giant social spider web!

http://texasento.net/Social_Spider.htm

Goeff's Favorite Poems

Check it out. Some plums among the chestnuts. (I was led to it by following the link to "The book of my enemy has been remaindered" from Andrew Sullivan's blog).

Gastón, el gran depredador del nautilus

Doonesbury: When we cut and run

More here.

Why isn't every physicist a Bayesian?

(Received 1 June 1994; accepted 3 November 1994)

Physicists embarking on seemingly routine error analyses are finding themselves grappling with major conceptual issues which have divided the statistics community for years. While the philosophical aspects of the debate may be endless, a practicing experimenter must choose a way to report results. The results can depend on which of the two major frameworks, classical or Bayesian, one adopts.

This article reviews reasons why most data analysis in particle physics has traditionally been carried out within the classical framework, and why this will probably continue to be the case.

However, Bayesian reasoning has recently made significant inroads in some published work in this field, and many other particle physicists may frequently think in a Bayesian manner without realizing it. I illustrate the issues involved with a few simple, commonly encountered examples which reveal how each framework can sometimes lead to unsatisfying results.

©1995 American Association of Physics Teachers.

Jumping Spider Mating Dance

Click to play

python vs. alligator

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4313978.stm

What to do with 66,000 business cards

...Dr. Jeannine Mosely found herself confronted with a gargantuan pile of business cards, rendered useless after the company she worked for changed addresses, she knew what she had to do with them: hand-make a real, live Menger Sponge — creating an actual object from something that had previously been merely a mathematical abstraction — a (sorta nerdy) feat of Guinness Book proportions.

(link)