Pictures from around St Ives from May 2012 (the ones with lots of water, courtesy of lots of rain and the River Great Ouse) – and pictures from last weekend, showing what it looks like around here most of the time.

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“Two plus eleven” and “one plus twelve” have two things in common:

1. They add up to the same number.
2. ???

Thanks to Surf City Coffee Company, Scotts Valley branch, for adding this riddle to my breakfast recently.

Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken

(Attention: Nerd humour)

Methods for synthesis, along with a complete chemical characterization of these materials are presented elsewhere[9].

(…)

[9] B. E. Koene, D. E. Loy, M. E. Thompson, unpublished.

Source: Adv. Mater. 10, 1108 (1998).

Too bad this wasn’t actually clearly revealed in the final Harry Potter book, but only recently during a public book reading by J. K. Rowling.
“Dumbledore is outed on page xyz” would have been another fine spoiler shirt. ;-)

At Arcane Gazebo I found the following observation:

…there are lots of mad scientists [in popular culture] but rarely do you see their grad students. It’s hard to imagine they’re doing all that mad science themselves. Sure, Dr. Frankenstein had Igor, but Igor seems like more of a postdoc. And Frankenstein operates the apparatus himself—what kind of PI [Principal Investigator] does that? A more realistic portrayal would be something like…

Read on in the original post.

Apparantly, the following three, very wise observations circulate as Harvard Law I-III:

1. Under the most rigourously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the sample will do as it damn well pleases.
2. A couple hours in the library can frequently be saved by a few months in the lab.
3. To figure out how long a project is going to take, make a reasonable estimate, multiply by ten and switch to the next higher time unit.

So true.

Ever wondered where exactly you’d come out on the other side of the world if you start digging straight down, through the centre of the earth and on until you see light again? (Not minding the uncomfortable heat at the center of the earth or other adverse conditions.) This cool two-world-maps overlay let’s you find out.