Uncategorized

Like its brother issue last week, Issue 21 is tardy. And like last week, we at Blog Wyrm continue to revel in the afterglow of Graduation events and the hectic fallout of needing to be in 5 places all at the same time.

The major difference is that this being Issue 21 and the graduation activities are finally over and the need for an adult beverage is here. Fortunately, Blog Wyrm has turned 21 so its legal.

This week’s Common Cents presents the other side of the David and Goliath story in modern economics. David can and does win due to diseconomies of scale that make Goliath look more like a brontosaurus. Added bonus: a special appearance by the manager everybody loves to hate

Self-reference, paradox, and natural language are the focus of this week’s Aristotle to Digital. Russell and Godel grapple with the Liar’s Paradox.

Can a comic be a sequel to a movie? Can it be successful if it is? As About Comics shows, the comic version of Big Trouble in Little China is a fun and worthy successor of the famous movie of the same name.

Finally, this week’s Under the Hood covers the numerical modeling of the vibrational energy of H2. Numerical methods based on Numpy and Scipy take center stage.

Enjoy!

Issue 20 is arriving a bit late this week. And we at Blog Wyrm have a great excuse. Graduation – high school and college. Cap and gowns, commencements, and the like. That bizarre craziness that starts with the student and then sucks the parents in.

In some sense, getting twenty issues out the door is a kind of graduation for us a well. Wonder what we’ll do next week when we turn out 21?

The subject of mass-varying systems in general is discussed in this week’s Under the Hood. A general form of Newton’s law is derived and applied to the conveyor belt problem giving a satisfactory answer to the question of where did all the power go?

If the common wisdom is to be believed, the modern-day David and Goliath story between small and big business would always end with Goliath dragging the lifeless body of David around. But as Common Cents shows, the real evidence suggests that David is still alive and well and is capable of pulling off an upset of biblical proportions.

Still thrilled by the connection between Turing and Gödel, Aristotle to Digital tries to outline the logician’s famous theorem using some help from a nice book on that subject.

Finally, we close out this week with a lost classic in comics. Rick Veitch’s ‘Abraxas and the Earthman’ is a thought provoking retelling of ‘Moby Dick’ set in space. About Comics takes a long look at this psychedelic work from the early eighties.

Enjoy!

The weather has finally grown pleasant enough that light jackets and coats can be left in the closet and sweaters need be worn only inside when the air conditioning is too high. The grass is lush, birds are out singing, and school is winding down. Nature seems to be a waxing toward a luxurious summer. And yet the world is filled with such brimming pockets of turmoil that its hard to feel any peace.

This general blending of highs with lows is reflected in this weeks offering in Blog Wyrm.

Common Cents examines some of the more unsettling notes from the economy of late. While not the most cheerful reading, the points raised here are important and ignoring the problems in both the structure of the economy and in our thinking about it is not going to make them go away.

The mood gets considerable lighter in Under the Hood. The intriguing and sometimes frustrating conveyor belt problem is the gateway to a more rigorous understanding of systems with variable mass and how momentum and energy conservation can be applied in more complex situations.

An exciting idea about the logic, computation and nature fills this week’s Aristotle to Digital. Is the Universe a Universal Turing Machine and, if so, what are the implications.

Finally, we close out this week with a fun look at Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Better known as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, movie audiences around the world have been tantalized by these new Avengers. About Comics fills in their fictional history straight from the comic books from which they sprang.

Enjoy!
‎

It is the first of May. The skies are overcast, the temperature cool and perhaps even chilly. People are wearing heavy clothing and are staying warm or they are dressing for spring and shivering. The first summer blockbuster is out in theaters in the form of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, but it certainly isn’t summer. It doesn’t even feel like spring.

Well, Blog Wyrm has just the thing for the sensible person who decides to eschew the great outdoors. Four new columns this week.

About Comics brings some of the those movie goers who no little of the origins of Ultron up to speed on the history of this murderous robot. More interesting than this sociopathic ai is its creation – the Vision.

Modeling systems and their corresponding states is all the rage these days and object oriented programming paves the way for exciting simulations. However, as Aristotle to Digital points out, it is often the case that the objects we don’t define are as important as those we do.

The electricity that flows everyday to power our modern economy comes courtesy of electromagnetic induction and Mister Faraday’s law. Massive hoops of wire move through carefully constructed magnetic fields at 60 Hz to bring all of us the internet, cable TV, and other wonders (or perhaps horrors). Inspired by these technological marvels, Under the Hood presents a working example of the flux transport theorem, which gives the mathematical underpinnings to the science of making electrical power.

Speaking of power, Common Cents talks about a different kind of power in the interactions between Management and Labor – the power to make each other miserable. By making a couple of straightforward observations, the back-and-forth between these two sides can be mapped to the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the results show how hard it is for each side to trust and cooperate with the other once they fell betrayed.

Enjoy!

Well two weeks turned into 6 weeks and we at Blog Wyrm do apologize. In our defense, half of our creative team has been busy supporting NASA’s launch of the Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission and mostly on the midnight shift. So it has taken a little longer to recover and get re-energized to get back to Blog Wyrm.

Anyway, we are back with issue 17 and in our prime (all pun intended).

This week’s Aristotle to Digital examines the Socratic Method and asks if this method was invented or discovered. If you have an opinion leave a comment.

