Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter in the Dark

Posted on July 18, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Jeff Lindsay stole my idea!  Well, he didn’t, really, but I’m amused that the central plot of his most recent book, Dexter in the Dark, is stunningly similar to a short story that’s been sitting on my computer half finished for years.  I’ve really got to start finishing my stories, though I’m not sure I could do it with quite the charm that Lindsay does.  Okay, enough personal musing:

Dexter in the Dark is the latest book in the highly successful series chronicling the exploits of Dexter Morgan, Miami crime scene investigator and serial killer.  The book series has inspired the Showtime television series Dexter, which has drawn rave reviews.  I first started reading the series the same way many people did: by picking up the book at the airport.  After that, I was hooked.  I gobbled up Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter and eagerly awaited more.

Curiously, though, Dexter in the Dark takes a bit of a departure from the previous books: it introduces what can only be called a supernatural element to the storyline, as is clear from the very first chapter.

Continue reading →

Posted in Horror | 1 Comment

Vet pulls hook from shark’s stomach, by hand

Posted on July 17, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Though a lot of people wouldn’t find this heart-warming, I did: an Australian veterinarian, David Blyde, ended up putting his arm into the jaws of a grey nurse shark to remove a steel fishing hook, saving the animal’s life.   The three-meter shark was spotted off the coast with the hook protruding:

Seaworld diver Trevor Lond lassoed the shark, which was brought in for a team to work on.  Blyde had the seemingly scary task of actually reaching in and removing the hook (though he was protected by a pvc tube which had been first inserted).  Video of the process can be seen on CNN here.  The shark was released to continue a life of eating various things that it shouldn’t.

The grey nurse shark is a lovely creature which, despite its appearance, isn’t particularly hazardous to humans (though some attacks have been reported).  It is, however, one of the most endangered species of sharks (with possibly as few as 500 in Eastern Australia), which makes this rescue of a female an especially happy success story.

Posted in Animals | Leave a comment

E. and H. Heron’s Ghost Stories

Posted on July 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

A few months back, I did a post on ‘psychic detectives’ in fiction, discussing the classic detectives such as John Silence and Thomas Carnacki as well as some lesser-known and more modern detectives.

My list was not complete, however, and I’m still running across ‘ghost hunter’ compilations!  I just finished reading Ghost Stories, by E. and H. Heron, and I thought I’d add their ghost hunter Flaxman Low to my list!

Continue reading →

Posted in Horror | 13 Comments

The Giant’s Shoulders #1 is up!

Posted on July 16, 2008 by skullsinthestars

The first edition of The Giant’s Shoulders is now up at A Blog Around The Clock. Being the first, there’s a huge number of entries to the carnival, so check it out!

The next edition will happen at The Lay Scientist, with entries due August 15th. Let’s keep it going!

Posted in Science news | Leave a comment

Einstein vs. Whittaker, with Born in the middle

Posted on July 15, 2008 by skullsinthestars

My former thesis advisor is the greatest! I recently helped him update an electronic compilation of his collected papers, but refused any payment for my services. He ignored me and sent me a copy of The Born-Einstein Letters, a compilation of correspondence between Albert Einstein and Max Born between 1916 and 1955.

This gives me an opportunity/excuse to discuss one of my favorite exchanges between the pair, concerning Sir Edmund Whittaker’s book A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity.

Continue reading →

Posted in History of science, Physics, Relativity | 9 Comments

In depth: depth of focus and depth of field

Posted on July 14, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Update: The original website with its digitally-altered ‘miniworld’ pics seems to have been taken down.  I’ve constructed a few of my own ‘miniworld’ pics to give the reader an idea of what I’m talking about:

zuiderkerk02

jaapedenbaan

florabama

From now on, I save an archive of all photos I use from the internet!

While stumbling through the ‘tubes the other day, I came across a very cute series of photos, an example of which is pictured below:

Is it a picture of a real place, or a picture of a miniature model? All the pictures are apparently of real places, digitally modified via Photoshop to make them look tiny! If you are skeptical, you can see the original picture of Stonehenge in the snow here, and what looks to be the original of Tokyo Tower here.

I’m not a digital photo expert, but it looks like a number of ‘tricks’ were used to make the pictures look miniature, including the simple psychological effect of always having views from above. The most significant modification, though, is of the focus: in the modified pictures, the foregrounds and backgrounds are out of focus, and this alone can fool the eye. Why is this?

This effect is a clever exploitation of the concept of depth of field, and its related ‘cousin’, depth of focus. I thought I’d do a short post about the idea (my friend Personal Demon suggested the topic months ago, actually) and the related mathematics. Along the way we’ll introduce a few simple lens topics from geometrical optics.

Continue reading →

Posted in Optics | 10 Comments

Five days left until The Giant’s Shoulders!

Posted on July 10, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions to the first edition of The Giant’s Shoulders is coming up on July 15th!  Entries should be sent to Coturnix at A Blog Around The Clock.

For the first edition, there is obviously no requirement for entries to have been written since the last edition, so we’ll take anything (only chronologically speaking, of course).   We’ll be automatically including all the entries for the “Classic Papers Challenge” that I hosted a few months back, as well.

Posted in Science news | Leave a comment

Invasion of the gluten-lacers!

Posted on July 9, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I never thought I’d be happy to be diagnosed with a disease.

I’ve teased my fiancée for some time for having a similar attitude. She has had chronic, misdiagnosed medical problems for quite a few years. Her frustration is palpable, and understandable, but I couldn’t help but tease her gently that she often would seem genuinely delighted at the possibility of having a problem.

But a diagnosed disease can be treated, which is where the excitement comes from. I was recently diagnosed with celiac disease, and it was truly a relief.

Continue reading →

Posted in Health | 6 Comments

Rant time: The End of Theory? (Updated)

Posted on July 8, 2008 by skullsinthestars

This one’s already been passed around the blogosphere like a cheap bottle of wine, but I feel the urge to comment on it myself. A recent issue of Wired Magazine has an essay by Chris Anderson with the very provocative title, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” The argument, in short, is that computers have gotten so good at processing massive amounts of data that we don’t have to understand the underlying processes that produce the data anymore: we can just let computer algorithms sort through the data and give us explanations. Anderson labels this new, model-free age “the Petabyte Age.”

This article and this attitude really irks me, and not just because I am a theorist by trade: the attitude presented here is, to my mind, so wrong-headed that it is actually hurtful to the progress of science. Let’s take a look at some of the claims.

Continue reading →

Posted in ... the Hell?, General science, Science news | 10 Comments

Richard Marsh’s The Magnetic Girl

Posted on July 7, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I thought I’d do a post on one more book by Richard Marsh that I’ve read, The Magnetic Girl (1903), currently only available on Google books.

The Magnetic Girl is significantly different than the other books by Marsh that I’ve discussed previously (The Beetle, The Joss, The Goddess, Curios). Although it is still undeniably a ‘weird tale’, with an unexplained supernatural element about it, it is not a horror story or a mystery: nobody is killed and no crimes are committed. The Magnetic Girl is, in fact, Marsh’s take on a comedic novel, with just a smidgen of social commentary thrown in for good measure. I give some details below the fold…

Continue reading →

Posted in Fantasy fiction | 2 Comments