Spock battles Spock in a hilarious serious of nerdy references. I generally despise commercials, but this is delightful. I also reminds me of the Planet Money episode about Lincoln and Audi.
Also, look out for Stanford’s self-driving car.
Tracks
Cards Against Humanity: Some time in the past three years, people have gotten it into their...
Some time in the past three years, people have gotten it into their heads that Cards Against Humanity is some sort of open-ended party game in which “there are no wrong answers” to the Black Cards. We feel terrible about the mistake. Here is the first in a two-part series devoted to revealing the…
The Cards Against Humanity PAX panel - thanks to Jeff and Ryan for hosting, and Angrybees for enforcing! Photos by Andrew Ferguson.
April Fools on /r/AskScience
The mods on reddit’s AskScience introduced “sponsored content” yesterday, demonstrating that scientists can have a sense of humor about a fairly serious issue (how money affects science). The strong negative reactions of those who were fooled was very encouraging for those of us who, in the face of all the indignities of research funding, still believe in the ideals of scientific independence and impartiality that we preach.
Some of the best threads include:
How does Quantum Healing regulate our Aura and remove toxins?
(Source: mypotsylife)
To the members of the MIT community:
This past weekend, a distressing event disrupted the life of our campus community. I am writing now to share details about the incident and important information that affects us all.
The incident itself:
On Saturday, February 23 at 7:28 AM, the dispatch center at the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) received an electronic communication reporting an emergency at 77 Massachusetts Avenue. The communication came through a Sprint relay message service designed for people with hearing or speech impediments. The communication went on for more than 18 minutes, with a Sprint relay operator interacting with the caller and in turn communicating with a CPD dispatcher.
One minute into the communication, the caller reported someone with a “really big gun,” and “armor” who was “getting out of control.” The CPD dispatcher immediately sent CPD units and State Police to the site, and notified MIT Police.
Within two minutes of being notified, the first MIT Police units entered Building 7. A team of six MIT Police officers coordinated with upwards of 25 CPD and State Police to immediately secure the area to keep the community safe and to search the Main Group. This tight teamwork was possible because all MIT Police officers train with CPD for emergency scenarios.
At 7:32 AM, the caller identified the alleged gunman by name. The person named was confirmed to be a member of MIT’s staff. This person was later questioned and found not to be connected to the incident in any way.
At 7:35 AM, the caller identified MIT President Rafael Reif as the target and said that the alleged gunman was heading towards the administration offices. At 7:37 AM, the caller indicated that the alleged gunman was retaliating against people involved in the suicide of Aaron Swartz. The officers continued their search of the Main Group and proceeded to a second location to ensure the safety of MIT’s President. At 8:52 AM, a campus-wide alert was sent.
This past weekend, a distressing event disrupted the life of our campus community. I am writing now to share details about the incident and important information that affects us all.
The incident itself:
On Saturday, February 23 at 7:28 AM, the dispatch center at the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) received an electronic communication reporting an emergency at 77 Massachusetts Avenue. The communication came through a Sprint relay message service designed for people with hearing or speech impediments. The communication went on for more than 18 minutes, with a Sprint relay operator interacting with the caller and in turn communicating with a CPD dispatcher.
One minute into the communication, the caller reported someone with a “really big gun,” and “armor” who was “getting out of control.” The CPD dispatcher immediately sent CPD units and State Police to the site, and notified MIT Police.
Within two minutes of being notified, the first MIT Police units entered Building 7. A team of six MIT Police officers coordinated with upwards of 25 CPD and State Police to immediately secure the area to keep the community safe and to search the Main Group. This tight teamwork was possible because all MIT Police officers train with CPD for emergency scenarios.
At 7:32 AM, the caller identified the alleged gunman by name. The person named was confirmed to be a member of MIT’s staff. This person was later questioned and found not to be connected to the incident in any way.
At 7:35 AM, the caller identified MIT President Rafael Reif as the target and said that the alleged gunman was heading towards the administration offices. At 7:37 AM, the caller indicated that the alleged gunman was retaliating against people involved in the suicide of Aaron Swartz. The officers continued their search of the Main Group and proceeded to a second location to ensure the safety of MIT’s President. At 8:52 AM, a campus-wide alert was sent.
Finally, officially published.
Also, my Erdős number is now 3.
![matthen:
The smooth motion of rotating circles can be used to build up any repeating curve even one as angular as a digital square wave. Each circle spins at a multiple of a fundamental frequency, and a method called Fourier analysis shows how to pick the radiuses of the circles to make the picture work. Decomposing signals like this lies at the heart of a lot of signal processing. [more] [code]
So cool.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/dc2b4d5c066cbd9f6022d8427fe58d8c/tumblr_mhlswzuNIY1qfg7o3o1_r1_400.gif)
The smooth motion of rotating circles can be used to build up any repeating curve even one as angular as a digital square wave. Each circle spins at a multiple of a fundamental frequency, and a method called Fourier analysis shows how to pick the radiuses of the circles to make the picture work. Decomposing signals like this lies at the heart of a lot of signal processing. [more] [code]
So cool.
Some scenes from our “Bank Heist,” the final “runaround” of this year’s MIT Mystery Hunt.
Oh, you raised $500,000 to take pictures every minute? We need to raise $8,000,000,000 to do it…IN SPACE.
