e pur si muove

Go crazy over undergraduate and graduate rankings. As usual, you need a subscription to see the full listing.

Unsurprisingly, Harvard remains the best-ranked university, no doubt in part due to its ginormous $23b endowment. The local university has climbed a few notches in the undergrad ranks to No. 42 (I believe it used to be No. 47). The chemistry program ranking remains at No. 6.

New subcategories for graduate rankings: Theoretical chemistry, with the top 3 being Berkeley, Caltech (*deep hacking cough*) and Columbia; and Quantum physics under physics, which is like excuse me? is this meant to be a new discipline??

*Deep sigh* Makes me really wonder if the US News people know what they are doing, and if the rankings-obsessed people who cling on to their every result like the gospel truth really know what they are doing too.

Why not grow your own 1-up mushrooms?

And it’s not even April yet.

technorati tags: april, fool, geeky

This is just so cool: an atomic-scale superfast rotor that spins so quickly, it pushes its surrounding water molecules away. LiveScience has a pretty decent writeup, though of course somewhat hyped up about breaking the laws of physics yada yada. Of course it doesn’t, it simply makes note that at the quantum level, classical notions of action-reaction break down. But these spinning cyanide radicals definitely make common sense break down in a fantastically amazing way. Watch a cartoon of what’s going on.

Read the real article in this week’s issue of Science Magazine. 

It’s not often you see a woman walking her tortoise on the Quad.

The weather today was divine. 72°F (22°C), clear skies, and people walking their pets on the Quad.

Ah, spring.