This and that ...

Been busy lately and haven't had time to post. I got a new temp gig for next week (yay!) and also, wait for it, found the Magic Clock Paper! (See previous entry, "The Clock".)

I'll post again soon when I get the chance.

Little Miss GTAKF, I *love* that binary T-shirt.

Monster Grrrl and Rubyroyalette, I love your posts on femme/gender identity and I want to respond to them this weekend.

Portland in general, who ordered this winter weather? This is ridiculous.

The Powers that Be

As you probably know, 2 and 4 are the only integer values for which the following equality holds: x^y=y^x. (The value is equal to 16.) [NB. given x≠y.]

But what about the rest of the function?

Mathematica to the rescue:



ContourPlot[(x^y) - (y^x), {x, 0, 4}, {y, 0.00001, 4},
AspectRatio -> Automatic];

UPDATE: Aha! Here we go. I've refined the plot display so that you can see the function better. It's not quite as seductive, but a little more to-the-point. Of course the diagonal line represents the case where x=y.

Mars Orbiter orbits Mars!

http://www.physorg.com/news11637.html
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.rss.html?id=1099
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060310_mro_mars_arrival.html
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/

Yaaay!

I really needed some good news this week.