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Other articles


  1. Cartographic and Cryptographic


    Sometimes I nerd out on tattoo ideas.

    I really want some sort of tattoo that’s geeky, scientific/mathematical, and also goes with my body shape. Like the equation for Gaussian Curvature, tattooed along the curve from my waist to my hip:

    I also want the geodesic equation and Einstein’s field equation tattooed onto my wrists as anti-suicide tattoos. To remind me that I still have things to fix before trying the old piano-wire-and-superglue trick. The Einstein field equation is usually expressed as .



    While the geodesic equation is usually written as .





    Another idea was to tattoo the RSA cryptographic algorithm, which used to be legally classified as a munition.

    That photograph is of some old-skool crypto-anarchist named James Melvin, who’s cuter than a spaceship full of robotic kittens, and who has it tattooed in four lines of Perl:


    #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
    $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
    lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
    

    Except I’d tattoo it on my bicep, so that I could flex and say, “Check out my guns!” Also, I’d probably get it tattooed in Python, because Perl usually makes my brain feel like it’s doing loopdy-loops in my skull. Also, if it was in Python, I could flex and say:

    Hey baby, is there a vet in this town?” No. Why? “Because this Python is sick!”

    Not to mention that it’s only two lines in Python:

    #!/usr/local/bin/python --
    from sys import *;from string import *;a=argv;[s,p,q]=filter(lambda x:x[:1]!= '-',a);d='-d'in a;e,n=atol(p,16),atol(q,16);l=(len(q)+1)/2;o,inb=l-d,l-1+d
    while s: s=stdin.read(inb);s and map(stdout.write,map(lambda i,b=pow(reduce(lambda x,y:(x<>8*i&255),range(o-1,-1,-1)))
    

    And speaking of spaceships, what’s cooler than maps of where the Earth is? This one shows Earth’s location with respect to the observable universe in the cosmic microwave background:

    Neat, but not feasibly tattooable. Also, not exactly readable to extraterrestrial intelligences either. But thankfully, NASA already made an illustration of where Earth’s Sun is, which would be readable by aliens, and they made plaques of it, which were launched with the Voyager 10 and Voyager 11 spacecraft. The graph uses the locations of 14 pulsars to show the Sun’s precise location. And someone else beat me to the tattoo, but whatever. I’m getting it anyway.

    I haven’t gotten any of these yet, though, because years ago I discovered a patent for nanoparticle ferrofluid tattoo ink. Basically, it would work like this: You take ferrofluid, which is a “fluid” made of nano-sized particles of iron, which is magnetic. Ferrofluids are really neat. If you’ve never heard of them before, you should check them out …

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  2. Cosmology

    I’ve taken to running half marathons while reading theoretical physics textbooks and listening to industrial or black metal. It’s the best way I’ve found so far to murderdeadkill social anxiety and panic attacks, not to mention it feels hella badass. One of my dearest friends is the only member of the only anarchist industrial project, so far as I know. One of the songs on their album (which, of course, can be downloaded for free), “Aspect of Illa”, starts with a quote from the movie Ninja Assassin:

    Oy, here’s a question for ya.

    Which one o’ these words don’t belong:

    Laptop, space shuttle, nanotechnology, ninja.”

    Which is totally a trick question, because of course all four word go together perfectly fine.

    Here’s a scan of the textbook I’m reading, because it wasn’t already up online. Er, well, it apparently was, but the site got a takedown notice. I hope they get a kick out of trying to stick their takedown notice in the mailbox of a burned down house.

    Springer Tracts in Modern Physics 210: Cosmology (click for .pdfs)

    Front Cover

    00 - Preface, ToC, and Notations

    01 - Chapter 1 - Basics

    02 - Chapter 2 - Relativity

    03 - Chapter 3 - Expansion

    04 - Chapter 4 - Cosmometry

    05 - Chapter 5 - Matter and Radiation

    06 - Chapter 6 - Standard Synthesis

    07 - Chapter 7 - Inflation

    08 - Chapter 8 - Structure Formation in the Opaque Universe

    09 - Chapter 9 - Structure Formation in the Transparent Universe

    10 - Chapter 10 - Higher Dimensions

    11 - Chapter 11 - Topological Quasi-Particles

    12 - Chapter 12 - Quantum Cosmology

    13 - Chapter 13 - Machian Aspects

    14 - Chapter 14 - Anthropic Aspects

    15 - Index

    Back Cover

    Because of this book, I now 80% believe in macroevolution and primordial nucleosynthesis (gasp, I know. Don’t freak out, I was agnostic on the matter until I could gather more information.) And chemistry makes complete sense now. I’ve asked every chemist I’ve ever met to explain their subject at the particle level, and all have failed miserably, blank stares abound. I was so sure that elements should be able to mutate  into other elements, they’re all made of the same sub-atomic particles after all. Turns out, not only was my thinking correct, but there are 3D diagrams detailing precisely how this transmogrification occurs. (Chapter 6, Fig. 6.10).

    Also, I take issue with the use of the Einstein-deSitter universal model for calculating the reentry time from the inflationary period in cosmological evolution. (Chapter 8, Eqs. 8.9 - 8.13) According to the book, this makes the calculations “only four orders of magnitude greater than they should be”. Apparently, this is some sort of improvement. Well, I take issue. Instead of defining inflationary perturbations according to the curvature parameter of the Einstein-deSitter universe, which is supposed to be used to describe cold matter only, shouldn’t we be using the Friedmann-Lemaître model?

    Because I probably just lost everyone, I’m going to blather on about something more trivial: Darkspace. Is a black metal group exploring …

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