Awwww…

21 comments

Skip to comment form ↓

1

Zeno

29 September 2011 at 1:57 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Fourier transforms are like magic.

Laplace transforms are also pretty cool.
2

Hideki

29 September 2011 at 2:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah, another link I can’t view on XP

Along with Observations of a nerd/Science Sushi which I’ve been unable to read since the move due to this issue -.-

Seems anything on Scientific American blogs crashes the browser in XP, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it (get a frowny Oh Snap! page in Chrome but it doesn’t work in other browsers eiher)

If anyone has a solution for that I’m all ears (eyes?) (other than switch to linux/win7/macos/etc.)

I’ve tried several machines running various operating systems and it works fine on windows 7 and windows 8 but not XP, heh.
3

Glen Davidson

29 September 2011 at 2:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah yes, math and chess club will win the girl in the end.

At least so go the desperate geek fantasies.

Glen Davidson
4

Ibis3, féministe avec un titre française de fantaisie

29 September 2011 at 2:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

@Hideki

Can’t help, but I’m running XP (FF 5.0) and I’m not running into any difficulty.
5

Dark Matter

29 September 2011 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

A lovely post.

Incidentally, is there a reason why a trailer for “Courageous” appears beneath the first two posts on the homepage, and in the sidebar? It doesn’t appear to be related to the text above or below and advertises as being from the directors of “Fireproof.”
6

Glen Davidson

29 September 2011 at 3:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Incidentally, is there a reason why a trailer for “Courageous” appears beneath the first two posts on the homepage, and in the sidebar?

Because you have to have somewhere to take the person you meet at Christian Mingle or at Liberty University. The advertising here dovetails nicely, IMO.

Not dovetailing with the commenters, of course, but perhaps with lurkers watching with fascination and horror.

Glen Davidson
7

Beatrice, anormalement indécente

29 September 2011 at 4:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Aw, mathematics and love. So sweet.
8

Vorticity

29 September 2011 at 4:23 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

That’s a fine article, but she commits a cardinal sin by not crediting Randall Munroe of xkcd.com for the illustrations.
9

Bill Door

29 September 2011 at 4:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Also, inverse Fourier transform… cause I’m kinky like that.
And fast Fourier transform when I’m in a hurry.
10

Therrin

29 September 2011 at 7:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah, another link I can’t view on XP

FF 3.6.20, XP Pro SP3, no problems. Sounds like an add-on or setting issue.
11

Therrin

29 September 2011 at 8:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Hideki, does the site crash whether you click the link or copy/paste into new browser window?
12

Echidna

29 September 2011 at 11:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I’m with Vorticity. Not providing attribution (for the xkcd comics) violates one of the basic ideas of science, as well as being bad journalism. I loved the article at first because Mr. Echidna and I have a similar vibe going but I came away feeling soured.
13

F

30 September 2011 at 1:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Jennifer Ouellette is awesome.
14

dontpanic

30 September 2011 at 1:37 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

I echo Vorticity + Echidna’s sourness about the xkcd non-attribution. Geek love for the yeah, though. Met via parallel blogs? How new school. Back when Ms. Don’tPanic and I started dating ~30 years ago one had to do things like visiting the NASA Ames Research Center “wind tunnels of luuve” in person on a Society of Physics Students outing — led to our first date that evening.
15

Chris

30 September 2011 at 1:52 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

When I was in high school I would walk along the sea wall and look at the waves. Since I had recently learned about sine and cosine I wondered if I could find the amplitudes and frequencies of the waves.

And in college I did learn all about Fourier transforms, along with eigenvectors, eigenvalues and the rest. I even managed to become a vibration engineer. Euler’s equation is seriously cool.

(I took statics thirty five years ago, and I still imagine little force arrows whenever I see a truss!)
16

LRA

30 September 2011 at 2:26 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Aw! I wish I could find a guy like that!!!!

Dang it!
17

BCskeptic

30 September 2011 at 3:38 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Very cool. Very cool.

See, this is the kind of foundational awe and wonder that religionists miss out on because of their narrow, dogmatic, bronze-age beliefs.

And, this helps to dispel the notion that only “geeks” (whatever the F that really means) are into science and math.

Now, if I could just get *my* wife to take a math/physics course…I wouldn’t get all of those blank stares!
18

Samantha Vimes, Chalkboard Monitor

30 September 2011 at 8:44 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

My DH sits in on my calculus classes. He does things like read for his classes or edit his novel, but he seems to have one ear open and catches the general idea of what we’re studying. Once the teacher teased him when he tagged along on test day, offering to let him sit the exam.
And once when I groused that exercising in a swimming pool alone was boring, he told me to think about multivariable calculus. I pouted at his snark at first, then realized I was in the ideal setting, as I could think about how the force of my arms moving in curves was sending my body forward as a vector.
19

theobromine

30 September 2011 at 9:58 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Ah yes, math and chess club will win the girl in the end.
At least so go the desperate geek fantasies.

Sure it will:

My highschool sweetheart and I met in “Math Club”, which was really a computer club in which we all piled into the physics teacher’s station wagon and drove to the school that had an IBM360, where we spent the afternoon programming in Fortran on punchcards. And we sat next to eachother in calculus class, comparing the results on our tests (alas, he usually won by a mark or two, since I had a tendency to swap + and – signs or make other silly mistakes). 39 years later, we are still together.

As for the next generation: Our son and his partner started out as science lab partners in grade 10, and they’ve been together for 11 years.
20

Benjamin "Acts of Baker" Geiger

30 September 2011 at 10:51 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Fast Fourier Transform delenda est.

Sorry, but that algorithm has pissed me right the hell off.
21

watch coriolanus full movie

15 November 2011 at 4:59 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment

Another important aspect is that if you are an older person, travel insurance pertaining to pensioners is something you should really contemplate. The elderly you are, a lot more at risk you might be for allowing something poor happen to you while overseas. If you are never covered by quite a few comprehensive insurance policy, you could have several serious problems. Thanks for expressing your suggestions on this weblog.