{"id":37,"date":"2005-12-13T02:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-13T02:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=37"},"modified":"2021-10-12T21:13:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T02:13:30","slug":"thats-not-a-proof-mate-thats-a-proof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"That&#8217;s not a proof, mate &#8212; that&#8217;s a proof"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I arrived Friday morning in an exotic, faraway &#8220;Backwards-Land,&#8221; where mammals have pouches, vegemite is considered edible, toilets should in principle flush the wrong way, and Christmas trees adorn a tropical summer landscape.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m here to visit the University of Queensland physics department, which is probably best known as the home of the world&#8217;s longest-running experiment: a glob of congealed black tar that&#8217;s been dripping through a funnel since 1927, at the rate of about one drop per decade. This important experiment recently won an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.improb.com\/ig\/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2005\">Ig Nobel Prize in Physics<\/a>, causing my colleague the <a href=\"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/index.php\">Quantum Pontiff<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=1094\">regret<\/a> not taking a photo of it while he had the chance. In perhaps the greatest advance in Catholic-Jewish relations since John Paul II prayed at the Western Wall, today <em>Shtetl-Optimized<\/em> proudly presents His Quantum Holiness with the following token of goodwill.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/uploaded_images\/tar-785228.jpg\"> <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog2\/uploaded_images\/tar-785228.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog2\/uploaded_images\/tar-782123.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s more to Australia than funnels of congealed black tar. There are also strange and wonderful birds with that wander around the campus eating people&#8217;s garbage. Birdwatching is not a pastime I&#8217;ve ever wished on anyone, but I <em>think <\/em>this one is an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Australian_white_ibis\">Australian White Ibis<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scottaaronson.com\/blog2\/uploaded_images\/ibis-758712.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Finally, Australia is also home to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2005_Cronulla_race_riots\">terrible race riots<\/a>, which erupted yesterday after a Lebanese gang apparently attacked two white lifeguards. I don&#8217;t have anything amusing to say about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I arrived Friday morning in an exotic, faraway &#8220;Backwards-Land,&#8221; where mammals have pouches, vegemite is considered edible, toilets should in principle flush the wrong way, and Christmas trees adorn a tropical summer landscape. I&#8217;m here to visit the University of Queensland physics department, which is probably best known as the home of the world&#8217;s longest-running [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-meatspace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6020,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/6020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}