Entertainment

I mean, how can you resist this? Hilarious, cute, and math oriented. I hope this brings a smile to your face today!

more cat pictures

Another caption given for this picture in the comments is “Delta Kitteh knows the difference”. Hehehe.

I’m sorry, but this XKCD comic was so wonderful that I simply had to post it. If you don’t read this comic religiously, shame on you. I had to shrink the photo down a bit to make it fit, so feel free to click on the comic to head over to the XKCD page.

I hadn’t heard of the “Look Around You” BBC television series before yesterday, but I was nearly on the floor laughing by the end of the following video segment about “Maths”. Read up on the series at their Wikipedia entry. I’m sure the other episodes are equally as hilarious. In my opinion, there are few things better than British humor mixed with math. Enjoy the video!

Since today is March 14 (3.14), I’d like to wish everyone a happy pi day. Read more about the wonderful number of pi here and here. I’m sure that some of you have seen the following visual representation of pi before, but this animated gif should give everyone a refresher on exactly what pi is. This informative animation was created by John Reid. [Note: I have this animation set so that it will only loop 6 times in total. If you'd like to see it again please refresh or restart your browser.]

Yes, it seems that Edwin A. Abbott’s wonderfully original novel about the travels of the square named A. Square through one, two, and three dimensional space will soon be brought to video. The website for Flatland: The Movie can be found here. The trailer for the movie is available on the website or on YouTube here. Here’s the synopsis of the movie:

Flatland: The Movie is an animated film inspired by Edwin A. Abbott’s classic novel, Flatland. Set in a world of only two dimensions inhabited by sentient geometrical shapes, the story follows Arthur Square and his ever-curious granddaughter Hex. When a mysterious visitor arrives from Spaceland, Arthur and Hex must come to terms with the truth of the third dimension, risking dire consequences from the evil Circles that have ruled Flatland for a thousand years.

Well, it sounds like there has definitely been some license given to modify the orginal plot of the novel. But I have to say that the plot modifications were immediately forgiven once I found out that Martin Sheen was going to do the voice of A. Square. Who can argue with that? Also, Tony Hale, of the late TV show Arrested Development, will be playing the King of Pointland. At any rate, as the website explains, “The movie will be part of an educational DVD, which will include the original text from Abbott’s book.” Also, it looks like it will be coming out in spring 2007, which isn’t too far away! If you’re dying to get a copy you can sign up on the website for priority access to the DVD. While you’re anxiously awaiting its release, I suggest reading Abbott’s original work. It’s a really quick read and is imaginative and original.

Yet another reason why I’m a total dork. If you don’t understand what’s going on just laugh when the people in the video laugh. Trust me, it’s funny. Also, this is actually what you do in graduate school.

Watch the music video here.

This evening I went to the theater to see the movie The Prestige, which was a fantastic. I highly recommend it. The acting was superb and the subject matter was intriguing. And hell, David Bowie was in it! Magic, and ultimately its relationship to science, were key themes in the story. Though there were a few minor holes in the plot it was definitely the type of movie that spurred some discussion after the viewing.

I don’t want to spoil anything with this post, but I will say that Nikola Tesla plays an important role in the story. When I got home I immediately turned to Tesla’s Wikipedia entry where I learned that three pieces of information played up in the movie were at least partially true:

1. There was some bad blood between Edison and Tesla, not least of which because Edison seems to have screwed Tesla out of a large chunk of change for some brilliant work he did for Edison.

2. Tesla did move his base of operations for a time to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he did some work on “wireless telegraphy”.

3. Especially later in life Tesla held some fantastic theories regarding subjects such as UFOs and the like. It seems to be the case that some of these beliefs came out of an untreated psychiatric disorder (probably OCD).

Interesting. Feel free to read more about Tesla at the link above. And I’d highly recommend seeing the movie. It’s one of the best I’ve seen this year.

How could I NOT include this picture of a pumpkin carved into the likeness of Alan Turing? It just wouldn’t be right to overlook this one! Read more about Turing here. In case you don’t know much about Turing, let’s just say he laid a substantial foundation for computer science.

Also, here’s a post from Boing Boing describing some mystery explosions that seem to be occurring around the world. More Halloween goodness!

Thanks to Boing Boing I found Randall Munroe’s website this morning, which describes itself as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”. Some of the comics are tremendously funny, especially if you’re a dork, which I am. Here’s one of my favorites:

Here are a few of my other favorites from the site (warning: there’s a bit of swearing in some of these if you’re offended by that kind of thing):

Computational Linguistics
Centrifugal Force
dPain Over dt
Science
Su Doku
Fourier

Happy laughing everyone!

Read interesting articles on math science as well as math lesson plans and math for kids. We also have resources on other subjects as well at Learninghaven.com.

Check out this article over at Science News Online that explores some of the wonderful mathematics references that have found their place in episodes of The Simpsons. For instance, in one episode “Kwik-E-Mart proprietor Apu brags that he can recite pi to 40,000 decimal places. “The last digit is 1,” he announces. To get that detail right, the Simpsons writing team faxed a query to NASA, where mathematician David Bailey obliged with the digit in question.”

It’s good to know that great comedy doesn’t always have to be brainless.

So this isn’t new at all, but when I saw it about a month ago for the first time I thought it was hilarious. Yeah yeah I know it should be “as x approaches 8 from above”, but come on now, let’s just let ourselves laugh a bit. Let me know if you have any funny math jokes/quotes!