my corner of nowhere particular
Connecticut has a place called “Fun Squared.” You can check out their website here.
Their motto is “Double the fun.”
Seriously?
STOP IT. Stop propagating stupidity. You’ve got a place for kids, and you’re naming it with a math term and then immediately defining it incorrectly.
I hate stuff like this.
Roommate Kevin went to some physical therapy this week for his back and got fitted with one of the coolest medicinal devices I’ve seen.
Kevin had this patch applied to his back. The patch has two sides: a positive and a negative.
Kevin’s Patch
Kevin’s Patch, close-up.
On the negative side, you’ve got some negatively charged sodium chloride and on the positive side you’ve got a polar, hydrophilic drug. This is, in essence, a battery. The negative side tries to scoot over to the positive side. At the same time, you’ve got the positive drug wanting to seep into the patient’s negatively charged skin.
My MSPaint (props to Viv for some guidance)
Apparently a more primitive application of this occurs in normal drug patches. Nicotine patches for example have a positive charge to attract them to the skin, but they don’t have the negative side of the battery present. This means that the drug just seeps into the skin. This system is not as advanced because you can’t control the rate at which the drug is administered to the patient. It just kinda seeps in at an inconsistent rate.
With the battery setup, you can control the flow from the negative side to the positive side and thus create an even administration of drug to the patient.
Awesome!
I mentioned last week that I wanted to try and find a way to promote MikeDiDonato.com. So I’m doing what I know how to do best: MSPaint and T-shirts.
I have designed a sweet t-shirt. Check it out:
It’s the perfect combo of Geekery and Rockery! All the while mocking corporate sponsership! I am going to be giving two of these t-shirts away. This is how it works.
There are three ways to get yourself entered in the drawing.
1. If you e-mail someone you know and tell them about my website (you must include a link to the website) and CC me in on the e-mail, then I will enter you into a drawing for a t-shirt. The person who sent the winning e-mail will receive a free t-shirt, and so too will the person who had the e-mail sent to them. For each person you send an e-mail to, you get one entry. One e-mail, one entry. If you send one e-mail to 8 people, you’ll only get one entry. If you send personalized e-mails to 8 people, then you’ll get 8 entries. E-mailing people who already openly read the blog doesn’t get you entries. Nor does e-mailing the same person multiple times. Please be respectful to the people you e-mail.
2. If you add a blog post about my website on your website and include a link to my website, you get two entries. Please e-mail me a link to your blog. Limit one blog post per person. If you are selected the winner via this method, you will receive two t-shirts in the mail.
3. If you share my blog via Google Reader you will get one entry – please make sure I’m following you first by sending me an e-mail. Limit one shared post per person. If you are selected the winner via this method, you will receive two t-shirts in the mail.
DEADLINE: The deadline is the end of Labor Day weekend (September 7th, 11:59pm EST). On September 8th, I’ll take those entries that I have received and randomly pick one lucky winner. I will mail out the winning t-shirts after I get the winners’ size and color requests.
Limit 15 entries per person.
I reserve all rights to deny entries to anyone I think might be spamming or stretching the rules in a way that’s sneaky or underhanded.
My e-mail address is: MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com
The t-shirt design above might change slightly between now and September 8th, but if it does it will only get more awesome. If the winner would prefer a Breakfast Squad t-shirt, then that’s cool too.
Good luck!!
A brief history of the smallest known objects:
A long time ago – Chinese philosophers suggest five basic elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water
Early 1800’s John Dalton comes up with his Atomic Theory. He suggests that all matter is made of indestructible, indivisible Atoms.
1897 – J.J. Thompson finds evidence of a smaller particle, the electron – develops the plum pudding model of an Atom
1919 – Ernest Rutherford does his alpha particle/gold foil experiment, finds evidence of a nucleus. Discovers the proton.
1932 – James Chadwick uncovers the neutron
1936 – The Muon (think heavier electron) is discovered by Carl Anderson
1960’s – Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig begin work into the classification of the quark. Quarks are what make up protons and neutrons. There are six known quarkes named: Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Charm, and Strange.*
Late 1960’s early 1970’s – Scientists begin to suspect that quarks, and leptons (electron family) are made of single dimensional strings
1975 – The Tauon (think very heavy electron) is discovered by Martin Perl
1990 – String theory adapted to include the potential for multi-dimensions by Polchinski
1995 – Edward Witten develops the M-theory which suggests 11 dimensions for strings
A few weeks ago I was talking to Sander about a computer game (gimme friction). “I love this game because it appears to be perfectly analog, but really it’s limited by the number of pixels within the screen. That means that there are not an infinite number of games, it’s actually closer to finite than one originally observes.” Sander replied: “But aren’t most games defined by their resolution?” And he’s right.
As the simplest example, there’s tic tac toe – a game with only 9 binary pixels. Connect four has 42 binary pixels. Even more complicated games like risk have a set number of countries, a set number of pieces, a set number of cards, and a set number of dice potentials.
When I think about our quest for the smallest building block, I think we’re really looking for the pixel of the universe. I think we’re trying to define a resolution for our world. After which, things might suddenly become a lot less infinite.
*fun fact: according to wikipedia the top and bottom quark used to be referred to as the truth and beauty quark. Neat!
