Economics:

It seems that spreadsheet is a major tool in Economics, and you'd better know how to use it. Two prominent economists from Harvard made a spreadsheet error, caught almost 3 year later by a graduate student. As it turns out, the paper based on the wrong spreadsheet was widely cited, and used as a basis for public policies. What is even more surprising to me, is that the spreadsheet was not openly available to other researches, and so no one was able to reconfirm the assertions of the paper, or even to reproduce the results for that matter. Paul Krugman also commented on the matter.

All that again raises the question whether Economics and science, you know...

Mother goose expecting babies

Campus news: mother goose expecting new babies on the ledge of the Middlesex College. Due soon. The only remaining question is how the new babies will survive on the ledge.

Picture taken from the window on the second floor. And the close-up:

Update: May 14.  The father would stay on the ground, but would protect the family-to-be by trying to scare anyone who enters the building. The staff had to put a special sign:

The thrilling story was followed by the whole building for several weeks. Apparently, the mother does not have to sit on the eggs all the time. Every morning she would fly down from the ledge to get some fresh grass. The eggs would be left open:

After the breakfast the mother would return to her nest:

The eggs should be turned around several times a day:

And the new babies are here! Only three made it.

The first steps are the most difficult ones:

And here's the happy family together:

But how are they going to get down? Well, the babies managed to get on the rim of the ledge about 16 hours after they were born.

Apparently, the mother pushed the first baby down, and the other two followed their sibling on their own. All three landed fairly safely. And now they are gone...

P.S. Photos is the courtesy of the Middlesex College staff.

Curious detective story about theoretical physicist Paul Frampton, distinguished professor at UNC.

I was wondering which 9 countries voted against Palestine's non-member observer status. So here's this glorious list (in alphabetical order):  

Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Panama, United States.

[As reported on Huffingtonpost.]

It is getting increasingly difficult to publish math papers, partially, because of the increased competition. However, it's not all that bad. A computer generated math paper has been recently accepted for publication by a real math journal (called Advances in Pure Mathematics, it is open access, but it is peer reviewed). The brilliant paper can be found on

That's Mathematics!

P.S. The journal is not yet indexed by MathSciNet, but given that the

database already contains over 2,000 items, it's only the matter of time...

Curious statistics: apparently, scientific papers published after having first been rejected elsewhere receive significantly more citations on average than ones accepted on first submission. That's according to an article in Nature. I wonder
if this article was rejected somewhere else before being published there...

Art book with no art...

I always thought that the first year calculus textbook is the worst deal possible. But this textbook beats any calculus text (or any textbook for that matter) hands down: Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800 — doesn't contain any images of art. Nevertheless, it costs $180 is a required textbook at Toronto's Ontario College of Art and Design. More about it here.