tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67140020492258625632011-04-22T03:01:21.356+02:00<i>What is now proved was once only imagined. (W. Blake)</i> <br /><br /> Comments, news & rants on science, the world & the restdileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.comBlogger101100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-88213101031619439012007-03-14T17:29:00.000+01:002007-03-14T17:32:09.715+01:00

(Este post en español.)Pi day is back! I shouldn't actually considered it as such, since we Spanish-speaking people write this day as 14/3, instead of 3/14... however, since the 3th day of the 14th month isn't likely to arrive anytime soon, I may as well jump on the wagon. My humble contribution is an applet (see below) for estimating Pi by picking random points in a square.But additionally,

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-12605214474293756702007-03-10T21:46:00.000+01:002007-03-10T21:55:57.989+01:00

(Este post en español.)Some other things I learned while perusing three months worth of blogs...* Second Life is becoming more and more like a real country, and one that appears in the newspapers more than some of the traditional ones. Not surprisingly, Reuters opened a news agency there. Sweden has become the first country to open a virtual embassy in SL. There is even a terrorist movement

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-86002084139956065692007-03-10T19:38:00.000+01:002007-03-10T20:04:17.601+01:00

(Este post en español.)After returning from a long trip and a couple of months mostly offline, I had (of course) to go through the 11000+ posts accumulated in bloglines; I still haven't finished the 10% I marked as "worth reading". So much stuff, so much. And the tables of contents of journals are lagging even behind that, a monstrous lump growing in my inbox. I just want to highlight some of the

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-52431106360170344842007-02-16T17:09:00.000+01:002007-02-16T17:11:12.816+01:00

I know, I know... For two months this seemed to be another still-born blog. But don't dispair, random visitors: in the next days (perhaps hours) blogging will resume, or rather, actually start.

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-43499557019830552542006-12-04T00:18:00.000+01:002006-12-04T00:35:25.240+01:00

I was writing a comment to a post over a Larry Moran's Sandwalk, and it grew a bit long. Since I don't like long comments, and on the other hand, I haven't found the time to post here, I decided to paste it here and only send the trackback there.The general topic is the current controversy in blogs and elsewhere about how to deal with religions; I won't survey the discussion here, since I doubt

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-53592003196238728702006-11-20T21:19:00.000+01:002006-11-20T21:29:58.959+01:00

...about the culture wars in the US, I feel obliged to do my part in answer to RPM's request for a little google bombing on Casey Luskin. Ok, that was it. Despite the fun of reading the stupid claims of anti-science activists, and the joy of reading the often brilliant fisking by science bloggers, I'd be happy to see the IDiots fade away; then the public space could be used for more interesting (

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-27869362550478570512006-11-17T06:13:00.000+01:002006-11-17T06:20:07.351+01:00

I'm a sucker for silly tests, and now I have a blog. It follows that I must post what I got at the Belief-O-Matic.... Well, just the top and the bottom of the list:1. Secular Humanism (100%)2. Unitarian Universalism (100%)3. Liberal Quakers (88%)4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)5. Nontheist (79%)...23. Islam (17%)24. Orthodox Judaism (17%)25. Hinduism (10%)26. Eastern

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-84080564343954211342006-11-14T05:11:00.000+01:002006-11-14T15:21:47.351+01:00

Just a commentary on titles, and sometimes content, of scientific news. Not long ago I was lead (by Digg, i guess) to a note titled "Antimatter discovery could launch new era of physics" (the original url is no longer valid, but the whole text is here). Sounds great, doesn't it? And a few weeks later I got a notice on another one (via PhysOrg), called "Particle decay may point to New Physics".

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-83294689685592675972006-11-14T00:24:00.000+01:002006-11-14T04:08:09.330+01:00

(Este post en español.)Ok, time to overcome the white-page-syndrome and start posting; when the current deadlines are over I may write something more digested.In this post I just want to direct the attention of my still non-existent readers to this review in the New York Review of Books, by Bill McKibben. I recomend the whole piece; I'll quote some bits here as a hors d'oeuvre.McKibben reviews

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714002049225862563.post-14798575376369153862006-11-04T12:45:00.000+01:002006-11-14T01:52:15.212+01:00

(Este post en español.)And thus it came to happen, that in a cold autumn night of the Alps, dileffante started blogging. And since a time-consuming blog was being started, why not two? This site and dilefante, its Spanish-speaking twin, shall be my outlets in the blogosphere. Blogosphere, beware!If you're reading this post, you're probably an early visitor (welcome!), and you won't find much here

dileffantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08397058137656377487noreply@blogger.com2