Money-laundering – confessions in view of the Panama Papers

Posted on April 9, 2016 by tkflor

Note: This blog-post was written by a guest-blogger who prefers to remain anonymous (read below and you will see why).

It seems that the Panama papers have taken the world by a storm: Continue reading →

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Perceptions of brilliance

Posted on April 2, 2016 by tkflor

Little Prince's Rose at the Museum of The Little Prince in Hakone, Japan

“On the little prince’s planet the flowers had always been simple. They had only one ring of petals; they took up no room at all; they were trouble to nobody. One morning they would appear in the grass, and by night they would have faded peacefully away. But one day, from a seed blown from no one knew where, a new flower had come up; and the little prince had watched very closely over this small sprout which was not like any other small sprouts on his planet…
Then one morning, exactly at sunrise, she suddenly showed herself.
And, after working with all this painstaking precision, she yawned and said:
‘Ah! I am scarcely awake. I beg that you will excuse me. My petals are still all disarranged …’
But the little prince could not restrain his admiration:
‘Oh! How beautiful you are!’
“Am I not?’ the flower responded, sweetly. “And I was born at the same moment as the sun…’
The little prince could guess easily enough that she was not any too modest – but how moving – and exciting – she was!”
From The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s tale, the arrogant flower “cast her fragrance and her radiance” over the admiring little prince, until she drove him away from his tiny planet. According to a highly publicized research (summary here), “expectations of brilliance” may drive away women from certain academic fields “whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success.” Why? Because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. To those who immediately start wondering, these results are not limited to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Continue reading →

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Greek Revival buildings in universities

Posted on March 18, 2016 by tkflor

Greek Revival, architectural style, based on 5th-century-bc Greek temples, which spread throughout Europe and the United States during the first half of the 19th century.

The main reasons for the style’s popularity seem to have been the general intellectual preoccupation with ancient Greek culture at the time, as well as a new awareness of the actual nature of Greek art brought about through widely circulated illustrations of notable ancient temples and the Elgin Marbles. The growing recognition of the Parthenon in Athens as a major monument helped secure the dominance of this Grecian form.
Greek Revival, Encyclopedia Britannica


Playmakers Theater, UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Built in 1850.

Continue reading →

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Another reason to celebrate Albert Einstein’s birthday

Posted on March 13, 2016 by tkflor

“Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.”
Albert Einstein, in a letter, March 1914
(from Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais).

Bearing in mind that only a few months ago, detectors on Earth measured gravitational waves produced some 1.3 billion light-years from us, Einstein’s quote sounds prophetic. He made this observation in correspondence concerning his belief in the principles of the theory of general relativity he was working on. Following an intense effort to solve the difficulties he encountered trying to formulate the field equations of general relativity, Einstein published his theory in November 1915.
The first exact solution to Einstein’s field equations predicted the existence of black holes.
In June 1916, Einstein published a paper predicting the existence of gravitational waves which propagate with the velocity of light.
On September 14, 2015, a transient gravitational-wave signal was observed by two LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detectors. Analyzing the features of the signal (“the tail of the lion”) scientists deduced that it was caused by collision of two orbiting black holes!!! Continue reading →

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He or She – some confusion about authors’ gender

Posted on March 4, 2016 by tkflor

“Kawasaki Ninja,” said Wardle. “I know we’re looking for a Honda,” he added, forestalling Strike,“but he crapped himself when we came calling.”
“So do most people when CID turn up on their doorstep. Go on.”
“He’s a sweaty little guy, name of Baxter, a sales rep with no alibi for the weekend of the second and third, or for the twenty-ninth. Divorced, no kids, claims he stayed in for the royal wedding, watching it. Would you have watched the royal wedding without a woman in the house?”
“No,” said Strike, who had only caught footage on the news.
From Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith

Regardless of whether you watched the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, aren’t those assumptions patronizing and chauvinistic?
Yet, Robert Galbraith, an ex-British Army officer who continued to work in security in civilian life, should know exactly how men like Detective Inspector Eric Wardle and army veteran investigator Cormoran Strike are reasoning. “Rosalind Galbraith” might be an officer with similar qualifications and also with a distinguished career (top secret – only her name can be disclosed), but would you trust her fictional depictions? Would you find her storytelling to be as natural and convincing as Robert’s? Continue reading →

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Celebrating first anniversary

Posted on February 18, 2016 by tkflor

I am celebrating the first anniversary of Initial Conditions, with a promotion and a giveaway.

