mimoSite Programming and some other things

And we are supposed to be upset because the technology that makes [blogging] possible has cut down on the number of bowling leagues? That’s like condemning butterfly metamorphosis for decreasing the number of caterpillars.

“Scott Alexander” in ‘The anti-reactionary FAQ’

I just finished Coursera’s Exploring Quantum Physics. It was pretty good: the Coursera Web sites works well, both lectures and homework exercises were good and the discussion forums were helpful.

The course starts from the basics, but it is not an introductory course: it requires a decent mathematical background (linear algebra and calculus, Fourier transforms) and some previous knowledge of quantum physics is useful, although not strictly necessary.

The course is taught by two teachers with very different styles covering quite different material, this makes it a bit disjointed. I would have preferred a single teacher thorough the whole course.

The program covers various advanced subjects like the Feynman path integral, quantum localization, superconductivity, the Dirac equation, the time-dependent Schrodinger equation and so on. The problem is that having to start more or less from the basics it is impossible to cover any of these advanced subjects in any detail: they are just introduced but not explained enough to get a real understanding. I think it would be better to limit the course to the more ‘standard’ introductory stuff, with maybe just one or two advanced topics covered in more details.

Through a post in one of the Coursera’s forum I discovered the ‘Theoretical minimum’ Stanford lectures. It is not a course but just a collection of live lectures by the same professor. I watched a couple of them on quantum field theory, the first particle physics series and now I am watching the quantum entanglement ones.

The lectures are for a general audience, so they usually start from the very basics and then build the whole theory step by step. The teacher – professor Susskind – manages to introduce very complex stuff in an approachable way.

Being live lectures, there tend to be quite a lot of question from the audience, backtracking and interruptions – these makes them much longer that the recorded Coursera lectures, but I found that this makes the material more easily absorbed (by me at least).

They are very good introduction to modern physics for anyone with some scientific background and enough time to watch an entire series: watching individual lectures would probably not work.

3D printing is about to redefine paradigms, rewrite/defenestrate/burn textbooks and give the unwashed masses the power to print iPhone covers at will

The Register in ‘3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?’

In Warsaw, the negotiators were tasked under the Durban Platform track (the so-called “ADP” track) to develop a work plan of substantive topics and a related calendar that will lead to the development of the text of an agreement of a new comprehensive policy architecture that can be discussed at COP-20 in Lima one year from now and then subject to final consideration and adoption a year after that at COP-21 in Paris

Robert Stavins in ‘The Warsaw Climate Negotiations, and Reason for Cautious Optimism’

A bank of screens contains … and AIS, an automatic identification system that transmits the ship's name, speed and heading, and other details to other ships, port authorities, and well-equipped pirates

From ‘Ninety Percent of Everything’ by Rose George

Gone are the grandiose diatribes and the repetitive talking points of the Ahmadinejad years. In their place is what the … Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sounding more like a member of a yoga collective, calls “heroic flexibility.”

Laura Secor of The New Yorker in ‘Talking or walking’

Mr Cameron has not [gave a speech in French] yet (though he has attempted to sound Australian)

The Economist in ‘Channel deep and wide’

The tunes of Phoenix Legend, a duo from the song-and-dance troupe of China’s strategic missile force, are hugely popular

The Economist in ‘Dancing queens’

[if the entire world were to impose a grain embargo on China] certainly it would be because we ourselves had committed some huge and dreadful crime against heaven. Even if there were grain to eat, it would not be good times for the Chinese people

Chinese economist Mao Yushi, quote by The Economist in ‘Daily bread’