Hook’s law: Peter Pan must walk the plank.

Yarr, ye scurvy dogs. Me here talkin’ pirate, seeing as it’s talk like a Pirate day (Thanks Todd) and me thinkin what would Pirate’s physics must look like. Being prone to long explanations and other yarring expletives, methinks we shall talk about proper designs of planks fer walking the plank.

Seeing as planks are ye olde version of good ole trampolines, we should be talking about trampolines and other springy designs to entertain the pirate, modern and old, yarr. And we be seein’ you turned into chum, yarr. So stay hooked fer we wil talk endlessly about our honorary Pirate, ye olde Robert Hooke, friend and chum of ye olde Captain Hook.

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Essay contest

The always enigmatic FQXI foundation (try to guess the acronym!) announced a while ago its first essay competition. The topic is “the nature of time” and it has the potential to be very interesting (or not). From the perspective of a string theorist, this is truly a foundational question, one that needs much more work, and could use a couple of new ideas. With some luck I may write something here about the issues involved in the future.

In the meantime go and read, vote and contribute! At the moment many of the essays there seem to have lots of cut and paste marks all over them, but it is still early…

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