I have seen lots of turkey pictures last week and this has reminded me of an anniversary: When I saw those last time I have just started using Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. @elkement Little bird has left its egg! #newbie #twitter — Elke Stangl (@elkement) November 22, 2012 So a review is overdue, and I…
Tag: Geek Collection
Mastering Geometry is a Lost Art
I am trying to learn Quantum Field Theory the hard way: Alone and from textbooks. But there is something harder than the abstract math of advanced quantum physics: You can aim at comprehending ancient texts on physics. If you are an accomplished physicist, chemist or engineer – try to understand Sadi Carnot’s reasoning that was…
Revisiting the Enigma of the Intersecting Lines and That Pesky Triangle
Chances are I made a fool of myself when trying to solve an intriguing math/physics puzzle described in this post. I wanted to create a German version but found it needs a revision. I will just give you my stream of consciousness as I cannot make it worse anyway. The puzzle presented by Quantum Boffin…
Breaking News on Search Term Poetry (Good, Bad, Ugly)
This is a break from quantum physics – you deserve it! Based on your questions – no un-follows so far fortunately – I will follow-up with attempting again to pick the right metaphors for 1026 dimensional spaces and tons of enormous vectors. But there is more (enigmatic) to this universe than quantum field theory – such…
On the Relation of Jurassic Park and Alien Jelly Flowing through Hyperspace
Yes, this is a serious physics post – no. 3 in my series on Quantum Field Theory. I promised to explain what Quantization is. I will also argue – again – that classical mechanics is unjustly associated with steampunk pictures of clocks and trains. It looks more like representations of time-lines in Back to the…
The Science of Search Term Poetry
In the break after the second session on Quantum Field Theory I am showing off light edutainment with a scientific touch. Every quarter I save the search terms as displayed in WordPress Stats for highly sophisticated statistical, psychological and linguistic analysis. That is, I do create a Search Term Poem. Rules are as follows: Every…
Space Balls, Baywatch and the Geekiness of Classical Mechanics
This is the first post in my series about Quantum Field Theory. What a let-down: I will just discuss classical mechanics. There is a quantum mechanics, and in contrast there is good old classical, Newtonian mechanics. The latter is a limiting case of the former. So there is some correspondence between the two, and there are rules…
Quarterly Search Term Poetry Results (Overdue!)
Due to my time-out from social media search terms submitted in Q2 2013 have not yet seen the light of day. Shareholders, I apologize! Going for a new level of efficiency in creating poetry I try to anticipate your comments and questions. I have announced it several times: I am poeticizing your comments now! I…
What? A Spooky Spam Poem of Danger, Fear, Hope.
It is time to purge the spam queue again! Spam commenters are still gloomy and plagued with existential questions and answers. I am very proud of the simple and powerful title. What? was a complete spam comment. I even clicked the associated link as it felt so genuine. What? there is no danger If you…
Theory and Practice of Trying to Combine Physics with Anything
You have told me, you miss my physics posts. I have missed them, too, and I give it a try. But I cannot help turning this into a cross-over again, smashing together half-digested psychology, physics, IT networking, and badly hidden autobiographical anecdotes. In 2005 I did research on the incorporation of physics-style thinking and mathematical…
Transhumanism and the Extended Self
This transhuman and extended post has now transcended all other related posts on gamification. Blogging singularity! But wait… we did not factor in the lawyers! The target of this reblog is now offline, but I want to conserve the URL to the embedded video here – The Singularity, Ruined by Lawyers.
Decoding Myself: Searching for Hidden Clues in My Blog Posts’ Titles
I am inventing a new experimental genre: Header Poetry. I tag this post with Spam Poetry and Search Term Poetry as – theoretically – my headers could show up as search terms or skillfully drafted spam comments. As an innovator in poetry based on recycled material I need to do this – in order to…
Cyber Security Satire?
I am a science fiction fan. In particular, I am a fan of movies featuring Those Lonesome Nerds who are capable of controlling this planet’s critical infrastructure – from their gloomy basements. But is it science fiction? In the year Die Hard 4.0 has been released a classified video – showing an electrical generator dying…
The BLAHS #4–Geek of the Year
Originally posted on The Millennium Conjectures™:
“Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”–Warren Buffett A view of technology in my youth. I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I give the Geek of the Year BLAHS to myself? Short answer: I almost won an award like that in my youth, but lost out to the guy…
Existential Spam Poem: The Soul of This Bag
I follow the call to arms by fellow spam poet Michelle(*)(**). Every time she blogs about spam poetry, I have a spam poem in my drafts folder – so I think I need to release the current one now. This time I defined the following goals: there should be a topic and a narrative, and…
Kicking off the ILFB Award: Intelligent Life-Forms in the Blogosphere
As announced in one of my recent off-the-wall posts I have been pondering about founding an award of my own. I am on a mission this week – now I need to get it done! My goals are as follows: Create rules that are self-consistent, loophole-free, but nonetheless rather simple to describe and to follow….
