Signore Galilei

“Scarborough Fair” is one of the best known English ballads to today’s listeners – up there with “Greensleeves”. Simon and Garfunkel recorded a version in 1966 that would probably be most familiar to listeners today: “Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme Remember me to one who lives there For once…

If you’re a geography nerd, familiar with New York City, or (like me) both, then you’ve definitely heard of NYC’s “Five Boroughs”. These are the city’s main administrative divisions, and each one also functions as a county of the state of New York. You’ve got: Manhattan (New York County) Brooklyn (Kings County) Queens (Queens County)…

Recently, I’ve discovered that Wikipedia keeps a list of “contentious topics”, which require extra care and attention from editors and administrators, since they’re frequent targets of edit wars and vandalism. Wikipedia’s Arbitration committee can move topics onto the list, and topics expire from the list after some predetermined period (at least a year) if the…

There is no such thing as a perfect map projection. Mathematically, it’s impossible to transform the approximately spherical surface of the Earth into a 2-dimensional map without distorting either the shapes or relative sizes of the features on its surface (or both). You have to make compromises somewhere. Of course, you can make a globe,…

The Roman empire’s legacy in the modern world is hard to overstate. So much of what we expect a state to look like comes from the Roman model. An empire two millennia and an ocean away from Ancient Rome having a Senate meet to pass laws in building with a bunch of columns and a…

This story starts with me being proven wrong. OK, well really it starts at least several decades ago. But my interaction with it starts with me being proven wrong. I was trying to determine which year saw the most countries gain independence. I was pretty sure that it would be 1991, the year the USSR…

Suppose you want to find out how much you weigh. It’s easy enough – get a scale, stand on it, and read the number. Now suppose you want to know how much the Earth weighs. You get out a scale and…hmm. What exactly do you do with it? Let’s do a little physics class refresher.…

Have you ever wondered where the government actually keeps its money? Governments usually get tax revenue in bursts, for example when income taxes come due – April 15th here in the US. They then have to spend all that money over the course of the year. So where do they keep their cash in the…

A few weeks ago, I embarked on another technology quest. This time, I wanted to digitize my library card, so I could get books using just my phone. I figured it would be simple – the card just used a barcode. All I would need was a picture of the correct barcode. At first, I…