After ten years of writing and rewriting, I published my first novel, Initial Conditions, in early 2015. I watched it take tiny steps and nervously read readers’ reviews. Those who read it, seemed to enjoy a story about love, career and ambition, even if they were not particularly interested in science.
A year after pressing on “PUBLISH”, it’s time to celebrate!

There is a Goodreads giveaway of two paperback copies, for those in the US.

And the ebook price is now 0.99 (USD, CAD, AUD, GBP and EURO) on Amazon, iBooks and Kobo, until February 28. And it’s ¥99 in Japan.

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Tales of extreme sensitivity

Posted on February 12, 2016 by tkflor

Water streamed from her hair down her clothes into her shoes, and ran out at the heels. Yet she claimed to be a real Princess.
“We’ll soon find that out,” the old Queen thought to herself. Without saying a word about it she went to the bedchamber, stripped back the bedclothes, and put just one pea in the bottom of the bed. Then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on the pea. Then she took twenty eiderdown feather beds and piled them on the mattresses. Up on top of all these the Princess was to spend the night.
In the morning they asked her, “Did you sleep well?”
“Oh!” said the Princess. “No. I scarcely slept at all. Heaven knows what’s in that bed. I lay on something so hard that I’m black and blue all over. It was simply terrible.”
from The Princess on the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen,
translation by Jean Hersholt (The Hans Christian Andersen Centre)

In the fairy tale, the Queen based her experiment on the hypothesis that only a true Princess is so delicate that she will feel “one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds”. A second, more recent tale, draws its hypothesis from Einstein’s one-hundred years old prediction about the existence of gravitational waves. In that tale, the pea is a cataclysmic event from a very distant past and the “mattresses” are the swath of space stretching over a billion light-years. For the sensitivity of the very delicate Princess stands “the most precise ruler ever constructed”, the twin sites of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). These two observatories were constructed to detect tiny distortions in space-time (strain), known as gravitational waves. One observatory is located in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana. The separation between their detectors (3,002 kilometers apart) is necessary to verify that the signals come from space and are not from some other local phenomenon. Continue reading →

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Unification

Posted on February 6, 2016 by tkflor

“The most cherished goal in physics, as in bad romance novels, is unification. To bring together two things previously understood as different and recognize them as aspects of a single entity – when we can do it – is the biggest thrill in science.”
from The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, by Lee Smolin

In Romance, both good and bad, “the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love” (from About the Romance Genre. In physics, those who seek unification, won’t necessarily find it. Continue reading →

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NaNoWriMo and a dreadful first-draft

Posted on January 30, 2016 by tkflor

“Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth.”
from On Writing by Stephen King

Back in November, I participated in the NaNoWriMo 2015 writing challenge. By the end of the month, the first draft was about 53k words. On December 10th , when I wrote “the end”, the word count was about 75k. Following King’s advice, I waited six weeks (recuperation time for the author and “aging” period for the manuscript) and then read a printed copy. “If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours,” King writes, “and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone’s darlings than it is to kill your own.” After that, King talks about holes in plot, errors in character motivation and other flaws in crucial components of a story.

In a blog-post titled Now What? A Roadmap for Revising Your Novel, James Scott Bell advises NaNoWrimo writers to “assess the big picture”. His first point, “Does this story make sense?” is obviously an important question. However, it already assumes that the magic has happened, so a story is entwined in a rough fabric of the first draft. Is such an assumption always justified? Continue reading →

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It’s snowing

Posted on January 23, 2016 by tkflor


It’s snowing and snowing. The sky is pearly-grey, and there is not even a glimmer of sun. The view from our windows (see photos) brings to mind the blizzard scene from Initial Conditions.

The magical wood from the previous night transformed into a bleak, outlandish world. Snow moved in surreal white currents; snowflakes circled all around in incessant, random motion. Something was very wrong in this mindless, raging chaos.
“Come on.” Jonathan’s voice was barely audible. He tugged Danielle’s shoulder and pointed. She squinted in the same direction, then nodded. Through the darting and swirling snow, Lucas Lodge looked like a phantom house, an illusion conjured to mislead and to lure. Fear froze her motions; she did not budge. An impatient pull from Jonathan broke the spell. She squeezed his hand, and they went on plowing through the tempestuous snow. Buffeted by the wind, panting and shivering, they reached the house. The door was unlocked.
A casually dressed woman stood by the entrance. She brightened seeing Danielle and Jonathan.
“Never mind the boots, just come inside,” the woman said. “My name is Rebecca. Please, leave everything here and warm yourselves in the breakfast room. I’ll bring some hot coffee.”

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