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Well this coming Sunday is the big game. I don’t know how to feel about it but it is unlikely I’ll watch more than a little in passing. On the NFC side, I like Marshawn Lynch (had him in fantasy league) and I don’t dislike Seahawks but I could do without their coach. On the AFC side, I have no specific player on the Patriots that I like (I had Brady in a different league) and I don’t dislike Belichick, but the whole ‘deflate-gate’ is tedious. I wonder if the Patriots can actual win – especially after they’ve been caught in, let us say, irregular behavior. It’s a good thing that there are really fine articles, courtesy of the Blog Wyrm staff to take our minds off of it.

A recap of the saga of the Inhumans continues in this week’s About Comics. Will the grand, star-crossed love affair between Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four and Crystal of the Inhumans play a role in Agent Skye’s future – we doubt it but it was too big a slice of comics history to ignore. And who knows, there may be a piece that actually gets worked into Agents of Shield and some piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Do detectives solve crime using deductive reasoning or do they employ some other mode of thought? This week’s installment in Aristotle to Digital tries to answer this question by looking at a memorable episode of all shows M*A*S*H. Regular maintenance is needed for both the body and the car and yet the method by which each are purchased is quite different. Common Cents compares and contrasts these methods and wonders why we give better and more knowledgeable care to our vehicles than ourselves. Finally, Under the Hood celebrates the wonderful mathematical tool of the Wronskian. Brought to us by Jozef Wronski, this tool is literally the swiss-army knife of differential equations possessing just the right tool for the right job.

Enjoy!

The middle of January is here is and so is Issue 11. The month of January is named for the Roman God Janus, the two-faced god of transformations and new beginnings. That said, there is nothing two-faced about this issue of Blog Wyrm.

In answer to a variety of requests, this week’s About Comics looks at the history of the Inhumans and forward to the possible fate of Skye from Agents of Shield. The age-old question of how language affects thought and how thought affects language makes a cameo appearance as this week’s Aristotle to Digital wrestles with the concept of infinity. The downfall of a once-proud American company is the topic and Common Cents gives its two cents on what went wrong at Kodak. And closing out the field Under the Hood presents the Dirac interaction picture, the perturbation analysis of time-dependent Hamiltonians, and the beginnings of Feynman diagrams.

Enjoy!

Welcome to Issue 10, which is something of a milestone. We’ve now published 10 weeks of new and exciting material. Many television shows don’t even make to 10 episodes before being pulled (i.e. the unlamented Selfie and Manhattan Love Story). So, needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) all of us at Blog Wyrm are excited and proud.

Image’s new science fiction comic Roche Limit is featured in this week’s About Comics. As a sucker for gritty futuristic dystopias, I had high expectations. See if Roche Limit can live up to them. Murder meets knowledge in this week’s Aristotle to Digital. Find out where on the epistemological scale your favorite detective ends up. Common Cents lets the genii (or is it Gini) out of the bottle in a data-driven discussion of income inequality. Finally, Under the Hood shows in detail how to calculate the Feynman path integral in one dimension.

Enjoy!

Happy New Year and welcome to Issue 9. As everyone settles into their resolutions, please consider making a very easy one. Tell your friends and family about Blog Wyrm and resolve to comment on a post. Now that I am done begging let’s look at what’s in this week’s issue.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund gets some time in the spotlight in this week’s About Comics. The CBLDF is an worthy group which I support but I take issue with some of the tactics they employ. The musings on epistemology and murder mysteries which were advertised for Week 8 never got published due to a personal issue so the first part appears in this week’s Aristotle to Digital. Front and center in this discussion are the philosophical ideas from Aristotle and Kant on how we characterize what it means to ‘know’ something. This post sets the foundation for Part 2 in which we meet the modern detective stories of Poe, Christi, Stout, and Eco. Common Cents discusses in a light hearted way how some among us may actually be free riders in the truest sense of the word. In the final column, Under the Hood presents a ‘derivation’ of the Feynman path integral. Along the way, numerous connections are made between the quantum and classical worlds.

Enjoy!

Issue 8! It’s hard to believe that in the past 8 weeks, we’ve put out 32 columns on a wide variety of topics and had fun doing it. After this issue, we are going to take a well-deserved two week vacation, with new material resuming on Jan 9th of 2015. But enough about the future, let’s discuss this week’s offering.

About Comics finishes the two part discussion on how to put technology to work for a comic collection with a detailed presentation of a Microsoft Access database that organizes and cross references over 8000 individual publications. Musings on epistemology and murder mysteries are the subject in this week’s Aristotle to Digital where philosophical ideas from Aristotle and Kant meet the modern detective stories of Poe, Christi, Stout, and Eco. Common Cents presents an unflinching view of the state of today’s labor market, which may just be the grinch that will steal Christmases to come. Rounding out the field in Under the Hood is the most detailed and careful discussion of the Schrodinger and Heisenberg pictures in quantum mechanics of which we are aware.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and may God Bless! See ya in back here on Jan 9th. Enjoy!

Well to quote Andy Williams, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.  And as the Christmas quickly approaches and the hectic and frantic pace seems to increase, we at Blog Wyrm are continuing to put out our columns for your enjoyment.  In this week’s blogzine, we have an even mix of thought-provoking items and how-to articles.

