10 dimensions, to be precise.

Useful in advance of my Anathem review.

this is a post for all those things I see from time to time that make me think "I should share that" and then I don't because I think "everyone has probably already seen it" when in fact everyone probably hasn't. So here are a few of those things, rolled up into one link-filled nugget of joy.

"A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke"

The 5 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High

DNA, Psychoanalyisis, Coca Cola a No Hitter and… you'll have to click through for #1.

Calvin and Jobs

A brilliant technolust cousin to Garfield Minus Garfield from Mad (the paper magazine, which is why we're linking to flickr).

Just In Case You Want To Play Catch-Up With the Meme Thing

Here's a handy timeline. The first I remember experiencing firsthand was the "Ate my Balls" thing, which makes me feel old.

Of course, everything makes me feel old right now, so that's nothing new.

For what it's worth, my favorite of the highlighted items is the classic "All Your Base Are Belong To Us." Now watch as I post it, like the Internet equivalent of a classic rock DJ

From this month's Scientific American, we have this sidebar:

Zapping Your Computer
A superstorm might well have strange effects on electronics. The high-energy protons that reach the ground produce neutrons that pass right through the shielding around satellite and avionics systems. (Most computer systems lack even this shielding.)

Extensive background radiation studies by IBM in the 1990s suggest that computers typically experience about one cosmic-ray-induced error per 256 megabytes of RAM per month. If so, a superstorm, with its unprecedented radiation fluxes, could cause widespread computer failures. For­tun­ately, in such instances most users could simply reboot.

Based on that assessment I have 8 such events at home and 12 such events at work every month. Whenever something weird happens to my machine from now on I'm blaming cosmic rays. Which is cool with me since at some level I'm all about cosmic rays (being an admitted geek for Marvel Comics cosmic heroes.)

Hell yes. Happy Saturday. Comics + Science.

Yowza.

Brian Greene, in case you didn't know, is a professor of physics at Columbia and is the author of “The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory” and “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality.” For my money he's one of the top candidates to fill the "America's scientist" position left behind by Carl Sagan. His popular books on string theory are remarkable in their ability to translate incredibly complex, and still-changing, scientific thought into language a "civilian" can understand.

Anyway, if you're not the type to watch the times' op-ed pages, here's a taste of his piece published today:

A COUPLE of years ago I received a letter from an American soldier in Iraq. The letter began by saying that, as we’ve all become painfully aware, serving on the front lines is physically exhausting and emotionally debilitating. But the reason for his writing was to tell me that in that hostile and lonely environment, a book I’d written had become a kind of lifeline. As the book is about science — one that traces physicists’ search for nature’s deepest laws — the soldier’s letter might strike you as, well, odd.

But it’s not. Rather, it speaks to the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning. At the same time, the soldier’s letter emphasized something I’ve increasingly come to believe: our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives.

Allow me a moment to explain.

Read the rest @ Put a Little Science in Your Life

Yes, April has been on of my busiest months in years, so I haven't had time to write as much as I would like.

May will be all kinds of awesome.

In the interim, here are some links I crafted, just for you.

Meet the Web's 10 most hated people.

That one should be pretty self explanatory.

I'm loving aliens instead

Robbie Williams disappeared from view at the end of 2006. Since then, he has become obsessed with UFOs and extraterrestrials. To gather evidence, he and Jon Ronson headed deep into the Nevada desert

On December 18 2006, Robbie Williams played the last of 59 stadium shows in a row, announced he was going to spend Christmas at his home in Los Angeles, and then basically disappeared. He was hardly seen at all in 2007. He briefly checked into rehab. He spent quite a bit of time hiking and playing football (he owns a football pitch on Mulholland Drive). Then he stopped hiking and playing football. His record company, EMI, announced he had no plans to release an album in 2008. Today he unexpectedly calls me to ask if I want to go with him to the desert in Nevada to meet UFO abductees.

Cognitive Dissonance in Monkeys – The Monty Hall Problem

The Monty Hall Problem has struck again, and this time it’s not merely embarrassing mathematicians. If the calculations of a Yale economist are correct, there’s a sneaky logical fallacy in some of the most famous experiments in psychology.

Visualizing Viruses

Most people want to avoid spam and viruses, which is exactly why MIT Media Lab's grad student Alex Dragulescu spins the net's detritus into art.

9 Common Idioms That Come from Technology

Again, straightforward.