http://qntm.org/ the personal website of Sam Hughes http://qntm.org/ragdoll http://qntm.org/ragdoll Ra » Previously "Interesting" is the term geologists use to describe Iceland, and geologically interesting places are worth paying attention to in the same way that warzones and brand new nuclear powers are. Entire cubic kilometres of lava are seen emerging from the place. Sometimes it grows new islands. Sometimes its volcanic fissures eject so much sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere that the global temperature drops significantly, crops fail across the Northern Hemisphere and millions die from famine. Iceland is the place you go to remind yourself that planet Earth is a machine: very large, continuously operating, working on a time scale too long to easily observe, towards a highly uncertain end; and to remind yourself that all the organic life that has ever existed amounts to a greasy film that has survived on the exterior of that machine thanks to furious improvisation rather than any specific dispensation. Iceland is also one of the few places on Earth, other than on people's skin, ...]]> Fri, 04 May 2012 21:43:28 +0100 http://qntm.org/know http://qntm.org/know Ra » Previously Dr. Dan Czarnecki arrives at the lecture theatre thirty seconds after the lecture was supposed to begin and stalks down to the front through a noisy cloud of conversations-in-progress. He throws his leather briefcase at a chair, grabs a marker pen from the nearest shelf and begins scrawling a board-wide equation on the far left whiteboard. His handwriting is appalling, even worse on the board than it is on the heavily photocopied notes he sometimes remembers to hand out. Today, the marker pen is running out. Czarnecki realises this halfway through the equation, glares at what he's written, glares at the pen, caps it and hurls it overarm into the waste paper bin at the other end of the wide, mainly circular stage. The bin is metal, and there's a sharp and satisfying tang as it catches the pen. Czarnecki finishes the equation with a different colour. Only then does he turn around and start removing his gloves, hat and coat. This is also the point at which he will start speaki...]]> Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:24:33 +0000 http://qntm.org/isnt http://qntm.org/isnt Ra » Previously When a man and his love interest first encounter one another in an adversarial setting, it's supposed to go like this: he proves overconfident; she proves overwhelmingly more competent; she decisively gets the better of him, with embarrassing and hilarious results; this impresses him (and anybody else who happens to be watching) while demonstrating that she's sassy and capable and can take care of herself. But this is a little too early in the lives of Nick Laughon and Laura Ferno, and neither of them can really take care of themselves yet. It's their first year at university and it's their first Beginner's Bojutsu lesson. Every time she lands a blow on him they both drop their bo staffs, and every time he tries any kind of clever spinning move (while the instructor, who would disapprove, is not looking) he loses his grip and ends up hitting himself in the stomach. The whole lesson is awkward stances, heavily telegraphed moves and clumsy falls. Fortunately, stage one in an...]]> Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:03:44 +0000 http://qntm.org/ignorance http://qntm.org/ignorance Ra » Previously The first magic spell is spoken by a 90-year-old retired Indian physicist named Suravaram Vidyasagar on 1st June 1972. It is one hundred and seventy-nine syllables long, comprising equal parts Upanishadic mantra and partial differential equation. The effect of Vidyasagar's spell is nothing at all. He has discovered what will later be called "uum", the empty spell, which expends no mana and fails to rearrange the universe in any externally detectable way, but which then - crucially - returns to the dispatching mind and tells it so. Vidyasagar immediately notices the curious reaction to his new "differential mantra". He repeats it several times. Each time, he receives, in an almost-non-existent part of his brain, a tiny almost-thought: a thought so faint and difficult to get a grip on as to be a tiny elementary dream: "Success!" Vidyasagar is confounded. The result is completely unexpected. Later, many will call it dumb luck. "Luck" can certainly be made to stick: future re...]]> Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:10:02 +0100 http://qntm.org/sufficiently http://qntm.org/sufficiently Ra » Previously "Stab wound" is a really amazing phrase to suddenly be forced to consider from close, personal range. Laura Ferno wakes up the following afternoon with a belly wrapped in bandage, a mouth tasting like sun-dried vomit and two distinct hangovers: one from the alcohol, and one from the anaesthesia. She spends a restless and irritable Christmas in hospital, forced to keep still so as not to tear her side open again. She is discharged shortly before the New Year, with a sizeable antibiotics prescription and instructions not to drink alcohol while taking them, which only makes her angrier. After a month and a half, her doctor gives her permission to be physically active again, and doesn't bother to set up another appointment. And then the physical injury is totally in the past. Laura forgets about her scar for months at a time. It should be over. But this is the United Kingdom, and a muggee can't straight-up kill a mugger in self-defence and simply return home to unified raptur...]]> Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:19:13 +0100 http://qntm.org/city http://qntm.org/city Ra » "Nottingham has enough pubs and clubs", say the local police. If you wanted to get around every last one of them it would be a year at a brisk trot before you were starting to visit establishments more than one mile from the centre of the city. Pick a Friday or a Saturday, any Friday or Saturday of the year: the establishments will be rammed and jumping and the streets bustling with people in their most tightly-wound and elaborately crafted drinking costumes. It's almost Christmas but the cold season has not added much to the average number of layers. Multicoloured decorative illuminations span the alleys and narrower streets: yellow curlicues and red stars and inexplicably five-pointed white snowflakes. Orange light spills out onto the street from the pubs. Floodlit trams cruise past, bells ringing at stumbling people in the way. Officers with cars and vans and fluorescent visibility jackets hold a largely pre-emptive presence on various likely streets. Quite frankly, it's a quiet one...]]> Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:32:21 +0100