Oh So Boring…

If you are anything like me…well, no one is like me. I’m unique. But, if you want to be like me, here is an activity that you can do if you are stuck inside during a blizzard like I am now or want to pretend to be. That activity? Looking at old menus!

I know, I know, not that exciting, but, man, is it fascinating! The object of my focus this afternoon is the LA Public Library’s online Menu Collection. Just give it a whirl and I dare you not to be sucked in.  Marvel at what ten bucks would buy you 30 years ago compared to today.

I’m not the first to find this site, but I’m damn sure not going to be the last!

There was a book review in this week’s Nature that I had to pass along (link, sadly, for subscribers only, but you get the first few lines of it).  It reviewed a book, Lilavati’s Daughters: The Women Scientists of India, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

If you like, the whole of Lilavati’s Daughters can be found at the IAS’ website here. Some of the autobiographical essays that I’ve read–and I haven’t read them all–are just great.  So good, in fact, that I’m thinking I might buy the book (available from Scholar Without Borders). Sure there is a slight (okay, whopping) premium over the base price of Rs300 to get it here, but $25 is worth a great book. Plus, I suppose I see buying a book like this as a show of support for women in science.

Even if they are all usually smarter than me. Damn you, nerds of the fairer sex!

Yours in women in science,

Matt

I’m not sure how long this offer will last, but the current issue of Contemporary Physics is being offered for free, free, FREE!  That means you don’t have to pay some gazillions of dollars for access.  (Or work at a research institution with a subscription.)

And if there was ever an issue of Contemp Phys to read this is the one.  It’s the 50th Anniversary Issue.

For those who’ve never read Contemp Phys, it’s a journal which is dedicated to making current, sometimes bleeding-edge, physics intelligible to a wider audience.  That often includes other physicists and, quite often, one certain theoretical chemist.

In this issue, you’ll find works by many of the big names of physics.  No, wait, this is Physics.  Names like Salam, Peierls, Hawking, and Chandrasekhar. But many of the articles are written by names just as big, just not as well known.  No matter what, though, ALL of the papers in this Issue are uniformly great.

That said, I was happy to see that one of my all-time favorite papers was included.  This is Otto Frisch’s famous “Take a photon…” paper. In this paper, Frisch presents a series of Gedankenexperiment (thought experiments) as a dialogue between various characters in regards to the interference of a single photon.  If you love great quantum physics, this is the paper for you.  If you love the freakiness of quantum mechanics, this is for you.  Heck, if you are interested in the quantum computing and information, one of modern physics’ big fields, this is a paper for you.

But, really, all of the papers in this issue (and remember there is a second page of papers…which isn’t quite apparent on InformaWorld’s site) are for you.  Read them all.  You will learn something in one of them. Probably in all of them.