Several people have sent this video to me:
I have to admit, I was baffled by it, but assumed that it was some sort of Soviet television entertainment for which I lacked the context. However, I learned a lot more from this fascinating blog post by Justin Smith.
From Terence Tao’s blog, I see that they have finished writing the first polymath project on A new proof of the density Hales-Jewett theorem. It’s a fascinating experiment in math research (or is it maths research?) and it’s great to see that it worked.
Via Animikwaan, a video of Bobby McFerrin jumping around to get the audience to give him a pentatonic cantus firmus, as it were…
I guess I’m nostalgic for old educational TV shows, but The Electric Company, which I barely remember, is (partially) on Hulu now.
The commercial interruptions are new, however. It’s not on the PBS station, after all…
Via MetaFilter, I learned of Detexify, which is a neat widget for finding pesky symbols in LaTeX. I tried it out and it’s not too bad. It also tells you what package to add for more esoteric symbols. Also, it learns from its input, so you can help train it while you’re looking for things.
Obviously it’s clear I’m a big nerd, but thinking back on the wonder that was Square One, I am astonished at how much work they put into their cultural references/parodies. You can dance if you want to… as long it is the Angle Dance!
On the official website you can watch the some other clips. If they ever released this show on DVD I would queue up to buy it.
You know who you are. More egregious copyright violation on YouTube… Horace Silver’s “Filthy McNasty.”
I’m blogging up a storm, it seems.
Fafblog is back! This better not be an April Fool’s joke…
Today’s PhD Comics strip reminds me of this classic Bloom County strip.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading Sadly, No! document the atrocities of Jonah Goldberg’s new book Liberal Fascism : The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. The book can be summarized by the following argument : Nazis liked organic food. Modern liberals like organic food. Therefore modern liberalism is rooted in fascism. Clever, eh?
Then I found out about this interview of Goldberg on the Daily Show. Wow.
See also this insightful contribution from Michael Bérubé on the line from Dinesh D’Souza (also one of my least favorite “commentators”) to Goldberg.
An Ergodic Walk 
