I spent a morning strolling around the old town of Strasbourg, France, with as main goal a visit to its impressive cathedral. Unfortunately it was a completely overcast day, so the sky was white instead of blue. But[…]
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Latest Posts
A Chalk Walk
Among scientists, a “chalk talk” means a lecture without a laptop and beamer to display fancy graphics, but simply using a blackboard and a piece of chalk to draw diagrams and formulas while you speak. It’s sort of[…]
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Lunar Eclipse over Amsterdam
Last night there was a (complete) lunar eclipse which was visible from Amsterdam. Many thanks to Jo & Piet for sharing their 9th-floor apartment balcony with me, from where the views were just wonderful! Here are some impressions.[…]
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Whim of the Week – 62
Beauty is cruelty…
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Complex Experimental Autocatalytic Sets
Autocatalytic sets are self-sustaining chemical reaction networks which are believed to have played an important role in the origin of life, and to be an underlying principle of living systems in general. They have been studied in great[…]
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The Evolutionary Roots of Irrationality
Standard economic theory assumes that humans behave fully rationally and are able to objectively calculate the value (or cost) of the different choices they are presented with. In fact, we pride ourselves on our rationality. Different from the[…]
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Whim of the Week – 61
A whimsical garage owner…
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Citizen Science: Schumann Resonances
Schumann resonances (SR) are global electromagnetic resonances generated by lightning in the cavity between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. Their existence was predicted mathematically in 1952. However, it took another decade before they could be reliably measured[…]
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Whim of the Week – 60
A poem about mathematics…
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Snooker Statistics Follow Precise Mathematical Laws
A particular mathematical relationship known as a power law has been observed in many day-to-day situations, from word use frequencies in natural languages to the connectivity distribution in Facebook friendship networks. As it turns out, though, such a[…]
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Whim of the Week – 59
Frolicking frogs and slithering snakes…
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Impressions of Amsterdam
I’ll admit it straight away: it’s not my city, and it never will be. But on one of those rare blue-sky days it’s actually not so bad (if you can manage to dodge the hordes of tourists, that[…]
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Whim of the Week – 58
Snails do it too!
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Update: Earthquake Statistics
A year ago I published an article in Plus magazine debunking claims buzzing around the internet about a supposed recent increase in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and so on. In that article I showed in detail how anyone[…]
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Tracing the Roots of my Family Name
It’s quite fun when your family name originates from a specific place that still exists and can be visited. As had already been known for a long time, my family name comes from a street, the Hordijk, in[…]
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Whim of the Week – 57
Room for rent…
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Evolution as a Problem Solver in Computer Science
The theory of evolution has helped biologists and ecologists to understand more about the natural world in general, and psychologists and social scientists to understand more about ourselves in particular. However, it has also taught a thing or two to[…]
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What’s Your Problem?
Some problems are fundamentally hard, not only for humans, but even for computers. We may know how to solve these hard problems in theory, but in practice it might take billions of years to actually do so, even[…]
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Whim of the Week – 56
Being different is not allowed!
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Whim of the Week – 55
The cat’s whiskers.
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Whim of the Week – 54
Welcome to Israel. Beware of falling rockets!
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Whim of the Week – 53
A bird’s-tail view…
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Whim of the Week – 52
A theoretical biologist making fun of theoretical biologists…
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Geneva Attractions: From High Energy Physics to High Altitude Views
Geneva is a city of many faces. Located in the far-western corner of Switzerland, at the tip of its namesake lake, it is steeped in history, surrounded by mountains, and host to the world’s largest particle physics experiments[…]
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The Origin of Life: A Selfish Act or a Cooperative Effort?
Around 1620 the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont, often considered the father of pneumatic chemistry (the chemistry of gases), wrote the following: “If you press a piece of underwear soiled with sweat together with some wheat in an[…]
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