Recently read: Steven Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life

Word of the day: bobeche (n.) A disk or flange-shaped extension at the top of a candlestick nozzle used to catch and retain the candle wax drippings. [Source: http://www.englishpewter.co.uk/glossary.html]

List: Notable electrical-engineers-turned-physicists

• Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from University of Bristol. Shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in physics for his reformulation of quantum mechanics.
  
• Edward Mills Purcell: Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University. Shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering nuclear magnetic resonance in condensed matter.
  
• John Bardeen: Bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from University of Wisconsin. Shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor. Shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in physics for developing a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory).
  

Recently read: Lillian Hoddeson and Vicki Daitch, True Genius: The Life And Science Of John Bardeen, The Only Winner of Two Nobel Prizes in Physics

Recently read: Joel Shurkin, Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley

Ben Franklin's biggest mistake

Why do people voluntary submit to the temporal shell game known as Daylight Saving Time? The number one reason that the Powers That Be cite is energy savings, but the evidence for this is inconclusive. In particular, the marginal benefit of extending the Daylight Saving period, as was done in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, seems negligible at best. It also seems rather half-hearted--if you're going to impose such madness, you might as well make all time Daylight Saving Time and maximize the "benefits."

Now playing: Coldplay - In My Place

Realism vanquishes hopeless romanticism

I think I have finally come to terms with the fact that, no matter how much you might love the most wonderful woman in the world, she might not love you back.

The economic psychology of nightclubs

While I waited in the line for pre-sale ticket holders outside a Detroit nightclub (names have been omitted in order to protect the guilty) from midnight to 1 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning, I had an epiphany regarding the economic psychology of nightclubs. It is a often-repeated truism that there is an incentive for a nightclub to try to have a long line waiting outside in order to give the impression that they are the hippest place to be. As I waited in line, I realized that the reason why they made the pre-sale ticket holders wait in line, rather than people who didn't already have tickets, was simple economics. The nightclub has an economic incentive to get non-ticket-holders into the club quickly, because if they make those people wait, they could decide to go home or go to a different club and then that is a lost sale. The nightclub already has the pre-sale ticket-holder's money. They can make the ticket-holder wait in line for an hour on a freezing winter night because the ticket-holder has an economic incentive to stay--(s)he has already spent money for admission in the club, and if they go home (or to another club), that money is wasted. And if there are a lot of pre-sale ticket holders, you fulfill the psychological strategy of having a long line waiting outside to give the impression of being a hip place to be.

The moral of the story: Don't buy pre-sale tickets for a club event unless you are fairly certain that the club is going to be filled to capacity when you arrive.

Now playing: Ben Folds - Annie Waits

Now watching: Pachelbel Rant

Optimal sort

I had been bothered for some time by this vague recollection of a reference to an algorithm that had been optimized several times, most notably by Don Knuth, but then subsequently by someone else. For the record, that was the 16-element sort, and I read about it in Artificial Life by Steven Levy.