American Scientist presents an interesting proposal in its Macroscope column this month. The authors want to explicitly redefine Avogadro's number (~6.022 × 10²³, as you may remember from physics) to be a specific integer.

I remember learning that this number represented a mole, the number of molecules of water in a gram. It turns out, of course, that this depends on the definition of a gram. At the moment, the gram is defined by a specific chunk of metal held in a vault somewhere in France. This chunk of metal (Le Gran K, according to the article) is changing over time (due to handling, cleaning, etc), so the actual definition of a gram is changing, as is (consequently) Avogadro's number. Redefining Avogadro's number to be a constant would remove the Système International's dependence on this physical artifact.

well, the universe begs to differ. actually, the universe doesn't beg or differ. the universe couldn't possibly care any less about you and your problems. or all of humanity for that matter. or all of the life on this pathetic little ball of rock floating through this vast emptiness of nowhere. in fact, if the universe did care, which it doesn't, this is probably what it would say. but the universe will probably just say it anyway, because it can.

I've seen a couple of references recently to the beautiful mathematical/scientific art of Bathsheba Grossman. Very impressive stuff that is almost entirely enabled by technology. She uses computers, laser etching, 3D printing, and maybe most interestingly, direct-metal printing, which is something I had not been familiar with. It's really nice how she gives detailed explanations of how she makes the pieces.

I know I'm supposed to be studying, but this is too funny, and physics related, so it's ok. I stumbled upon this site that reviews the best and worst (mostly worst) representations of physics in the movies. Very funny. It includes a movie phyics rating system. The earth catasrophe movies seem to fair the worst, as is to be expected if you've ever seen one.

To expand on dkg's recent post on Flying Spaghetti Monsterism and Intelligent Design, read these recent NYTimes articles. One is more or less a history of FSM; the other, by Daniel Dennett, addresses the ID debate. I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage, and it is starchy. Ramen.

Finally! An anti-evolutionist writes a reasonable letter to the Kansas City School Board. More details can be found here.

That is all.

Some fun links from yesterday's NYTimes:

• Is Time Travel Possible?
• Reality influenced by others?
• Best of web art

I learned today about this rather unusual situation where a baby was born with two heads. Oddly enough this was featured on an Oprah episode.

Apparantley this baby was the result of conjoined twins with one developing incompletely only as a head, attached at the base of each of their skulls. Amazingly it was able to survive parasitically receiving all of its blood/oxygen/nutrients from the fully formed body of its twin.

As the fully developed twin was medically compromised by the parasitical twin, the decision was made to remove the attached head in order to allow for the other to survive.

Am I punk enough?

This site also uses a very nice looking content management system called Mambo. Too bad it's not in Debian. I wonder why?