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A Tribute To Richard Feynman: Feynman Point Pilish Poems 2013

Richard Feynman was born on 11 May 1918. Today would have been his 95th birthday. This isn’t...

The Math-e-Monday Puzzle: Squares from a Tetrahedral Die

It isn’t Monday, but I’m puzzled every day of the week.Alice is puzzled too; she’s playing...

The Math-e-Monday Puzzle: Infinite Packings Within Finite Figures

After the scramble to get out of jail, here are some questions about imprisoned shapes! In my last...

Solution to The Jailer's Revenge

The solution to the Jailer’s Revenge question is fairly lengthy, so I think it warrants a separate...

Richard Mankiewicz

I used to be lots of things, but all people see now is a red man. The universe has gifted me a rare autoimmune skin condition known as erythroderma, or exfoliative dermatitis. The idiopathic version... Read More »

CERN Liquid Containment Unit Leaks on Camera

Mar 17 2010 | comment(s)

One of CERN's liquid containment units - a coffee mug - is shown to leak profusely when an attempt is made to put it into commission. A hapless pair of PR gurus bought their mugs at CERN's gift shop and only discovered the faulty design once it was tested back home. Mercifully, CERN does not currently have an online shop so this isolated accident should not alarm the rest of the public.

A Problem in the Philosophy of Neuroscience: Introspection

Mar 16 2010 | comment(s)

Neuroscience has a problem. It may appear to be a mere philosophical problem but has practical implications for the broader philosophy of science and the scientific method.

Worlds in Collision - Run Your Own Solar System

Mar 16 2010 | comment(s)

In 1950 Immanuel Velikovsky published his bestselling Worlds in Collision, where he proposed that Venus was once a satellite of Jupiter that went AWOL and caused catastrophes on Earth as it flew past. Nobody believes this now, and few believed it then either, but you can see how it would work using a solar system simulation designed by PheT.

Is This How Brain Waves And Neurons Create Consciousness?

Mar 15 2010 | comment(s)

I had previously speculated on how electric and magnetic fields generated by individual neurons may be able to transmit information to other neurons with which they are not in synaptic contact. From a purely physical point of view it strikes me as at least something to investigate. After all, we know that there are broad sweeps of electric fields that travel across the brain - whether alpha, beta, gamma, delta or theta waves. Such endogenous fields are both generated by the brain and feed back upon the brain. There must therefore be a mechanism by which such emergent fields are generated, sustained and propagated by the basic units of our brain: the neurons.

Hyperseeing - Art, Mathematics and Architecture

Mar 15 2010 | comment(s)

The International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture (ISAMA) has published HYPERSEEING regularly since fall 2006. HYPERSEEING offers a lively mix of articles, news, reviews of books and exhibits, announcements, and even cartoons. One issue per year is typically the Proceedings of the ISAMA conference.

I was involved with ISAMA a few years ago and attended one of their conferences in Albany, NY. It is a mixture of art based on mathematics as well as a mathematical analysis of patterns and structures in art and architecture.

Does the success of a scientific theory justify belief in the entities that the theory posits?

Mar 14 2010 | comment(s)

This is a question on the Philosophy of Science examination paper for the BPhil at Oxford, as set last year.

"Does the success of a scientific theory justify belief in the entities that the theory posits?"

Indeed the paper has a related question:

"Must a good scientific explanation of the occurrence of an event refer to some of its causes?"

The student manual includes the helpful suggestion that all questions are, of course, liable to interpretation.