’s probably best move… ever! 😎

Enjoy… 😈 !

Tagging…

Well, in order to try to make life a bit simpler and add a bit of order to this chaotic world of blogging… i decided to start using categories (as WordPress calls them — tag is the name everyone else uses) based on the arXivs (as you can see in the posts below).

So, if you want, you can look for something like this… and, if more people start adopting this standard… maybe we’ll really be able to organize posts that deal with material from the arXivs in a comprehensive way. 😉

Have fun… []’s! 🙂

The interesting bits of today…

Just to entertain until tomorrow… when the real entertainment comes to the masses (see this link on the 12Sep07 😉 )… i’ll leave some links:

• Stephen Hawking on Simpsons
• Bill Nye vs MIT atmospheric physicist on Larry King
• Icy calculations on a hot topic

Enjoy! 😈

Yet again: My apologies…

Folks,

I apologize for causing yet more trouble… but it’s been some time now that i’ve been having some trouble with my local installation of WordPress, and all of the tricks i tried to fix it seemed to have little impact: the plugin i used to fix this situation, apparently, does not get along very well with the theme i had chosen… so things just spiraled from there. 😦

Long story short, i decided to move to a more Web2.0 solution and use WordPress.com [as a managed solution] for hosting my blog. I’m still getting acquainted with this new environment and figuring some things out… but i hope this is it: No more moving my blog around! 😛

I have many posts… from 2003 on that i want to bring forward to this new plataform… but i guess this will have to wait a bit until i can cook up some script to convert things around (the export facility on my installation of WordPress has also been a bit moody lately).

Anyway, i really apologize for the trouble, but i hope it won’t [ever] happen again — i appreciate your patience. As always, please, leave me a note if you see something wrong or that can be improved. 🙂

Thanks and enjoy! []’s!