Revision of the Reference Sources Tab

I've edited and better organized the references found at the Reference Sources tab of this blog. Reference Sources is sort of like a reference desk with all of the key sources I use accessible from one page. It does not contain blogs, and for a detailed list of the blogs I most often frequent go to the Link Sources tab, which is sort of like a blog roll but with lots of info about the blogs.

The Reference Sources tab contains some key stuff missing at places like Martindale's Reference Desk, which, on the other hand, contains a lot of links I do not, most of which appear to every related site, while I focus on what I see as the most useful ones.

Nonetheless, I can see my Reference Sources is missing a number of good references which I'll be adding in from time to time. I am also not so happy with the table formatting in Blogger (whose CSS makes formatting the table exactly like I'd want too difficult), which is why I did not use it originally, but it is plainly clearer in a table with subject lines. Anyway, I hope someone out there finds this useful.

Upcoming Posts at Galileo Feynman

When I began this blog I imagined a mix of posts on art and politics, music and culture, science and society interspersed with short essays on a variety of more philosophical subjects. I haven't had much chance to focus on the essay side -- which I'd normally post under the tag Blah blah blah, among others -- but I thought I'd mention what's in the hopper. It's all pretty nerdy, so abandon all hope if you're looking for something else. A lengthy list follows bellow the break.

John Baez's The Crackpot Index

John Baez, a well known physicist and more importantly the cousin of Joan Baez (I'm not sure why that is more important and I am sure he gets tired of hearing about it but everybody probably asks), developed the Crackpot Index a number of years ago to measure the degree of crackpottery of laymen who write to mathematicians and physicists about the layman's latest great discovery. We here at Galileo Feynman believe that "Dr." Baez is a hidebound reactionary and a self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy who created his index as part of the conspiracy to SUPPRESS ORIGINAL IDEAS.

A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

1. A -5 point starting credit.
2. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.
6. 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
7. 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).
8. 5 points for each mention of "Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann" (sic).

U.S. States Compared in Population with World Urban Areas

I thought it might be interesting to compare 2012 populations (estimated, as listed at Wikipedia) of the largest U.S. States with the populations of the largest urban areas in the world, and I've thrown in a few random countries and the largest Canadian province just for good measure.

Region	Population	Region	Population
California	38,041,430	Mexico City (Valley of Mex.)	19,463,000
Tokyo–Yokohama (Keihin)	37,126,000	Florida	19,317,568
Canada	35,002,447	Cairo	17,816,000
Jakarta (Jabodetabek)	26,063,000	Beijing	17,311,000
Texas	26,059,203	Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto	17,011,000
North Korea	24,589,122	Mumbai (Bombay)	16,910,000
Australia	22,864,478	Guangzhou/Foshan	16,827,000
Seoul–Incheon (Sudogwon)	22,547,000	Netherlands	16,775,273
Delhi	22,242,000	Moscow	15,512,000
Shanghai	20,860,000	Los Angeles	14,900,000
Manila (metro Manila)	20,767,000	Kolkata (Calcutta)	14,374,000
Karachi	20,711,000	Dhaka	14,000,000
New York City (metro)	20,464,000	Buenos Aires	13,639,000
São Paulo	20,186,000	Istanbul	13,576,000
New York	19,570,261	Ontario	13,506,000

You'll note that the New York State population is smaller than the New York City metro area; that's due to the inclusion of Newark, New Jersey, and southern Connecticut area in the metro area. More below the break.

Sports Illustrated's 100 greatest Sports Photos

Sports Illustrated has what it purports to be the 100 greatest sports photos of all time -- of course, it's U.S. centric (since, evidently, the greatest sports photos are about the U.S.), but it's a great review, anyway. No photos from the swimsuit edition made the cut (I carefully looked). Via Kottke.

2012: Best-of Lists

I promised to post 2012 best of/wrap-up lists before the end of 2012, which just goes to show you how good my promises are. Well, I am finally doing it, below the break, but let me note, first, that Miss Cellania has a bunch of really good collections of lists from around the internet -- you know, if you really needed these you could have gone there:

• Music wrap-up lists
• Books wrap-up lists
• Movie year end lists
• Sports wrap-up lists
• TV wrap-up lists
• Science wrap-up lists
• Advertising wrap-up lists
• Tech and games wrap-up lists
• People oriented wrap-up lists
• Internet news/events/video wrap-up lists
• Photograph best-of lists
• Blog wrap-up lists
• News wrap-up lists
• Miscellaneous wrap-up lists 

That's a lot to go through (as if one really needs to go through every best-of list), so here's the best ones, in my view (as if one really needs to go through any best-of lists):

A List of Reference and Educational Sites

[Note: An updated list of sources is in the "References Sources" tab, above]

I looked for a list of reference and educational sources on the internet, and I wasn't able to find one I discuss one here and linked it below, so I've made a more updated one.

After going through hundreds of sites, I've winnowed the list to about 150.  If I had to only pick a few they'd be Wikipedia (and its associated sites), Google (also for its associated sites), The New York Times (for its archives), the Internet Archive, WolframAlpha, JSTOR, SSRN, NASA, FindLaw, How Stuff Works, Khan Academy, and Open Culture. (For non-reference/education, but just general interest I'd have to add MetaFilter.)

The full list, below, avoids sites behind a paywall or requiring registration (though sometimes that's necessary for full content). Here's the full list:

Great Short Science Fiction

Apropos of nothing other than listing them for the dusty annals of posterity, here's a list of the best science fiction short stories and novellas of all time I've ever read. It's the list I'd recommend to someone if they were seriously interested in the genre. I'm told making such lists is what blogs are for. Anyway ... as is obvious I've linked to text or pdf versions where I could find them, and annoyingly called them all "classics," listing them in no certain order:

• The Time Machine, H.G. Wells [link] [back-up link]
  The classic story about time travel and the future of humanity as well as segmentation of society into the haves (the Eloi) and the have-nots (the Morlocks). The Time Machine has been adapted to film many times.
• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes [link] [back-up link] 
  Classic story about modifying intelligence and the tragedy of technology; subsequently expanded to a novel and then a wide release movie. Very smart, well written, and moving.