HUMANITIES
Monday Missive – April 16, 2018
Thank You, Anita — On Sunday, April 15, 2018, approximately 130 of Anita Moss’s family members, friends, colleagues, and students gathered to celebrate Anita’s life. As the various speakers recalled their experiences with Anita, underlying themes soon became apparent. Speaker after speaker talked about Anita’s kindness, her helpfulness, and her words of encouragement. Anita clearly made a difference in the lives of so many people. ...
NATURAL SCIENCES
Arago finds new physics with a compass (1824)
One of the challenges of doing physics outreach is that there are so many cool phenomena which simply can’t be demonstrated in an eye-catching way, because they are too small, too subtle, or too complicated. So whenever I find a demo that really has a “WOW!” factor to it, I treasure it.
A perfect example of this is a demonstration of what are known as eddy currents, which can be done with a simple copper pipe and a neodymium magnet that fits easily inside it. I...
Fred Saberhagen’s Brother Assassin
An army of intelligent war machines are dedicated to the utter annihilation of humanity. When they begin to lose their war in the present, they send an unstoppable cybernetic assassin back into the past to kill a key figure in humanity’s history, in order to destroy their resistance before it can begin. Humanity’s only option is to send one of their own back as well, to protect the key figure no matter the cost.
Does that story sound familiar? It very well may, but...
