Via Swans on Tea , a great article about Richard Feynman’s days in the 1980’s working for Thinking Machines on their groundbreaking massively-parallel computers. (Reprinted from Physics Today.)
Richard did a remarkable job of focusing on his “assignment,” stopping only occasionally to help wire the computer room, set up the machine shop, shake hands with the investors, install the telephones, and cheerfully remind us of how crazy we all were. When we finally picked the name of the company, Thinking Machines Corporation, Richard was delighted. “That’s good. Now I don’t have to explain to people that I work with a bunch of loonies. I can just tell them the name of the company.”
But then there is this:
The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest...
Content suppressed by ://URLFAN, for full article visit source
Websites mentioned in article (click for rank details):
Psychologists have used hypnosis to give people the ability to see numbers as colors.
That form of synesthesia is naturally possessed by roughly one in 1,000 people, among them such historical luminaries as physicist Richard Feynman and writer Vladimir Nabokov, who saw "q as browner than k, while s is not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl."
LINK TO ORIGINAL ... more
A serious section concludes Richard Feynman’s Surely You’re Joking , in which he denounces various forms of bad science. He talks about the pseudoscience of UFOs and reflexology, but also about problems with the work done by credible scientists, such as the bias towards publishing positive results and ignoring negative or inconclusive ones. He raises issues about the quality of school textbooks and the ethics of those who publish and select them. He stresses the importance of retesti... more
Harvard University’s endowment is $35 billion, and some people aren’t happy about it. Massachusetts legislators see money that could be theirs, and are contemplating new taxes. Social activists see money that could be going to charity, and want to divert it. Distinguished alumni who have landed at public universities wonder why, with all that cash, Harvard graduates such a tiny number of students.
These are all legitimate concerns, and I won’t be suggesting the id... more
After Congress slashed the budget for high energy physics just before Christmas last year, well into the 2008 fiscal year, Fermilab had to scramble to figure out how to cope with a huge shortfall in its budget.
The response was twofold. Firstly, all employees would be subject to “ furloughs” in which all salaried employees would take one week off without pay in every two-month period. This has made it hard to get, say, five Fermilab people in a meeting together the past few m... more
Pocket Change From: cosmicvariance.com Post Date: 2008-05-26 15:17:04
I made a chart! This is the kind of thing you do when you return from a long trip and are jet-lagged.
These are the 2008 research budgets for physical sciences , in billions of dollars, for the main funding agencies in the U.S.: the Department of Energy, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. For helpful comparison purposes, I’ve also plotted the $14.9 billion that has been misplaced over the course of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Not the cost of the war itself, w... more
Feeds and posts are not affliated with ://URLFAN. They are displayed here simply for informational purposes, if you would like to remove your feed, posts, or domain from ranking and analysis, please contact us.
Content suppressed by ://URLFAN, for full article 
Websites mentioned in article
Buzz Words mentioned in article:
How popular is cosmicvariance.com?
