Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Varied thoughts


  • Over at Chad's blog (so much easier to type than Uncertain Principles), there's an answer to why mathematicians are so weird...the commenter's answer that "it's hard." Which begs two questions:

    Which is harder, math or physics?
    and

    On the whole, who is weirder, mathematicians or physicists?

    Clearly, the answers are "the latter" and "mathematicians" (the proof is left to the reader).

  • Apparently Blogger is getting a long overdue revamping...though it's not clear how long it'll take for the upgrade to make its way here.

  • Chad is on a tear with interesting posts...now he's looking for a new car. Lot's of people are recommending the Fit, though I suggest he wait for the (rumored) hybrid. It's interesting looking at what people drive. I know of a pretty senior faculty who wears jeans and untucked button-downs everyday, and what does she drive? Just a brand new, 7-series BMW. Of course, there's also the younger faculty member having trouble getting through the tenure process driving a new-ish 3-series.

  • More Chad...he solicits musical suggestions. If I were younger, I'd try out the suggestions in the comments. But no, I'm old and lazy, and addicted of course to Pandora (free, internet radio). Update: Oh, I forgot to suggest Tanita Tikaram...probably a bit too mellow for some, but....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So I'm a physicist; I've only recently been reading (by and large lurking on) a few physics blogs I've found. I'll de-lurk to second the enthusiasm for Tanita Tikaram.

I was in high school when Ancient Heart came out, and it was one of the first CDs I bought. I have 6 of her albums, although not the one that just came out, and recently they've been all I listen to.

I don't listen to music as much as I'd like to, though, for I can't do serious, or even semi-serious work while listening to interesting music, and I'm not really comfortable tuning out the world with an iPod out in public. I did put togther a bunch of albums (mostly stuff they use as background music on This American Life) that I used while writing my thesis to block out background noise, and it still helps me work sometimes.

Tanita Tikaram is great, though, one of the very few artists that I've kept listening to since high school.

Angry said...

Yeah, she's very refreshing.

As for working with music, I find it usually helps me concentrate. But, strangely, only when I don't need too much of my brain. If I'm writing or something, the music somehow keeps me on track. But if I get bogged down where I actually have to work something out, I need total silence.