Daniel Ranard is currently a PhD student in theoretical physics at Stanford University. His favorite thinkers are Einstein and Dostoevsky. Email: danranard [at] gmail.com
by Daniel Ranard You must have seen the iconic image of the blue-white earth, perfectly round against the black of space. How did NASA produce the famous “Blue Marble” image? Actually, Harrison Schmitt just snapped a photo on his 70mm Hasselblad. Or maybe it was his buddy Eugene Cernan, or Ron Evans – their accounts…
by Daniel Ranard We're surrounded by algorithms. Facebook uses an algorithm to curate your newsfeed, credit agencies use an algorithm to compute your credit score, and soon an algorithm may replace you in the driver's seat. As algorithms come to dictate larger swaths of life, it's important to understand exactly what they are, and especially…
by Amanda Beth Peery I once had a handheld plastic mirrorthat reflected one feature at a time: the wrist, the blushing shell of an ear or lips pulled into a grimace or smile. For a while I gazed into water and ice to see my vision in ripples and whitenessfrom every lake-rimmed forest shore, I…
by Daniel Ranard "I am in the world and at the same time in myself: is there geometry more beautiful?" —Abdelmajid Benjelloun When someone learns you're in academia, sometimes they ask questions you're not qualified to answer. An economist friend was asked once: "Oh, so how long do eggs last in the fridge?" And so…
by Daniel Ranard how do you know the moonis moving: see the dry casting of the beach worm dissolve at the delicate rising touch:–A.R. Ammons, in Expressions of Sea Level During the August eclipse, I overheard a funny bit of philosophy. I'll tell it verbatim, I swear. Tree branches had enclosed a stretch of path…
by Daniel Ranard Sometimes it's easier to understand abstract math with a story. When I explain bits of math to unsuspecting friends, I'm always happy by how quickly they follow. Even precise definitions and proofs are easy to learn with a little work. But for the uninitiated, eventually the words and symbols start to slip…
by Daniel Ranard In the twentieth century, two important ideas arose with a nominal similarity: Einstein's theory of relativity on the one hand, and the idea of cultural or moral relativism on the other. It's probably fruitless to draw parallels between concepts that arose at distant ends of the intellectual spectrum—the hard sciences versus the…
by Daniel Ranard you cannot turn around in the Absolute: there are no entrances or exits no precipitations of forms to use like tongs against the formless —A.R. Ammons, in Guide The world is usually grasped by its pieces. We may speak of a “holistic” perspective, but it's hard to understand all of a thing…
by Daniel Ranard Maybe you've heard by now about last week's Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded to three physicists for their work on topological phase transitions. But if you didn't already know what a topological phase transition was, chances are you still don't. When a friend of mine read a few popular articles on the…
by Daniel Ranard. “Every choice we make is totally predetermined,” you hear someone say, a little too loudly, from a nearby table at the coffee shop. “If we had a big enough supercomputer, and we knew the exact configuration of all the atoms that make up a person and their surroundings, we could calculate their…
by Daniel Ranard Math works pretty well. We can count apples and oranges; we can scribble equations and then launch a rocket that lands gently upright. When an argument is indisputable, we colloquially say “do the math,” and we speak of events that will happen with “mathematical certainty.” Math works so well that you're forced…
by Daniel Ranard Nearly anyone who tells you about quantum mechanics is quick to tell you how weird it is. And perhaps any science that ventures outside the realm of the visible or the human is bound to be strange. Our universe is a strange place, filled with exotic objects whose undeniable strangeness is blunted…