Archive for June, 2009
On Free-Energies and “Higher-Learning”
This tiny post was originally conceived to appear in “Really Cool Derivations“, the working title for an unpublished study companion meant to pain young upper middle-class students from semi-orthodox Indian families who weren’t romantic enough to indulge in the arts and were consequently conscripted into training for entrance exams conducted by elite institutions of “higher-learning”. [...]
June 22, 2009
• Tags: free energy, higher learning, latex, legendre transform, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics • Posted in: Dileep's • 4 Comments
Blink, Morse
In the novel *Cryptonomicon*, one of the lead characters finds himself implicated in a (comical) drug bust, and is placed in a jail cell under the watchful (electronic) eyes of hi-tech eavesdroppers. It’s a scene out of a spy novel (although *Cryptonomicon* isn’t quite that), minus the secret agents, plus one savvy Unix sysadmin. He’s [...]