Ever wonder how you might put modern technology to use to organize your comic collection? Well look no further than the current entry in About Comics where a simple approach to using a modern relational database is covered in an easy-to-understand fashion. A new type of Turing test is proposed in Aristotle to Digital and the reader is left to consider if the law is actually intelligent. Common Cents discusses a current spat between the government and the taxi drivers in New York City and how it serves as a microcosm for examining the role of government regulation. And to close things out, Under the Hood takes a small detour to talk about Greens functions in their own right as clever ways of solving inhomogeneous differential equations.

Enjoy!

Its hard for the Blog Wyrm staff to believe but the year is coming to an end as we slide into December.  It is amusing to us, and perhaps to you, to note that the etymology of the name ‘December’ has its root in ‘decem’ which is Latin for ten.  The month of December was originally the tenth month of the Roman year until July and August were popped into the calendar to commemorate Julius and Augustus Caesar.  We guess that old saying ‘it is good to be the king’ has some truth to it after all.

Anyway lets talk about this weeks blogzine.  Issue 6 offers a host of interesting articles.  About Comics asks the question as to whether anyone at Marvel is listening or reading their own stories about the Mad Titan Thanos.  We at Blog Wyrm doubt it and would like to make a general appeal that Starlin and only Starlin be allowed to write about ‘The Big T’.  The notions of scientific provability and falsification are explored in Aristotle to Digital, where black swans and misplaced faith play a central role.  The Prisoner’s Dilemma makes the first of what will be many appearances in Common Cents.  Interesting in its own right, its application to social dilemmas is even more fascinating. Finally, the idea of what makes a Greens function out of a quantum propagator is presented in Under the Hood.  It is amazing what a difference a Heaviside step function can make.

Enjoy!

Well Issue 5 is out the door accompanied by pounds of turkey carved and consumed, pieces of pie eaten like there is no tomorrow, and hours lazily whiled away with family watching football and movies and just hanging out.

In this issue we have a holiday-themed post in Common Cents, where the true story of the Plymouth Colony how they eventually had something for which to be thankful is told.  About Comics finishes up a look at the Wild, Weird West with a recap of the action and analysis of the storytelling behind one of the best comics on the market today – East of West.  Aristotle to Digital offers another look at the themes of language and mirth with a fun exploration of the logic behind the ‘wise sayings’ of Yogi Berra.  Finally, Under the Hood continues its examination of time evolution operators, this time drawing a fruitful comparison between quantum and classical mechanics.

The staff at Blog Wyrm wishes all of you a happy Thanksgiving.  Enjoy!

Well temperatures are falling and an amazing amount of snow has fallen across the country.  Poor Buffalo, New York, has been particularly singled out for some of the most intense lake-effect snow to be seen in some time.  Temperatures across the nation seem to be below normal.  Winter seems on the way and eager to get to work.  So we at Blog Wyrm hope that everyone remains warm and safe and is able to enjoy the charms of what can be a difficult season.

This week’s issue will hopefully help your enjoyment as the last few days for really comfortable outdoor activities dwindle.  In About Comics, the second part of the Wild, Weird West covers the really nice work done by Visionary Comics on their Deadlands storyline.  Aristotle to Digital cracks a smile this week with a fun and humorous discussion about one area that artificial intelligence clearly hasn’t been able to come even remotely close to what a human can do – telling a joke.  The column in Common Cents considers the question of what exactly is insurance and reflects on who might benefit by confusing matters of ‘if’ with matters of ‘when’.  Finally, Under the Hood starts a detailed look at time development of quantum systems with a general presentation of the evolution operator.

Enjoy and stay warm.

Well, issue 3 has gone more smoothly than the other two and the Blog Wyrm staff looks like it might actually be settling into a routine here.  For a while, I was worried that we had bit off too much.  On the whole, whether we make our weekly delivery schedule is a trivial problem and one that is entirely self-imposed.  That said, we are mindful that we wouldn’t likely have the freedom to pursue this enterprise without the numerous men and women who served in our armed forces.

As relatively recent immigrants (one of us is third generation, the other first), we don’t have a great deal of familial experience with military service.  My mother and most of her siblings served in some fashion during World War II, and my father served stateside during the Korean War.  When I was growing up, my cousins and I would gather around my Uncle Walt and he would show us his scars where four German bullets entered and three came back out – grim souvenirs of his service in the European theater.

I was too stupid to say thank you as a kid but as I got older and realized the pain and fear he must have gone through on the battlefield I made it a point to call my Uncle Walt each Veteran’s Day just to thank him. He’s since passed away so let me direct my thanks to all those who served.

In this issue, we have the first of a three-part installment on the modern western-horror comic in About Comics.  Aristotle to Digital weighs in the pronouncement by Elon Musk that artificial intelligence is a demon waiting for us to lose control. Common Cents discusses the ideas of comparative advantage in the work place and beyond. And in our final column, Under the Hood presents a fairly novel way of teaching about abstract vector spaces using Fourier series in wxMaxima.

Enjoy.