Random links
- Pa. Couple Tired of Cars Crashing Into Home
- "A Pennsylvania couple has found themselves in an all-too-familiar situation this week when a car crashed into their home for the fourth time, the third time in the past six months." Also: "The couple has wanted to put a boulder in front of their house to prevent accidents from damaging their home, but they said they have been told that such an obstacle would make them liable for any damage to a rogue driver."
- The Physics of Spilled Coffee
- Good to see that researchers are paying attention to important problems. One interesting bit: "A fluid's back-and-forth movement has a certain natural frequency, and this is determined by the size of its container. ... everyday mug sizes produce natural frequencies that just happen to match those of a person's leg movements during walking. This means that walking alone, without any other interference, is tuned to drive coffee to oscillate in a mug. But the researchers also found that even small irregularities in a person's walking are important: These amplify the wilder oscillations, or sloshing, which bumps up the chance of a spillage."
- Junia amongst the apostles
- "So how did the idea get around that the female Junia was really a male Junias? ... despite Luther’s influence, with only one exception, Greek New Testaments down to 1927 continued to give her the feminine accent. ... Who, then, is guilty of the sex change? Stand up the thirteenth (1927) edition of Nestle: the standard Greek Testament beloved of twentieth-century “scientific” and “modern” biblical scholarship! Again—Yes! Not Dark Age monks; not obscurantist popes; not medieval misogynist conspirators; not pre-Enlightenment bigots; it is the brightest and the best of liberal European and North American modern scholarship that took a reconstructive scalpel to Junia’s groin."
- Can Timeouts Change the Outcome of Basketball Games?
- Their answer: "here we show timeouts have no significant effect on the final outcomes of games. Moreover, we find that the timeout factor only appears to reinforce the game of dominant teams"