Tuesday, December 18, 2007

LinkDump.

The histomap of evolution.
Ok, so they were off on the age of the Earth by, oh, 5.5 billion years, but give them a break. It was published in 1932.

Key quote: "Evolution does not, as so many assume, teach that man is descended from an ape or monkey. Modern evolutionists teach only that man and the apes had a common ancestor of whose characteristics they know little and who may have approached in structure and appearance modern man more than modern ape. Neither does evolution pretend to explain the origin of life, or that the development of man has been entirely mechanical or accidental.... The Histomap merely summarizes the more generally accepted views, recognition of which engenders a philosophy of life capable of inspiring a faith of the highest order." (Emphasis mine.)

When did the theory of evolution change to "Evolution teaches that the development of all life is entirely accidental and mechanical, and recognition of these views prohibits a faith in any higher order"?

Mathematics in Futurama. Ok, half the page is in Spanish, but the other half is still interesting. I think much of that was written by Dr. Sarah Greenwald, professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University. At least, I think so because most of that appears in the special feature "Mind-bending Futurama math lecture by Professor Sarah Greenwald (Teachers: use it for exciting and educational classroom viewing!)" on the Bender's Big Score DVD. That feature alone makes the DVD worth getting, especially since the episode itself isn't all that funny.

It's also worth noting that there was a similar article in Math Horizons a few years back about math in The Simpons. I have a suspicion it was written by the same person.

Pixar Easter Eggs.

Interesting article on atomic clocks. I thought it was interesting how they had to recalibrate the clock because they moved it to a different floor and the gravitational force of the Earth was different.

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