Möbius Transformations Revealed

Möbius Transformations Revealed is a wonderful video clarifying a deep topic. This is amazing work by Douglas Arnold and Jonathan Rogness of the University of Minnesota. --Edward Tufte

Any beautiful, simple presentation of complex information charms us, and we think you will enjoy this visual explanation of Möbius Transformations:

Cool Tool at Yule!

The Newseum — the Interactive Museum of News — offers a neat little tool that allows you to scan the day's newspaper front pages. Just pass your cursor over a little yellow regional dot on the map, and the corresponding front page pops up on the right. Click on the dot, and the selected front page appears at a more legible size on your computer screen.

One isn't limited to U.S. newspapers either--it's an international tool which allows you to scan the day's news from 360-degrees . . . all over the globe!

". . . you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

A reminder to students in the throes of final research papers:

Last year, Wikipedia founder Jimmie Wales said he wanted to get the "message out to college students that they shouldn’t use [Wikipedia] for class projects or serious research."

This message is strongly stated in a Wikipedia page titled Researching with Wikipedia, which reminds students that "In all academic institutions, Wikipedia, along with most encyclopedias, is unacceptable as a major source for a research paper."

Or as Mr. Wales says, “'For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.'”

Speechless

Unless our mind is playing tricks on us, we seem to remember hearing Sir Richard Burton read the phone book on The Tonight Show back in the 1960s--the white pages, no less. We remember his voice as low, intimate, seductive, urgent.

That old canard that "His voice is so beautiful that he could make the phone book sound good" has been dusted off in support of the Writers Guild strike. For the Speechless campaign, friends of the striking writers create a series of vignettes which demonstrate how the industry is literally "speechless without writers."

We love episode no. 16, in which actors Patricia Clarkson and Amy Ryan read the yellow pages with pathos verging on the tragic.