John Colton's blog

Cecil Adams, of course, is the nearly omniscient author of the Straight Dope newspaper column. The Straight Dope is almost always worth reading.

An older column about "What would happen if you were swallowed by a black hole" popped up a week or two ago under the "classic columns" section of the website. However, it said that you would fall into the black hole forever. That's wrong, according to a discussion I had in ~1993 with a black hole expert. So, I emailed Cecil about it and told him that while it would appear to an outside observer that you would take forever to reach the hole, to you yourself it would happen very quickly. That's relativity for you.

I've (practically?) never seen this before, but in his column from last week Cecil admits an error:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2909/what-would-happen-if-you-were-swallowed-by-a-black-hole-revisited

Don't worry about falling forever toward the black hole without ever actually getting there. I said that was one of the possibilities. I acknowledge with shame that I was wrong. The truth, insofar as this can be known about an event that's fundamentally unknowable, is that it might appear to an outside observer that you were falling indefinitely, for reasons I don't feel it's necessary to explore. However, you yourself would rocket through right on schedule, or at least we think you would.

He doesn't acknowledge my email, and there may well have been others who wrote in, but I'm taking credit! :-)

An interesting recent USA Today opinion piece. They surveyed people's reactions about Mitt Romney, and found that those who (a) know a Mormon personally, or (b) know a lot about Mormonism (as proved via a quiz), are not affected by statements such as "Some people say Mormons are not Christians". But those who (c) *think* they know a lot about Mormonism but don't really (as proved via the quiz) were bothered most of all by claims about Mormons not being Christians.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/11/column-tolerance-we-have-a-ways-to-go-.html

Some were given a boilerplate biography [of Romney] that did not mention religion; others were told that he has been a local leader in his church; others were told he has been a leader in the Mormon church. Still others were told, "Some people say Mormons are not Christians." By comparing reactions to these various statements, we could see how each one affected a person's willingness to vote for Romney, and also how different kinds of people responded to the statements.

...

When respondents were told about the claim that Mormons are not Christians, nearly one-third said they were less likely to vote for him.

Interestingly, the claim that Mormons are not Christians had virtually no effect on those people who reported a close personal relationship with a Mormon. This news, though, is presumably small consolation for Romney's supporters. There is little they can do between now and 2012 to encourage closer friendships between Mormons and their non-Mormon neighbors.

Our results do, however, indicate that there is something Romney's supporters can do to assuage concerns about his Mormonism. People who objectively know a lot about Mormons — that is, those who scored 100% on a short quiz on facts about Mormonism — were much less likely to be bothered by the claim that Mormons are not Christians. In contrast, respondents who claimed they knew a lot about Mormons, but who actually did not, were bothered most of all by claims about Mormonism.

...

We take no position on whether Romney is right for the Republican Party or for the White House...We do take the position that the whole country will be better off if there is no "stained glass ceiling" in politics for members of any religion or no religion at all. A good way to break such a barrier is for all of us to really know the Latter-day Saints — as well as all the other kinds of "saints" among us.

This is amazing. Boston-based contemporary a cappella group Overboard is giving away their new album, Help!. It's Beatles-themed, with 23 covers of Beatles songs. I've only listened to five or six tracks so far, but already I'm blown away by the album--by their interpretations and the quality of the singing & recording. Easily worth purchasing for $15-20, but it's FREE. FREE I tell you!!

You can download the album here:
http://www.overboardvocals.com/

Click the "Download Help! for free" link. The free offer only lasts until Dec 23, 2009.

I LOL'ed out loud(*) when Beaker came in.

Also available in HD if you go to Youtube itself.

(*) nod to Mr. Monk

This is a beautiful recording of Miserere Mei Deus, by Gregorio Allegri--especially if you watch it in high quality (go to youtube, click the HQ button on the bottom right).


Unfortunately youtube doesn't say who the group is singing it. :-(

Wikipedia had a funny blurb about this piece: "The Miserere is one of the most often-recorded examples of late Renaissance music... The work acquired a considerable reputation for mystery and inaccessibility... the Vatican, wanting to preserve its aura of mystery, forbade copies, threatening any publication or attempted copy with excommunication. They were not prepared, however, for a special visit in 1770 from a 14-year-old Mozart, who, on a visit to Rome with his father, heard it but twice and transcribed it faithfully from memory, thus creating the first "bootleg" copy. In 1771 Mozart's copy was procured and published in England by the famous traveler and music historian Dr. Burney."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorio_Allegri

The image of Mozart as the first bootleg copier made me smile.

I apologize for the width, but one of my students sent me this. Read closely. I'm not sure which is more alarming, element "light", element "Toronto", or element "rhubarb". :-) Made me chuckle quite a bit.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/091002-ig-nobel-2009-awards.html

Here's one paragraph from the article:

...

This year's winners included Donald Unger, a doctor who received the Medicine Prize for cracking the knuckles of his left hand -- but not his right -- for sixty years to see if the habit contributes to arthritis (it didn't). The Chemistry Prize recognized a technique for growing diamonds from tequila, while the Physics Prize highlighted a study about why pregnant women don't fall over that was published in Nature, one of the most prestigious journals in the scientific community.
...

As a belated (but planned to be such) birthday present for Leslie, we went on a daddy-daughter date to They Might Be Giants on Saturday. It was a "family show", meaning that they concentrated on songs from their 4 (?) childrens albums. The most songs were from the recent album, Here Comes Science, which quite frankly isn't as good as their older album No! (perhaps the best kids album of all time by any group, in my opinion). Considering the price of the tickets, there were a lot of <5 year olds present. We had fun, getting there an hour and a half before the show so we could get the best seats (no assigned seats). Or, more like "so we could get seats", period, because 80-90% of the audience had to stand, often with small children on their shoulders.

Haven't posted anything in about a month... the reasons are three:
(1) I had to submit a paper for publication. The paper was rejected, so I had to rewrite part of it, then resubmit it (to a different journal).
(2) I had a BYU grant proposal due last week on Friday, to help fund my undergraduate research students.
(3) I had an NSF grant proposal due yesterday. That's mainly what has made me work Saturdays and weekdays until ~8 pm each day for the last three weeks. But, it looks really good (in my opinion) and I got it turned in with about 4 hours to spare! :-)

So, I feel like a free man now.

To celebrate, let me post this comment one of my Physics 105 students sent me today:

You should go to the Physics department and demand to teach physics 106 and then demand more money because you would be worth it!!! We wish you were teaching 106 but alas, the world doesn't grant us every wish. Thanks for all you've taught us!!