Monday, 5 September 2016

Very interesting stairs...

Remember the post of all those dizzy stairs? Well, I recently found two examples that will make you smile...




Saturday, 3 September 2016

Let's party!

Today our very special friend 1smartcanerican turns 70 years young. Have a fantastic day, 1sc, you deserve the best! 





Some blog related cakes:




A lot of deliciousness:













... and the inevitable Canadian themed cakes:



Happy, happy birthday!


Wednesday, 31 August 2016

A very unusual published physicist

I found this amusing article and had to share it with you...

Jack H. Hetherington was a professor of physics at Michigan State University in 1975, when he finished what would become an influential physics paper, an in-depth exploration of atomic behavior at different temperatures.
   

He was all set to send it to Physical Review Letters, but before he dispatched it, Hetherington gave the paper to a colleague to get one one last set of eyes on the piece. This is when he ran into a strange problem. Hetherington had used the royal "we" throughout the paper. As his colleague pointed out, Physical Review Letters generally only published papers using plural pronouns and adjectives like “we” and “our” if the paper had multiple authors.

Hetherington couldn’t have simply done a find-and-replace to correct the offending articles as it was the year 1975 and the whole paper had been produced on a typewriter.

Unwilling to change all the pronouns, Hetherington portrayed F.D.C. Willard as one of his colleagues at Michigan State and submitted the paper, which was published in issue 35 of Physical Review Letters.

F.D.C. Willard was Hetherington's cat, Chester. Of course just listing “Chester” as a co-author probably wouldn’t fly, so he invented the name F.D.C. Willard. The “F.D.C.” stood for “Felix Domesticus, Chester." Willard had been the name of Chester’s father.

 

[Source: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1975-a-cat-coauthored-a-physics-paper]


Tuesday, 30 August 2016

Street art

I really like imaginative street art. The availability of it makes it very attractive, in my eyes. Ok, we can't travel the world looking for it, but then we can't travel and in many cases pay entrance fees to see art in museums.... Viva the internet!















[I've been in touch with Pallottine and he's been away due to some health issues. He has a stubborn clot in one leg and is undergoing further exams in order to decide which is the best course of action. He simply doesn't feel like commenting here, as it's a very personal blog, people behave differently, are more involved with each other than in a political blog, for example... That won't stop us from sending our good thoughts, lighting candles and all the things we always do when somebody needs our love and attention, eh? Pallottine sends his love to all.]