The Mad Hatter's Secret Ingredient: Math

The first numbers that come to mind when thinking about Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland might be how much money the movie is raking in at the box office.

But numbers also appear to be woven in among the talking rabbits and smoking caterpillars of the original stories. Author Lewis Carroll was also a math teacher in Oxford, England, and mathematicians say the Alice books are full of algebraic lessons — such as why a raven is like a writing desk.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124632317

NPR
March 13, 2010

Comics

http://xkcd.com/

A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.

20 years

It's an anniversary!

Taken in 1990 by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, the "pale blue dot" photo shows what our planet looks like from four billion miles away. Earth is the tiny speck of light indicated by the arrow, and enlarged in the upper left-hand corner. The pale streak over Earth is an artifact of sunlight scattering in the camera's optics.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123614938

Darwin's Camera

NPR article

Parastou Forouhar

Creation

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122818161

Open Your Eyes

— Richard Dawkins (Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder)

Life and Beats under the Microscope

This is a song called "Zap Zap" by the electronic band Cut Copy.

SHERLOKIAN

“If I claim full justice for my art it is because crime is common (and) logic is rare.”

Sherlock Holmes, The Copper Beeches

www.sherlockian.net/

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/pl_screen/

TED VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization