randform

but not for long. Thus any company with sufficient financial backing may go ahead and think about generating revenue with the super-duper magnetic interactive-W-Lan-e-paper-fridge-calendar!

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From his last conference in spain Tim brought back the typical conference presents, like notepads and informations about the region of Castro Urdiales. Well I am not so interested in settling down in Castro-Urdiales so I flipped only briefly through the infos about the real estate developments of the region. However what caught my attention was the above paper strip. It is an explanation of how to use a spanish fan (there was also a plastic fan among the presents) (Warning: I had never been to spain so my astonishment about the fan may appear ridiculous to some spain experts).

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again a short story from my classmate which she wants me to publish for her creative writing class (in german). this time the task was to contemplate about language use in advertisements.

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I am back in Berlin. It is nice to be back again, but I will certainly miss the very english local peculiarities like e.g. discussions about discussing car races!

Unfortunately e.g. the recent headline in the Berliner Zeitung displays that there are much more serious issues than car races which need to be tackled. In particular the Berliner Zeitung article asserts that the polar Ice seems to melt faster than previously assumed. (some more images via realclimate). According to Berliner Zeitung the Arctis may well be free of ice by 2040 instead of the by the IPCC predicted 2070. There seems also to be evidence that the species in the soil of newly frost free regions like e.g. in Siberia may enforce the runaway effect, where I hope that this effect is not going as far as in the mars on earth experiment, where there was finally not enough oxygen left for breathing.

One of the major problems which leads to an even more dramatic rapid climate change is clearly the danger of overpopulation. So rethinking social conventions and dynamics may be necessary.

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A disappearing number by Simon McBurney with Original Music by Nitin Sawhney is a production of complicite which currently runs at the barbican:

Our new devised production is a meditation on mathematics, infinity and our relentless compulsion to understand.

Unfortunately as it turned out I had not the right telefon number for booking a ticket in time, so I missed it.

In an old randform post about solar cells I was writing a bit about the computer modelling of solar cells. In particular I mentioned that it seems that the involved models use mainly a theory which was to a great part developped by Shockley and Queisser in the 50/60s.

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An online browsable collection of french drawings. More than 900 nineteenth century drawings from scetches to finished works.
(via the cartoonist)

I try to stay up to date with what’s going on in the math and physics world by e.g. reading blogs of scientists. One of the probably most famous blogs in the mathematical physics world is this week’s finds by John Baez whom I visited on Friday.

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A small update to nad’s post on indra’s pearls: Jürgen Richter-Gebert has made an interactive course (german only) with his dynamic geometry program Cinderella. Now you can easily experiment with those circles and iterated function systems yourself.