A simple experiment from elementary mechanics involves rolling cylinders down inclined-planes and everyone knows how that experiment turns out – don’t they? Well this week’s Under the Hood argues that this innocent experiment is a lot more subtle than it looks.

No doubt you’ve heard that opposites attract but have you ever heard how they can join forces for a common goal? Common Cents shows how Baptists and Bootleggers can join forces and how the gunless and the gun runners can come to common goal where firearms are concerned.

What do Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Harry Houdini, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and Amelia Earhart have in common. The league of distinguished historical figures form the lead cast for Herald: Lovecraft and Tesla. Find out all about it in About Comics.

It may be a little early but we at Blog Wyrm are taking the next two weeks off for Spring Break (there is also this little matter of a few spacecraft getting off the ground…).

We’ll be back on 3/20.

Ciao

I suppose that if Blog Wyrm were a young woman, we would be thinking about holding a party and would be shopping for cars. If it were an NCAA men’s basketball team, we would be swelling with college pride, looking forward to a doubling of admission applications and burning cars, sofas, and mattresses in the street. Well Blog Wyrm is none of these things but 16 issues is still an awesome achievement and a reason to celebrate – although we won’t be burning anything.

When launched, Image Comics was a prepubescent’s dream: big muscles, big breasts, big guns, big action and no story. Things have change in the past twenty years as discussed in this week’s About Comics.

What do language, metaphor and Star Trek have in common? Come read Aristotle to Digital and find out.

The calculus of variations is a rich body ot techniques that has untied many disparate fields of study. Sadly the notation is often fractured by sloppy presentations. Under the Hood tries to set things right.

Contrary to popular belief, capitalists are not limited to business owners, bankers, and Wall Street wolves. Common Cents talks about what capital is and how there is a little bit of capitalist in each and everyone of us.

Enjoy!

The snow has fallen and so has the temperature. The irony of this current issue, is that the number 15 is greater than the reading on my thermometer. And since it is so cold outside why don’t you stay in and read some fine columns in this week’s installment.

While not quite the three-card Monte made famous as a classic New York scam, the two card Ace problem is an interesting study in probability, statistics, and counting and a perfect application of stochastic reasoning in this week’s Aristotle to Digital.

When does multiplying by a matrix look like performing a vector cross product? When you are in the magic that is three dimensions as explained in Under the Hood.

Sure the Godfather can make you an offer that you can’t refuse – by unfairly using force. But can the free market ever be fair and gentle? Common Cents explores the Ultimatum Game and the results may surprise you.

Well it seems that the Marvel cinematic universe has performed perhaps another homage to a little known character. About Comics explores the literary similarities between renaissance religious literature and a big bad super villain on Agent Carter.

Ever been on a merry-go-round and things look different because you were going around in a circle? Well  explains how to describe what you see and we promise it won’t make you sick.

Enjoy!

The Blog Wyrm staff have always been fond of the unusual and quirky.  This should come as no surprise considering our tongue-in-cheek nature and our eclectic subject matter. So in celebration of our quirkiness and the fact that our fourteenth issue is coming out on Friday the 13th, we thought we would focus on the word ‘Fortnight’. Fortnight comes from old English where it literally means fourteen nights. A popular unit of speed, the furlong per fortnight, is a blazingly fast, if you are snail. At that speed, it would take only a short 21 minutes to cross, from left to right, a typical 8.5×11 sheet of paper. Quirky enough for you or perhaps too quirky? In any event, let’s get on to the columns.

The January jobs report is in. The economy has been producing new jobs at a good rate. So why did the unemployment rate go up and what should the Fed do about it? Common Cents has some answers.

About Comics finishes the backstory of our favorite Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. with a look at Skye’s very huggable and lovable father – Calvin Zabo – and looks ahead to what the future may hold for her in the Marvel cinematic universe.

Aristotle to Digital takes a random walk through thoughts on the use of uncertainty, statistics and probability in everyday life.

Ever been on a merry-go-round and things look different because you were going around in a circle? Well Under the Hood explains how to describe what you see and we promise it won’t make you sick.

Enjoy!

Do to a variety of small events, we at Blog Wyrm are running a bit late this week for Issue 13. We comfort our consciences by pointing out that this Baker’s Dozen installment is pack full of columns a bit bigger and more eye grabbing than we’ve put out before.

About Comics continues the back story of the Inhumans. In this installment, the connection between the Inhumans and the Kree is center-stage with a fleeting reference to this past summer’s blockbuster movie ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. Find out the secret origin of the Inhumans why their city doesn’t seem to sit still for very long.

Where does money come from and is it true that time is money? Common Cents answers these questions with a little help from the O’Jays and Schoolhouse Rock and shows how it is better to think of that old saying the other way around.

Aristotle to Digital explores how the simple symbol of ‘=’ can pack so many different meanings into two small horizontal lines. Along the way, we ponder why its seems to be that the smaller the word the bigger its entry in the dictionary.

Finally, Under the Hood explores the various properties of the one-sided Greens function. Connection are made all over the place to the propagator, the Wronskian, and complex variables with a dash of causality thrown in for good measure. This column is the coda to the presentation of time evolution in quantum and classical mechanics that has been filling the column these last ten weeks.

Enjoy!