Hey everyone! Sorry about the placeholder entry earlier today; I got caught up in hanging out with my sister (and making some delicious pork ribs) and totally forgot about the blog entirely. Won’t happen ever again. I think I went a little too far yesterday with regards to length, so I’ll be doing some shorter entries to prevent myself from getting too long-winded. Since it’s so late today, I’ll just post some links and leave the meaty material for tomorrow. Apologies!

Sean Carroll explains in easy-to-understand terms the physics on why there is something rather than nothing - Every time I hear about modern physics I always come away with a deep appreciation for the work that these men and women do. In many ways I regret not studying physics in more depth at college. (h/t to Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy for this one)

Peter Theil’s CS183: Startup class in essay form - I’ll be following this really closely. Startup life is something I’ve been pretty interested in, and it’s really rare to get a free glimpse into a veteran’s wisdom like this.

TU Munich’s Mathematics department cancels its Elsevier subscriptions - This needs to happen more often. I’m glad that Harvard put out a strongly-worded statement against the worst practices of academic journals and publishers, but in the end what’s needed to achieve real change is action to impact their bottom line.

Health Affairs outlines why drug shortages happen - The implications of how sensitive our stockpiles are to the shutdowns of individual factories are really scary.