Interstellar Economics

For those of you not subscribed to my Shared Items, here is some silly research on the economics of interstellar travel.

First Fundamental Theorem of Interstellar Trade: When trade takes plaec between two planets in a common inertial frame, the interest costs on goods in transit should be calculated using time measured by clocks in the common frame, and not by clocks in the frame of trading spacecraft.

Second Fundamental Theorem of Interstellar Trade: If sentient beings may hold assets on two plaents in the same inertial frame, competition will equalize the interest rates on the two planets.

Aya's Birthday

We've only had time this year to celebrate Aya's birthday with our families so far. We went to the Haifa Science Museum and then pick-nicked at Afek Reservoir. Here's how I had fun in the museum playing Tower of Hanoi in 40 seconds:



And for comparison:



The photos are on Facebook, for whoever wants to see:





UPDATE: Updated the link so people who aren't registered to Facebook can still view photos. Annoying how this is not the default, but inside the photo album there is a link that allows this.

Science Vs Faith

Not faith in God, which cannot actually be refuted by "contradicting evidence". Rather, faith in some religion and stories, some of which contradict known scientific facts (= theories proven beyond reasonable doubt), like Evolution.

String Theory In 2 Minutes

Here are a few vids trying to "explain" String Theory in 2 minutes.

• Ducky (The winner in the contest)


• Weird


• Musical

There are more over there, which is your favorite?

A Vaccine for AIDS!

The wet dream of medical researchers has been achieved - the vaccine for AIDS is here (ready for clinical tests, that is).

After being with a biologist for 2 years, I can't help but thinking this is not necessarily a good thing. Sure, the vaccine might work on 99.9% of the people, but there a good chance the rest of the viruses will evolve and mutate into something even more resistant.

Aya here says that it might even become airborne, since the vaccine is now messing with parts of the virus DNA which have been pretty constant now.

And the worst part is that none of this is can be tested in the lab. You can't really predict what the outcome of releasing this "cure" will be by testing in a lab.