Fourth dimension surfing
Originally posted on Pairodox:
The second image below has marked time in the drafts section of my dashboard for well over a month. It was taken at the Jacoby Falls on one of the very first mild weekends of our Pennsylvania spring. An earlier post which described that visit concerned a topic altogether divorced from…
Remarks Written by Brain-Dead Visitors
Dear reader, enclosed you find my latest spam poem. Each line is verbatim from a spam comment (including typos). The meme pool had comprised about 400 spam comments collected in the past three weeks. This time I forced myself to compile the poem extremely fast, scrolling through these comments in Data-from-Star-Trek-style and letting my subconsciousness…
On Social Media and Networking (Should Have Been a Serious Post, Turned out Otherwise)
It has been nearly a month since my satirical post on LinkedIn and bot-like HR professionals has stirred interesting discussions and unexpected reblogs. I have promised to come up with related posts regularly. To all my new followers who were probably attracted by the Liebster-award-related nonsense: Compared to those posts this one is unfortunately a…
Missing Policies for the Mad Tea Party and What to Learn from The Jabberwocky
I am trying to re-gain control over the blog award nomination process, or I pretend to do so. postmoderndonkey had called it a Mad Tea Party of a nomination process – and right he was. You may accuse me of making this blog the strange attractor of a self-referential loop of weird referrals to itself…
Liebster Blog Award Nomination for Everyone!
Originally posted on postmoderndonkey:
Many thanks to the Elkement blog for nominating Postmoderndonkey into a potentially ubiquitous spam nomination process chasing the illusive Liebster blog award presumably never to be awarded as the nomination acceptance process expands by a factor of eight with each completed acceptance straining the limits of the infinitude of the world wide web. Cutting…
Liebster Blog Award: This Time I Try to Respond in a More Normal Way
It happened again – I have been bestowed a blog award despite the way I handled my last nomination. This time I will respond in a different way. I – the Subversive El(k)ement – will adhere to the rules! Geeks, please bear with me though! I still think that blog awards are just ridiculous chain…
Surprise Potatoes in the Soldiers’ Vegetable Soup!
Having blogged for more than a year I have finally reached the status of renowned, serious blogger. I have carved out my niche, and I have been asked for providing feedback on a book in that particular category. Of course, it is a book of spam poems. Surprise Potatoes in the Soldiers’ Vegetable Soup ……
On Time Travelling: Rigorous Categorization of Science Fiction Movies
Do you remember the scary moment when Ashton Cutcher alias Evan recognizes suddenly that his arms are crippled – and that they have been crippled since many years? This is a scene from The Butterfly Effect: Evan discovers that he is capable of time-travelling to his troubled childhood. He tries to fix the present by…
Impolite and Humiliating Spam and Why We Really Need Tags for Spam Comments More than Time Machines
It has been a while since my last spam poem that was really compliant with the rules. My most recent attempt at Spam Poetry bent the rules. (But it is true – I am usually changing the rules as I go.) Recently I have learned from fellow blogger and spam poet Michelle that there is…
Professional Online Persona or: What Are Your Skills?
My previous post has triggered intriguing discussions – about writing, identity and what I called an ‘online persona’. As far as I remember I borrowed this term from David Weinberger’s book Small Pieces Loosely Joined – sublime reflections on the way the web has impacted culture and communication. I have asked myself sometimes: How should…
On Writing or: What Do I Need to Smoke to Understand Your Websites?
This is a verbatim quote. (“This” refers to the second part of the title. The first one is a lame reference to Stephen King, of course). It is a question asked by a former colleague some years ago who had been exposed to my proto-blog websites for the first time. These websites are subject to…
Spam Poets Write Weird Things
The title has been provided by this blog’s visitors, I guess licensed as Creative Commons. It has been a month since I have posted the last search term poem – here we go again! This time I don’t break my own rules – despite of having quoted two intriguing search terms here. But since this…
I Need More Trivial Content
Don’t panic – I have left the lofty heights of political analysis for now! But thanks again for all the fish, commenters, as I had ventured out of my geeky comfort zone quite a bit! But now I am back: to down-to-earth, hands-on, ready-to-use … Spam Poetry The categories and tags for this blog are…
On the Hierarchy of Needs and Needless Things
Yesterday The Curtain Raiser has reminded that a well-versed blogger should celebrate the first blogging anniversary. I hit the Publish button first on March 2012, 24, so I should consider writing something pivotal in three days. But I am not there yet, rather the opposite. Having just announced on Twitter and Google+ that my posts…
elkemental Force 