Mike’s Blog

Handel’s Flash Mob

I do love a good flash mob this time of year, bringing some brilliant Christmas cheer.

Hat tip to bluegal

Math as a Tool

Slashdot passed an interesting article on about the value of math education. One little bit from it:

Americans like technology but seldom have a grasp of the science behind it. And the mathematics that is behind the science is regarded as even more mysterious, like an inner sanctum into which only initiates may gain entry. They see the rich and nourishing technological fruit on this tree of knowledge, but they see no deeper than the surface branches and twigs on which these fruits grow. To them, the region behind this exterior of the tree, where the trunk and limbs grow, is pointless and purposeless. “What’s the use of math?” is the common query. “I’ll never use it.” When a nation’s leaders are composed primarily of lawyers, administrators, military men and stars of the entertainment industry rather than statesmen, philosophers, the spiritual, and the men and women of science, then it should be no surprise that there is so little grasp of the simple reality that one cannot dispense with the trunk and limbs and still continue to enjoy the fruit.

I do think the idea has merit. After all, how many people can say that have the faintest clue how their iPhone works under the hood?

The Billion Prices Project @ MIT

MIT has started an automated system to extract a value similar to the consumer price index, only do it every day. They call it the Billion Prices Project. This is a brilliant match of internet automation and economics! And it appears to track the CPI reasonably well over the long-term. This is what they’re doing:

We currently monitor daily price fluctuations of ~5 million items sold by ~300 online retailers in more than 70 countries.

Antikythera Mechanism

An Apple engineer has reproduced the Antikythera mechanism with legos.  From The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Eminem Parody

Really weird. Really…