HowTo: blog

Fabiorojas has some tips!

Illusion optics!

Using the techniques of transformation optics, which allows Maxwell’s equations and topology to bend the space through which light passes, they describe how a particular object could be optically transformed into another: a spoon may appear to be a cup, or one may see a peephole where there is really a solid wall. Rendering an object invisible then becomes one case out of many possible illusions. We await the experimental realization.

From here.

Writing books for tenure is not fun!

‘You have to promise me you will stop asking me about what I am writing.’

This request surprised Sid. It had been going on for months. When we worked, he continually made me talk about Shakespeare and Milton. I’d been working on a dry tome of literary criticism and for some reason Sid was fascinated by it.’

‘Look, I never wanted to write this book in the first place,’ I explained. ‘But now I have no choice. No book, no job—that’s how you get tenure. And when I come out here I just don’t want to think about it.’

‘How can talking about Shakespeare and Milton depress you?’ he said. ‘You always loved books. You always wanted to be a writer—now you are writing a book. How can that be depressing?’

‘Because I never wanted to write this kind of book, okay? I wanted to write the great American novel, be the great American writer. Not become some professor who writes incomprehensible criticism that no one wants to read. Look at you. You wanted to set a record at Bonneville. Well, sometimes our dreams don’t come true. Just leave me alone when it comes to that stuff and let me do what I have to do.’

I looked at him and knew: now he got it.

From here. There are other interesting ideas in the post — like, for example, why it might not be an accident that

many academics have passions outside of their teaching lives that animate them more than their primary work.

Take a look!

Erdos would rather believe in simulations than in formal proof!

When told of this, Paul Erdos, one of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century, said, “That’s impossible.” Then, when presented with a formal mathematical proof of the correct answer, he still didn’t believe it and grew angry. Only after a colleague arranged for a computer simulation in which Erdos watched hundreds of trials that came out 2-to-1 in favor of switching did Erdos concede that he was wrong.

From Jeff Atwood’s piece on Monty Hall problem at Coding Horror.

Science versus engineering

Eric Drexler talks about at least two important differences between science and engineering, in spite of their sharing the same language:

The information flows that link these levels are antiparallel: In scientific inquiry, physical systems shape their descriptions through measurement, and the results constrain and shape general, abstract models (theories) by testing them. In engineering design, by contrast, descriptions (specifications) shape physical systems through fabrication, and general, abstract models (system concepts) shape descriptions through design.

…

While science aims (ideally) to produce exact descriptions of all parameters of all members of a general class of physical systems, engineering aims to manufacture instances of a single kind of system, making choices to ensure that itsfunctional parameters will equal or exceed those specified by a design description.

Likewise, while science aims to formulate a single theory that exactly fits all parameters of every description, engineering aims to design at least one description of a system having functional parameters that equal or exceed those required by one of a potential multiplicity of system concepts.

In this connection, is a proliferation of possible ways of satisfying a constraint good, or bad? In science, finding more possibilities creates greater uncertainty; in engineering, finding more possibilities provides greater freedom of design. This is a basic question with opposite answers — and there are many more.

Thining like an economist, understanding the world and political allegiances

Here is Brad DeLong:

To me, the thing to note about the economists–the Mankiws, the Lucases, the Beckers, the Barros, and all the rest–who have pledged allegiance to the Republican Party this year is how much they hagve stopped thinking like economists. When an economist thinks about American health care, he or she begins with what we give up and what we get: we give up $1 trillion dollars in real resources a year relative to other countries, and we get… what?… not much. But this is not how Mankiw or Becker approach it. When an economist thinks about nominal demand, he or she thinks about (a) the money stock and (b) the determinants of velocity–the incentives people have to spend their money quickly or to tend to hoard it. But that is not how Lucas or Barro think when they claim that fiscal policy cannot affect nominal demand.

I still remember being convinced by Rick Ericson when I had just turned 18 that thinking like an economist required that one always pay attention to three key principles: market equilibrium, individuals responding to incentives, cost-benefit tradeoffs. And I remember him convincing me that if you kept those three principles in mind always you could do a much better job in understanding the world. I thought that Chicago-School economists believed in these principles too. But someone–was it Mark Lemley?–told me more recently that intellectual principles almost always weigh much less in the balance than political allegiances.

A good one!

A hard-earned lesson

The bottom line: how you spend matters much more than how much you spend. Let this be a lesson to those who think that it only takes money to make universities good.

From this piece by Pervez Hoodbhoy; link via Abi.

By the way, though not in the same league as what Hoodbhoy describes, I have heard of cash awards for papers in one of the Indian Institutions too!

Economic primers: a reading list

From Brad DeLong:

I can think of three things to do:

1. Set them to read, as preliminary background, one nineteenth-century book, Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street, and one early twentieth century book, John Maynard Keynes’s Tract on Monetary Reform. There is a possibility of some confusion: when people today say “Keynesian” they mean late Keynes, and the Tract is early Keynes. But if that is made clear, it should work well: those two lay out pretty much all the issues and do so in a historical context divorced from today…
2. Set them to read, as preliminary background, the paperback macroeconomics half of Krugman and Wells’s introductory economics textbook…
3. Set them to read, as preliminary background, the macroeconomics half of Cowen and Tabarrok’s forthcoming introductory economics textbook…

Take a look!

Which Neumann?

The Neumann of Neumann’s principle, or, principle of symmetry is this one and not this (as I thought).

Couple of materials science fun links

When does silly putty break like a piece of glass? Go here to watch the video!

A profile of Mark Miodownik and his materials library (link via Jenny):

He dates his interest in materials to his purchase, as a schoolboy, of a clear, acrylic ruler advertised as shatterproof. When the ruler shattered into a hundred pieces – on being smacked against the skull of a schoolyard bully – Miodownik was shocked: “I was so appalled by this I went back to the newsagent with the evidence and confronted them with it. They said, ‘You can have another one,’ but I had to say, ‘No! The point is it’s not shatterproof. You’ve either got to change the name or get rid of the whole stock!’”

The shop owners couldn’t be bothered. “But I cared. And I wanted to know how you could make a shatterproof ruler. What was shattering anyway? Why do some things shatter and others don’t?” His obsession led him to a PhD in turbine jet-engine alloys at Oxford University and on to his present role as head of the Materials Research Group at King’s.

Have fun!