most popular blog posts

It was suggested I make a post of posts with the most pave views. Easily enough done...


The most popular was an April Fools joke which was surprisingly popular.   Of the rest, 2011 was the biggest contributor, with 5 of the 9.  Then there's two from 2013 and two from 2010.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marin Avenue (Berkeley)

Image
On Saturday, I got an email from Tim telling letting me know that Murphy's Spring Classics was going to start up Marin Ave. I'd missed that. Murphy announces his courses the day before, and indeed it was already well into the night before when the course announcement went out. I'd skipped over the details, jumping straight to middle and end games. Marin? I laughed at the irony, because not long before when he'd told me he was choosing to repeat the Nifty Twn Fifty which we'd done together last year versus selecting Murphy Mack's Stage Mullett two-day, I responded I didn't think I had it in me to ride Marin Ave two years in succession. Well, so much for that. I was committed, so I went downstairs to swap my 11-26 cassette for my Recon 12-27. The name is easily overlooked: "Marin Ave" fails to strike the same impression as, for example, "Redwood Gulch" or "China Grade". But among those in the know, Marin Ave is infamous i
Read more

Post-Election Day

Image
Well, The People have spoken. Smart Voter has some really nice results listings. A few comments on proposition results : 13 passed. I suspect a lot of remods are now going to be classified as "earthquake safety upgrades". Seems like an accounting nightmare. Oh, well. 14 passed. There is hope for the Republican Party! This may be the end of the socially radical wing of the "conservatives" (cough!). Katherine Roberts has pointed out there's nothing conservative about the right-wing. Moderate Republicans, like Tom Campbell (who polled ahead of Carly Fiorina only among "liberal" Republicans in California, but would have gotten my vote as a Democrat) will have a chance. And fiscally irresponsible Democrats like Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi will face more competition. All good. But that in the primary that each voter gets only one vote brings up some interesting game theory questions. For example, consider the Senate race. Suppose I support
Read more

hummingbird feeder physics

Image
I couldn't figure out how the hummingbird feeder worked. Why didn't it overflow? Forces need to balance, of course. Neglecting surface tension, there liquid level is higher in the inner reservoir than in the feeding chamber, so there must be a corresponding pressure difference. Suppose the pressure in the inner chamber were zero. Then the column height difference would need to be atmospheric pressure / (density of liquid × gravity). But this is over 9 meters! Obviously the height difference is only approximately 1% of this. So the pressure difference inside versus outside is only approximately 1%. The inside is only slightly below atmosphere. So air is getting in. How? Does it diffuse through the liquid? If this were the dominant mechanism, it wouldn't take long for the pressure inside to go from 99% to 99.3%, for example, which should be plenty to push the column of liquid down in the inside chamber and thus push liquid out through the holes. It would over
Read more